
How Design Works - stevenkovar
http://startupsthisishowdesignworks.com/
======
benohear
Good design is, amongst others, making sure your headline font isn't too thin
to render nicely on your target platforms and your body text is easy to read.

It is also avoiding pie charts in general (see Tufte for an explanation), and
definitely those with just _two_ data points.

Content-wise, the key message seems to be that AirBNB, Apple and a few others
place a high value on visual design and are successful, therefore you should
emulate that in order to be successful yourself.

I've got to say, it's all a bit superficial for my taste. Others might find it
a good starting point, especially for some of the referenced resources.

~~~
tlrobinson
I thought the pie charts were a good way to show that "[they] are thinking
about the same things" because at a glance you can see the charts are roughly
the same shape.

~~~
tel
To follow the Dieter Rams quote, good design is "as little design as
possible". Those pie charts each display 6 pieces of information and are
intended to compare and contrast those data points in 3 contexts. 18 points.

When you realize how little message is actually contained there then they seem
to be less about telling you something useful and more about looking pretty.

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cemregr
I'm not sure if startups need any more convincing that they need designers,
and even at that, this page doesn't do a terribly good job at it by providing
a nicely laid out collection of definitions from Wikipedia or uninformative
poll results.

Also, I feel like trying to recruit designers off Dribbble is like trying to
recruit novelists off Twitter. It's hard to gauge somebody's higher level
product design skills by looking at 400x300 shots devoid of context. The
benefits usually associated with having designers on board come from their
empathy and desire to solve problems. "I just want to make pretty things"
designers on Dribbble won't provide you this if they are the only designer you
have.

Last month I was communicating with designers on Dribbble looking for full-
time startup work, and I was sadly unsurprised to find out that none of them
were interested in solving problems. (Note: I'm a designer myself)

~~~
eamesly
The problem is you went to Dribbble looking for a designer. Dribbble is a
website for artists. At first, this idea may be confusing because of their job
board and the postings which call for the types of people you may be looking
for.

The reason you can't find anyone you want comes down to the very essence of
the site: a place for artists to show off their pixel perfect creations on
400px canvases. Artists aren't that great at problem solving, but they can
make really beautiful UI and related imagery. Go there when you need pixel
magic, but I wouldn't expect to find the kinds of people to solve high level
design problems.

You are probably looking for a "design thinker" type. Someone with a brain
sculpted by a big consultancy like IDEO, Frog, etc. trained to think about
design in terms of logic and creative thinking rather than visuals. But
definitely not an artist.

Good luck.

~~~
tomcreighton
While I agree Dribbble's limited canvas doesn't really help to find
'designers' as you're defining them, to thus write off everyone on there as
'artists' seems a bit short-sighted.

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wizardhat
As a programmer this sounds like some pretentious bullshit. I've done so many
UIs where 20 people jump in all thinking they are experts and have long drawn
out discussions about how the UI should look, only to change their minds after
I've done it and have another round of discussions...

Honestly, all the word "design" means to me is "I take so long to get anything
done that I must plan my ass off like I only have one shot, and force everyone
else to work this way".

Just get stuff done, and move on. No ones going to give a crap about your
sweet design if your product doesn't do anything.

~~~
semisight
If we're talking over-designing, I agree. Design without function is
worthless.

At the same time, function without design is an ugly cement cube with no
windows for a house; sure, it does the trick, but I'd much rather live under
the stars than in that.

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duopixel
As much as I appreciate Dieter Rams approach to design, I must say that favors
one particular kind of design.

For a much more encompassing discussion on design (which could include
software architecture) this 1972 interview with Charles Eames is mind blowing:

<http://blog.gentry.io/eames-design-is-a-method-of-action>

~~~
semisight
I was waiting for someone to say this. The Dieter Rams philosophy has picked
up steam, but people would be mistaken to conclude that good design will
always be a sort of zen minimalism. The best design is whatever most clearly
communicates the message.

When I took a graphic design class a while back, my teacher used the example
of a pizza flyer. By any standards, they're not minimalist. They're full of
garish colors and crowded with pictures--and yet, they work. Personally, I can
say that I'm much more likely to buy from a place with that type of ad than
one with a "minimal" ad.

