I’m not artist or designer, but I have spent enough time studying good products on the web (as well as studying why my past products have sucked) to have some initial thoughts on it.
From my limited experience, design can be boiled down to three main points.
- Good design is useful. It enables the user to easily do what they want to do.
- Good design minimizes cognitive load. It respects the user’s time and attention.
- Good design is beautiful, without sacrificing utility or increasing cognitive load.
Only three things, but it is difficult to accomplish all three. If you product is useful, minimizes cognitive load, and is beautiful, you have done one hell of a job.
What does good design mean to you?
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P.S. This is post number #83 in a 100 day blogging challenge. See you tomorrow!
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Hey Alex,
thanks, nice post, I have a couple of thoughts about a good design too:
Good design should be innovative
Good design should make a product useful
Good design is aesthetic design
Good design will make a product understandable
Good design is honest
Good design is unobtrusive
Good design is long-lived
Good design is consistent in every detail
Good design is environmentally friendly
Last but not least good design is as little design as possible
Cheers,
Yury
Haha, I think I recognize those 😉
https://www.vitsoe.com/us/about/good-design
Again, I’m no design expert, but when reading through that list, it didn’t seem like the minimal list to me. So, for the sake of simplicity, I tried to boil it down as much as I could.