Keep Your Unsolicited Redesign to Yourself
erickarjaluoto.com
erickarjaluoto.com
Who is the author to say what a designer should or shouldn't do?
I love the postscript, which shows the author has no idea what he's saying:
"A brief postscript: I fear that some confuse the nature of my posts as being overly curmudgeonly or as intended to incite vitriolic debate. If you read them carefully, though, you’ll realize that even in my crankiest seeming ones, I’m just making an appeal for common sense."
It's a pity that what he's saying is not commonsense, but merely a way of dictating his own narrow view of the world.
To be honest, I don't get the harsh, visceral reaction some people have to unsolicited redesigns. I hate the attitude of many people who make such redesigns too, but I'm not impassioned enough to see a redesign presented with some humility as a personal affront.
The justification for many bad designs also rubs me the wrong way. I once read that the worst pedant is the one who uses the complexity of things as an excuse not to challenge the status quo. That a company has many bureaucratic barriers, legacy systems, conflicting research and internal politics is not an excuse for bad design. It's an explanation, but not an excuse.
I agree that designers should focus on creating things that will be actually be used, solving a real problem. This requires business sense, though, even if you're essentially working for free.
Real problems don't give you as much recognition as riding on the bandwagon of some hot company. It's a sad fact, but nobody ever got famous for designing a local deli website.
It's alright to fork a particular software project if you don't like the way the main branch is going, but good luck promoting it by throwing the original under the bus. Same story when starting new competing projects/frameworks. That slippery slope isn't unique to designers.
Whenever I go on a trip abroad, upon my return I have always noticed new perspectives not only on home, neighborhood, town, but also country and culture.
Likewise, whenever I see alternate designs of something familiar, be it the layout of a city, or a more efficient suburb, or a website, or a magazine, it provides new perspective into the existing design. The alternate design might suck, or be lacking in some ways, but it always helps view the old design with fresh eyes.
So there is value.
On rare occasions, the proposed alternative design is better.
So it's win-win in my book, and this author needs to lighten up a bit.
But you know, they're still usually a lot of fun to check out. If all they do is entertain a few people and get people thinking, I think they're worth it.
When I see these in a designers portfolio, though, presented as real work, I feel like that is dishonest.
I definitely don't mind seeing whatever work a new grad has - we all have to start somewhere. But, I just like to see it marked as schoolwork or whatever so I can get some understanding of what part of the work they actually did.
The other thing is that I actually do regularly see portfolios with actual work for major brands, so when I see it in a portfolio, I tend to assume its real.
1. no True Professional Designer does unsolicited redesigns
2. thus, everyone doing unsolicited redesigns must be novices (even though specific professionals doing this, e.g. 37signals, were mentioned and scorned)
3. novices must be doing this because they don't know any better, and don't see any alternatives for becoming a True Professional (not because it's, say, fun)
4. thus, here is advice for novices on how to become a True Professional. (Hint: it is the path the author took)
It reminds me of the sort of condescending attitude some parents have toward their children--considering every difference of opinion to be the result of a lack of experience, and thus requiring the child to be called aside for a "life lesson."
For once, I'm glad HN is reacting to this as sourly as it is. :)
1. Smart bloggers (e.g. the people at 37signals and a handful of others) figure out that redesigns of popular websites are a great way to generate blog traffic.
2. Young designers see this trend, and think they can capitalize on it as well.
3. Many new designers start to spend their days working on spec designs, hoping to either get some visibility or impress a prospective employer.
4. They neither gain any actual design experience, nor do they (except for in the rare case) get the interest they had hoped for.
There's a lot of real design work out there waiting for new designers. They don't need to work for free, nor do they need to try to prove themselves by "redesigning" what Jony Ive and his team have spent the past few years on.
Is that really so warped? ;-)
Honestly, if the author had just left out any mention of the professional designers who redesign things for fun, in the "concept car" sort of way; and specifically targeted the article right from the beginning at only the amateurs who think that "this is the way to recognition", then sure, it'd be a fine article. I also would have skipped reading it, as I think would most of HN--thus the underhanded form of argumentation required to come around from a linkbait-y premise, to his actual point.
I ask as a developer who feels similarly.