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fiatpandas
Font rant: year 2012, Windows still cannot nicely render (most) embedded web
fonts.

Font rendering in my various browsers-> Chrome: horrific, Firefox: pretty bad,
IE9: better, but still bad.

All MS has to do is put together a designer with good sensibility and one
brainy dedicated developer, and have the developer tweak font code until the
designer is satisfied and font rendering is just as good as Mac. Boom, the
world on the web instantly becomes more beautiful for millions of people, or
whatever. One big reason designers like Mac is the font rendering. Everything
is wonderful over there.

Anywho, carry on.

~~~
keithpeter
<http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8403291/design-page-screen-grab.png>

How does the font rendering here compare? Its Firefox on Ubuntu 12.04
(actually using Gnome Shell). I've always found Ubuntu font rendering
different to other GNU/Linux distributions, and I prefer it.

~~~
fiatpandas
If I'm judging your screenshot on aliasing/rendering alone, it's very nice
(Mac-tier). However, when I look at your screen, I can't help but notice how
big everything is on the page. Did you change default font size settings in
FF? Could be a GTK issue as well.

Text is being occluded in the red circles; the FB stuff at the top is bigger
than it should be; the credits to the right are too big. Here's my FF for
comparison, which has the sizes right but bad rendering on the body text:

<http://i.imgur.com/LnY6h.png>

And chrome, being even worse with aliasing: <http://i.imgur.com/zFcu1.png>

~~~
keithpeter
Screen shot was taken using gnome-core package installed on a CLI Ubuntu 12.04
installed from the netinstall iso. So no Unity desktop. I'm still working out
what might be missing or altered in this very non-standard setup.

I'll pop another one on later with a default Unity interface as the Ubuntu
team intend

I've always preferred Ubuntu's font rendering over other distributions/oses.

------
reneherse
This is a good place to start for people uninitiated to the concerns of
design. I only wish I had been so concise as an undergrad.

The title however, is a bit unfortunate. It's a touch condescending, something
that designers should really try to avoid when trying to impart the importance
of their craft on an audience. At all costs avoid any trace of snobbery. (We
all know the pronunciation of 'design', for instance.)

More significantly, the article is not so much about how design _works_ as it
is about what design _does_. That's fine as a starting point, but it's
precisely the _method_ of design that multidisciplinary teams need to
understand to create truly great products. Dieter Rams's principles are a good
touchstone for critiquing one's work, but _how_ those qualities are arrived
at, i.e. _the process_ , is the bigger issue and the real "how design works".

An article about how the design process can be understood by others and
engaged with would be a benefit to the startup community: It's a huge
challenge to create the methods and camaraderie that enable developers,
designers, and other stakeholders to collaborate and iterate effectively.

NB: The site is very difficult to peruse on an iPhone.

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Tzunamitom
In my opinion, startups aren't the problem when it comes to design - large
corporations are. If I had a pound for every time I've had to fight to include
budget for design work in work in a project for FTSE 100 clients, I could
start my own VC fund. Why do I need design in my org chart? Process diagram?
Status report? Business case? SDLC? Agile framework? Whatever...

The best solution I heard of was the concept of a "Simplicity Tsar" - a
C-level independent observer with the power of veto on any product (internal
or external) that doesn't make the user's life simpler. It's a shame more
corporations don't buy into this idea.

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milkmiruku
I'm finding it somewhat ironic that the website isn't responsive and gives me
a horizontal scrollbar on a 1024*768 screen.

~~~
DanBC
Having the big red fixed box at the top left is causing me distraction. I
expect left aligned stuff to hit the leftmost part of that box, but there's a
lot of stuff that is not hitting it.

And that makes me wonder what the right edge is aligned to.

I know nothing about design. I guess I'm used to grid layouts and having
everything nicely aligned, and this doesn't feel as if it is.

Pictures of different widths on the left are giving me too many different left
margins for text. So, some of them are aligned with each other, but you don't
see that because they're not all on the same fold.

