I beg to differ. There is always design work, you made design choices and even if they were careless choices you always have a final work that might be great or just poorly designed.
Clean in the sens: "Clean is better than an mess". The article seems to be written for non-designers who know practically nothing about design. And for them, clean is something great; it means they can effectively represent their ideas.
Maybe that's good career advice, but it feels wrong somehow. My own experience is that while design is hard, it's always simpler than dealing with the nitty gritty. The hallmark of good design is that it leads to simplicity in the lower layer (implementation, etc).
I hesitate to question anyone's abilities before you know what constraints they had to work under. Designers often get the blame for internal management chaos, and a lot of executives feel qualified to make major design decisions.
> Questions about whether design is necessary or affordable are quite beside the point: design is inevitable. The alternative to good design is bad design, not no design at all. - Douglas Martin: (http://www.stcsig.org/usability/resources/pith.html)
"Clean" is not a goal, nor is "messy". Given how many articles on lean startups and testing are posted here on HN, I'm surprised how many readers are swallowing the author's advice without questioning WHY "clean" is better or necessary. The author himself said here in this thread that he isn't interested in testing at all. That, to me, shows a fundamental misunderstanding, and frankly disrespect, for great design.
The parrot secrets ebook is a classic example of great design that is definitely not "clean". Yet it is successful.
Never confuse your personal aesthetic with design.
There are great books to learn from, and everyone should take all these book recommendations to heart. But take the time to absorb the professional advice, and try and synthesize it into rules you can work with and apply properly.
It might be the result of a compromise but it is still an active choice. I think it is within the remit of a designer to think how the product will be serviced.
In a sense, by definition not, since good design is design that achieves its purpose.
Sometimes ultraclean design can send a message of fanciness or snobbishness that turns off "ordinary" people. But I think a good designer can temper that fairly easily.
You're right, but at the same time, it's a totally unhelpful statement in a project.
Everything is bad design everywhere, at least when you're a consultant. You're generally not brought into projects that have good design, and everything's roses.
I've been on a few projects with amazing design, and it was a very different experience. I didn't even argue for more work for them, because they had it all under control.
They essentially, wanted to be confirmed how great they were. I don't know if the CIO was curious if it was true, or if they all just wanted pats on the back, but we taught them a few really detailed things they didn't know, helped on a few really tricky edge cases, and said you're golden, keep killing it.
>Articulating why a design is good is substantially harder than coming up with a good design.
Yes, and slower. Trust is good, though in a professional environment one will be expected to motivate their choices with a rational argument... unless they want to play the card of the artistic licence, tough one when someone is trying to sustain a business.
thats one of the best ways to go about it. delegate that design task to someone or something that is good enough so that you dpnt have to worry about it.
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