Maybe a really silly blog name or maybe a really clever one, I don’t know. But feel I need to get something out in the open, a rant I suppose. A few years ago someone showed me the most horrid, bandwidth blood sucking, garish, pointless and stupid flash website and asked me that is what a good designer does- what do you do? Yes, all the individual elements to the site were well drawn and crafted in PhotoShop, and the background video cleverly put together in sequence to the animated 3D characters. But this wasn’t design, this was art (and definitely not to my taste). Being an ex-Flash designer, I fully appreciate the amount of effort and time it must of taken to craft every last bit detail. My mind boggled to how on a technical basis this was possible and even how my Mac didn’t explode with all the processing it was taking just to load the pre-loader. But after you consider the 4 minutes it took to get past the pre-loader and intro credits it took several clicks and at least another 4-5 minutes just to realise this was a site selling a creative company in Germany selling something. I can’t remember because my mind went into sleep through long periods on inactivity. After arguing my point to a stone wall face this was not design, it left me questioning my own basis to my work and how I approach it. Am I suppose to sap the maximum amount of bandwidth available and torture every RAM chip to demonstrate I know how to add an extra animated roll over state or demonstrate I can create pop out video content on roll over? If so, I have been doing this wrong for years.

Design For Life

Once some time had settled I came to the realisation that every body looks at design differently, especially on the medium it is delivered on. A few years ago, I watched a programme on BBC2 called “Design For Life”:http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00mx9y1 which was a design talent competition based around a winning position at Philippe Starck’s Paris office. Here you had clearly some of the nation’s most talented young product designers creating some of the most outrageously eye catching products, but Starck himself said they are missing the true point of design. He made the suggestion design is a tool used to make our lives easier and to solve problems we may have in life. The winner of the competition designed an innovative walking aid called Flo. Elegant in shape, simple in functionality, cheap to manufacture (compared to existing alternatives) and to use a cliche, form follows function. The product solved a life problem with minimal cost and looked elegant to boot. So as UX designers, UI designers, web designers, digital designers, etc is our roles to prove we are able to make drop shadows look cool when they are inset or is our role to identify user / business goals and design around those? I never studied art, I studied design so I wouldn’t know how to make a modern day Mona Lisa out of a web page viewed in IE6 and above running Windows NT. Using the same cliche above, I think the really clever thing is make something work for your objectives / goals first and then look visually good second. The visual element to me is only means to enhance the overall design and aid the goal it is intended for. Delivering the message in the appropriate tone that helps the user emotionally connect to our design, to put it another way.

Designing For Objective and Goals

When we approach a project, whether it be a re-design of a current website, new internal software or even a tablet app, we must first identify what problem or need we are trying to address. Can design exist for design sake? No it can’t, it should only exist and be measured on the level it addresses a problem or achieves it goals. In my experience, sometimes the most clever thing you can do is remove the noise in your design that allows the user an easier passage to complete the objective. “Google”:http://www.google.com/about/company/philosophy/ is not widely seen as design leader but in the mid 1990′s it re-wrote the Dummy’s Guide To Search Engine Design when it stripped out all the local weather and international celebrity news and left a pure a simple input field and search button. Genius! Who would of thought the users to a search page would only be interested in search? Many years later, Google is still largely true to this formula and the once dominate Yahoo and MSN are still playing catch-up by some sizable distance. Would they be the market leader today if they had adopted a Flash movie with 4 minute pre-loader and intro animation time strategy? As UX designers, we nurture the ability to separate noise in a task from those essential elements. Whatever hinders the process hinders the user and can only be a negative thing. You could say advertising is the biggest culprit for this, with their spinning text and catchy colour schemes that lend nothing to your perfectly formed, perfectly balanced design. But, we must remember to balance the goals of the users and the goals of business. Yes I know it sounds like I’m selling my soul to the devil in a pin-stripped suit but these are essential means in which keeps the process going and that keep us in a position where we can hopefully keep innovating, money. Therefore we must strike a design harmony between the users goals and to the business goals of our client / employer. No easy task creating wonderful user experiences that appease both sides but definitely possible. Thankfully I feel better getting that off my chest. No doubt I will keep adding to this post as there are so many points I would like to cover that I have barely scratched the surface with. If you agree, disagree or think I’m a lunatic please let me know your thoughts on the subject.