I call myself an interface designer. But I don't consider what I do purely visual at all. I find that it's hard to describe. How do you describe to someone the feeling you get when you put your tongue on a lemon? Or how it feels to click the "next page" button on newspond.com?
Design is not how it looks, how it feels, or how it works. It's all of those things, together-- it's the experience. On the web, it's the way a layout makes you feel on a subconscious, visceral level and how the buttons and interactive elements literally feel when you click them. On a more tangible level, it's the way the volume knob on a stereo feels stiff when you change the volume, or how a nice doorknob makes a thump-click when you close it.
There's no way to "design" an amazing product if you don't consider everything at the very beginning. On the web, there are three things to consider: visual design, interface architecture, and underlying technology (an analogy would be the tires and color of the exterior, the safety features and interior design, and the engine of a car). If you skimp on any of these three things, your product will seriously suffer. Do you own a Chevy Nova or a Dodge Neon? Of course not. Both of those cars were built by sacrificing visual design and safety features for cheapness.
There's a philosophy of rapidly developing, rapidly releasing, and then rapidly iterating. I think a lot of companies take this too literally and rapidly build everything half-assed, rapidly release half-assed products, and then rapidly iterate half-assed features without ever going back and fixing their half-assed first revision. I think a better process is to design an easy to use, awesome version 1 with the simplest, most necessary features first, then iterate based on that level of quality. At that point, you've set a bar of quality that you simply have to achieve with every release.
To summarize, don't skimp on designers or hackers. Skimp on features. Features are free, and can always be added later.
My design mantra is: make it easier for the user to go to the next step than it is to for the user to go goof off on reddit.
using this, i work from the bottom up. I find which part of the user experience is the most boring and try to improve that until it isn't the most boring part. then repeat.
When it comes to cost cutting, many times it’s design or marketing that goes first. This is like an applicant ditching the cover letter on their resume when the job market is down: it’s laughably bad timing.
I'm so, so sick of this kind of post. Some design guy thinks design guys are not well treated. OK, sure, maybe, why not. Then the guy goes on to say how design is everything. Sometimes the design guy disses the hacker for skimping for a few hundred on design. Other times the design guy insults the hacker's taste.
"Design" is not the only part of the business where you design things. In product development you design too. The "design" branch is the one concerned with the design of things that don't change the function of your product, just the appearance. It's makeup. Design, as a verb, is important, but what this guy is talking about, "design" as a branch of business, is really exactly the first place to skimp.
Not that skimping in this area will not have its costs. The reason you have to cut costs to begin with implies cutting something that you may need. If you have been running a tight ship, anything you cut will hurt somewhat. It's like starving. After a while, your body starts consuming parts of your organs. It consumes developed skeletal muscles preferentially. Sure they're important -- they wouldn't be there in the first place if they weren't -- but they aren't your liver. You won't die from having your muscles catabolized. People often talk about the other branches and go back and forth over which matters most. "The market is everything." "No, the product -- the product matters the most." I feel these discussions sometimes omit the fact that many areas can be necessary, just like you need several organs to survive. Is your liver more important than your heart? A moot point. You need a market, you need a product, you need to monetize eventually. You can argue that any one of these is essential, and you'd be right. But design? Design is the appendix of a startup. At best, it is the second kidney. Nobody cares what your logo looks like. Nobody cares about the favicon. The buttons don't need to be 2.0. None of these things are very important, and worse, they're not even that hard to do. Making a passable favicon is not that hard, and you can always pimp it if/when you have tons of VC money.
> The "design" branch is the one concerned with the design of things that don't change the function of your product, just the appearance. It's makeup.
This is where you are pointing out a big problem in most organizations. Design in many organizations is treated as purely visual, when it really shouldn't be. If this is the role of design in your organization, then yes, absolutely, it is expendable. Lipstick.
But you don't want lipstick. There's also interaction design / product design. You want someone who can, BEFORE a person even puts a line of code down, understand what the user wants to do and make sure the user experience makes sense in that context, through real user testing and rapid iteration. It's just cheaper to think and change on paper or a whiteboard. Once it's implemented, it is very costly to change. This type of design is not lipstick. It is the process by which a product takes shape... and it is not expendable.
We're talking about different things. The article talks about selling cereal boxes. That's expendable, or at least less vital than other things.
In a more general sense, design has its purpose, no question. How do you make something without designing it? Sure design is a big part of making a product, and is the heart of any business. But the article talks about lipstick.
I'm not a "design-guy" who thinks design guys are not well treated. If you'll notice in the analogy you actually quoted I compared good design to a cover letter. (It's not perfect, but what is?) Obviously if the product (aka the resume) is no good, the best cover letter in the world will not matter. And conversely, if you're product is good enough, you will be able to get away with bad/no design consideration.
I'm not saying the cover letter is not important. I'd like to have a cover letter whenever possible. I'm saying it's the first place to cut costs. If you only have a few sheets left in the printer, the cover letter is the first thing to go. That's all I'm saying. Design is good to have, but should be one of the first things to cut during hard times. It's going to hurt sales. It will feel like shooting oneself in the foot. Sure it's absence will make hard times harder. If it didn't serve a function in the money-making process, it wouldn't be there in the first place. But there are other parts that are even more important.
If a business is in starvation mode, design as it relates to ads and packaging should be one of the first parts to go.
I'm extremely curious about the methodology, even more than the results. The kind of distinction they draw seems very difficult to capture in an objective study.
i'm not sure if this is the paper, but this one explains what they mean by "customer experience design". the little table on page 12 mentions radical innovations like making something that your customers actually want, focusing on the "customer journey", talking about "brand attributes", and "storytelling." i think that all means "show your customer why they should want your product," and i'm not sure worrying about kerning is all that critical to it. can't hurt though.
That Peer Insight study citing is from a Fast Company article about design. I think it was the Dec '07 issue. They referenced that statistic in the cover story article as well as in the letter from the editor. The statistic was my inspiration for this post. I have not seen the study myself, so take that out-of-context-statistic (and all others you ever come across) with salt.
Design is not how it looks, how it feels, or how it works. It's all of those things, together-- it's the experience. On the web, it's the way a layout makes you feel on a subconscious, visceral level and how the buttons and interactive elements literally feel when you click them. On a more tangible level, it's the way the volume knob on a stereo feels stiff when you change the volume, or how a nice doorknob makes a thump-click when you close it.
There's no way to "design" an amazing product if you don't consider everything at the very beginning. On the web, there are three things to consider: visual design, interface architecture, and underlying technology (an analogy would be the tires and color of the exterior, the safety features and interior design, and the engine of a car). If you skimp on any of these three things, your product will seriously suffer. Do you own a Chevy Nova or a Dodge Neon? Of course not. Both of those cars were built by sacrificing visual design and safety features for cheapness.
There's a philosophy of rapidly developing, rapidly releasing, and then rapidly iterating. I think a lot of companies take this too literally and rapidly build everything half-assed, rapidly release half-assed products, and then rapidly iterate half-assed features without ever going back and fixing their half-assed first revision. I think a better process is to design an easy to use, awesome version 1 with the simplest, most necessary features first, then iterate based on that level of quality. At that point, you've set a bar of quality that you simply have to achieve with every release.
To summarize, don't skimp on designers or hackers. Skimp on features. Features are free, and can always be added later.