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dm8
Some of the points mentioned in this article are good. Additionally, I believe
designer's role is not just limited to "design" but to become the most
important cog in the product development lifecycle. I personally believe
designers should have strong business sense as well as technical
understanding. They _must_ understand the limitations and reality of business
as well as technology.

Like technology you should never outsource your design completely. Its okay
give some design assets to 99Designs etc. but not whole design job.

Note to OP: You tried to make this page really visually appealing, but it
fails on interaction design. For example, those popups for short summary about
Dieter Rams 10 principals are annoying and provide terrible UX. You have to
wait for few seconds after clicking each box. Why not simple tooltips?
Tooltips are not fancy but they are really useful.

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geoffsanders
This smells of a resumé rather than a resource...

HireMeIKnowHowDesignWorks.com

~~~
bengl
Perhaps that's what the creator intended?

~~~
geoffsanders
...my point exactly ;) lol

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tef____
design, like engineering is about tradeoffs, and flourishes in the presence of
constraints. unlike engineering it is often about the cross-domain trade offs.

it's a nice love note to design, written by someone who has learned more css
than information design.

the pie charts are terrible (i'm totally sure he interviewed dieter rams and
asked him to put a numerical quantity on the importance of his principles).

I can't see a way anyone can interpret the data accurately from the charts
he's written.

the pie charts are misleading, the bar charts use two different proportions of
responses (engineers vs 'biz'). the axes aren't labeled properly (is it % is
it number of responses).

------
Isofarro
1.) Use unreadable font for the header

2.) Pick tangentially related, but non-informative images (icons for
interaction design).

3.) Ignore how the web works, e.g. incremental loading

4.) Pick low contrast colours for text, because that just interferes with the
design.

5.) Ignore the simple thing that design is meant to complement and work with
the product.

6.) Spread things haphazardly on the page so there's no natural flow to the
content.

That's how this site portrays design as "working". And for that reason, I'm
out.

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Eduard
designersthisisnothowyoushouldnameawebsite.com

~~~
mehulkar
i'm digging all these new long-name-urls actually. they're easier to remember
then the ones with randomly missing characters.

~~~
Eduard
You must either be very patient, especially when typing those URLs on a mobile
phone; or you are lucky not to be physically handicapped.

~~~
mehulkar
ok, I agree with the phone thing.

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gdilla
I prefer Mike Lee's explanation of design: UI sets the user's expectation, UX
is how well you meet that expectation.

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keithpeter
Brave thing to do, knowing that 'the medium is the message' when you write
about design.

Ram's 10 principles look interesting. However to read each summary, I had to
click the button and wait for the popup. Perhaps the same space could have
been used to display the actual text?

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tnorthcutt
Pretty poor viewing experience on mobile (stock Android browser).

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mlopes
How ironic that this is on a page that is such a disaster, design wise. Gave
up trying to read that, after less than 30 seconds.

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nextparadigms
What I got from this is that Apple actually copies (or _steals_ ) the designs
of Braun quite a bit. In fact it looks like they go out of their way to make
similar designs to those of Braun.

I don't understand how a company who does that so often, is so aggressive
towards others that do the same thing to them.

~~~
smacktoward
Saying Apple "steals from" Braun is too strong. (Xerox has a much stronger
claim to having been ripped off by Steve Jobs than Braun does.) But it's
undeniable that the Jobs/Ive design aesthetic was strongly influenced by the
work of Dieter Rams. That's not unusual, though; anyone who works in a
creative field (including programming) will know the work of another can
inspire you to new directions in your own work.

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Weymouth
This is like saying Ruby is numbers and syntax.

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mkramlich
Can you succeed with great design? Absolutely.

Can you succeed without great design? Absolutely.

Does it help? Yes.

Is it needed? Well, some kind of design sense is needed. Does it have to be
stellar? Does it require an official Designer/Artist? In some cases, yes and
in some cases no. Depends on the business, depends on the software. You'd be
surprised at how many people will pay you money just to solve a problem or
make some pain go away, or to automate otherwise manual tasks. Don't all have
to be purty.

