Design requires intent. Systems are rarely intended to get the exact result they end up creating.
Perhaps 'adapted' rather than 'designed' would make this statement more likely true. But then, there may be some other system that is somehow more perfectly adapted that achieves the same result.
This has been considered industry best practice for quite some time, and there are studies proving effectiveness (although I can’t cite them at the moment). However, the current design trend is minimalism, and we're stuck with that for awhile. It will eventually adjust itself back to a new baseline normal, somewhere in between.
I'd also argue that an uncontroversial definition for 'good design' would be design that functions best for the majority of users.
That somewhat explains the trends you see in design, because when we employ a convergent design standard, it's more readily accessible in a single visit than a design that breaks away from current conventions.
It's also empirically the case that the convergent design standards represent the 'fittest'.
And I would argue that evolutionary speaking they represent 'good design' (that's my definition anyway).
This is a feature. It means the design is compatible with basic adaptive technology that lets us tailor it to our individual physical needs. The more beautiful the design, the more rigid it becomes.
Yep. It's an inevitable choice, but I find that in the context of design systems, we don't usually end up making that choice intentionally, and instead default to over-optimizing up front without consideration of other approaches.
I think this can be said of any engineering design or even designing policy: design is essentially producing hypothesis that a design is the ‘best’ solution of problem where ‘best’ is defined by some method to predict the outcome of the design.
It's nice to learn there is a name for something that took me a few years to discover. If something doesn't make sense to me, it's probably because I'm not realising the whole scenario.
I've learnt not to critique other peoples designs without a full understanding.
The designer probably would have changed a few things if they had a second attempt. Unknown and usually silly requirements can play a big part in design that you as an outsider are unaware of. I've learnt to assume competence rather than incompetence. At the time, there was likely a very good reason for such a decision.
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