

Design is a Side Effect  - cwan
http://dswillis.com/uxcrank/?p=480 

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alex1
UX is a science and visual design is an art. I think they are both equally
important.

The UX guy is like an architect, but even if he comes up with a nice building
layout, no one wants to live in wood and cement foundation. UX and visual
design go hand-in-hand and both are needed to create something compelling. In
web design, collaboration between the UX guy and visual designer is very
important, as the things they do are equally important.

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Alex3917
Visual design is only an art if you're doing it wrong. It's no coincidence
that design is a synonym for fate. The goal of design to force the user to do
something or feel something, and you can only do this if your design is
incorporating predictable elements. Which is pretty much the opposite of art,
where you're testing novel elements to see what change they produce in people.

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Mz
Your remark makes me think of some show on HGTV where they were staging a
property and the stager talked about using art and other visual design
elements to maneuver people down the hall, right past the so-so kitchen, and
on to the great view and living space at the end to make the place sell. If
you know what you are doing, web designers can similarly direct attention,
etc, of the user.

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asolove
This assumes that "design" should be narrowly construed as "decoration" that
"solves a problem" (like: "what color should the header font be to make it
stand out?")

On the other hand, the whole UX movement and firms like Adaptive Path have
shown that, if we consider the real brand (customer experience) as a design
possibility, and let traditional design methods drive not just decoration but
also the complete architecture of how the customer interacts with us, we can
find much better solutions. It isn't as simple as "find out what your
customers want," especially in emerging markets.

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Estragon
I don't know. I'm reading _The E-myth Revisited_ at the moment, and it claims
that salespeople sell 10-15% more when they're dressed in blue than when
they're dressed in brown. The OP seems to assume that most purchasing
decisions are based on rational assessments of experience with the products
under consideration, but results like the blue/brown experiment suggest that
there is a lot more going on, and seemingly irrational factors can have a huge
impact on customer decisions. If that's the case, the "froofy" aspects of
design rejected by the OP can have a significant business impact and should
not be ignored.

But it does make sense to subject those aspects to rigorous testing rather
than just spend weeks talking about them, as described in the OP.

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Mz
The article makes me think of a principle from mapmaking: A good map is
typically described as "beautiful" but a beautiful map isn't necessarily a
good map. If you design/engineer it properly to do a particular job well, it
tends to have a certain elegance and visual appeal. In contrast, adding all
kinds of froo-froo crapola to the map may make it look like art but cease to
function effectively as a map.

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swombat
Principle.

Principals are people. Principles are ideas.

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Mz
Thanks. Fixed.

