Here’s an article that starts a thoughtful exploration of something I’ve been pondering over the last few months: that great design and particularly providing design solutions to Sensis cannot be done without participating in a full discussion about business factors (eg. revenue and business models) that will play a big part of a site’s (and the design’s) success.
There is a tension between what designers can affect and what we have no control over. Because we can’t always change the ultimate success or failure of a project, we often dismiss the success or failure as completely outside the work we’ve done. I think this is a short-sighted, dangerous way to approach design. If we consider our role as designers outside of the success of the project, then we’ve discounted the value that we could potentially bring to the table.
We can’t just offer up a beautiful design and think our job’s done. This article ponders such designer conundrums as:
Designers have a tough time dealing with ugly design that works well…They say things like “MySpace succeeds despite its design“. (same thing happens with Google). However, this doesn’t address the success of the project: nobody can argue that MySpace isn’t an all-out success. Same with Amazon. Same with Google. [BC: Not to mention eBay] These sites don’t even write valid HTML, for gosh sake. But they’re wildly successful…the most profitable and beloved sites on the Web. I added that “beloved” part because it is absolutely critical. You can’t talk about Google and Amazon (and probably MySpace) without people saying they love them. How can we then go on and say they’re not well-designed? I think being beloved might be the very definition of great design…at least that’s what I aspire to.