I consider these to be the design equivalent of speculative fiction for literature. It's an interesting exploration of a direction the designs could have gone and what the original designers could have explored. It's design curiosity, not one-upmanship.
There's a difference between really cool "what if" stuff that is done without pretension or expectation (there was an awesome Microsoft rebranding last year) and stuff like the linked NYT redesign, where the implication (and outright argument) of the entire thing is "ha ha you guys are terrible! look how great I am!"
Design can only do so much to make something bigger and better than it actually is. I'm sure many novice web designers have dreamed of making a groundbreaking website for a mom-and-pop business like a deli, but when they got to make the website, they noticed how futile it would be to make an incredible website for a small shop. Online orders—who's going to order online? Contact page—a phone number should be enough, list the working hours so people know when to call. List of products—why, a single paragraph is enough. Keep going and all you get is a single page with a logo, a terse description of the place, some pictures, and a phone number.
Few small business have the magic you'd need to tell a story, and if you can't tell a story, you're left with a generic thing, desperately trying to embellish it. I've seen many restaurant websites. I've allowed Flash to run countless times just so I could open them, and I can tell: they all look the same, and all of them lack soul. But I'll be honest: I don't think there's much that can be done with a small budget, and knowing how small the audience is.
A novice designer wants challenge, recognition, and the feeling of working for the big players. You don't get this from working with most small local businesses. At best, a website for a deli is just a stepping stone to a more exciting project. I'm not sure you can convince a young person they just have to keep working on boring projects (as morally good as they are) until they get enough clout to work on what they fancy.
I agree all designers want challenge and recognition. Do they all want to work for the big players? Perhaps, if they happen to admire the design output of the company in question. In the end, every designer is different and makes their own choice about what appeals to them.
And, a good designer will find the story, even when working with a small client. The problem with design jobs is almost never the client, or the seeming lack of excitement in the project, but rather in the designer's ability to tease out that story and give it form. Look at a project like the design of Mailchimp. The subject matter might not seem exciting, but the designers found a way to engage with the audience and present the story in a compelling fashion. A lot of designers would look at that project as a drag; they'd be sorely mistaken.
I once met with a young designer who was very frustrated by how boring his job was. He complained about how all he ever got to do was design boring charts. This seemed strange to me. He had the opportunity to take data and make it intelligible to his audience. This was a hardcore design opportunity that he was squandering because it seemed beneath him.
A project is only as boring as the designer chooses to make it.
I agree that a design job is what you make of it and approaching a project with the mindset that it's just another run-of-the-mill project will only produce run-of-the-mill output.
Everyone needs variety in their work to keep learning and feeling like they're facing a new challenge.
The problem is that a number of the unsolicited redesigns come from a standpoint that is often ignorant of the stuff that matters: client requirements, existing user data, targets, different kinds of limitations (budgetary, technological, timelines, etc. - basically what the author said, and are thus often (always?) created in a perfect world-type vacuum.
If you've worked on (by that I mean you've lead the design on) medium to large sites - the kind that involves teams bigger than 5 people (not including the client's people), and involve thousands of uniques per month, monthly turnovers of hundreds of thousands of dollars, A/B tests, and lots more, you'll understand where the author is coming from.
Also, try putting yourself in the initial designer's shoes: you've worked on a site for over 5 months, dealt with weekly client meetings, countless emails, dozens of requirements, digested analytics, studied results of A/B tests, learned about subtle yet important factors, such as the difference between "buy now" and "add to cart" was an additional $50k each month, and then suddenly Random Designer A goes: "hey, look how I made this sooooo much more pretty!"
While young designers may think that the original designer's reaction is something that a grumpy old fart would make; to more experienced designers, all that Random Designer A did was expose his inexperience.
Is it entertaining? Eh, sure -- to some. Is it valuable to the companies that the redesigns target? Maybe, maybe not. Is it valuable to the designers who do the redesigns? Definitely.
Athletes practice athletics, bodybuilders lift weights, hackers hack, and designers design. Just because you don't like the medium doesn't mean their isn't value in the practice, even if it has nothing to do with design.
I'm not a designer, but it occurs to me that by doing a redesign, this is how designers debate and discuss elements and aspects of design!