This is a continuation in the series on “The Social Web Economy“
You can’t have a good product if it doesn’t look good. While the initial launch of the Facebook platform brought about applications with poor design but broad success, the quality of design has slowly begun to improve. The reality is that designers give products that extra bit of appeal necessary to get users to try it out. Absolutely everybody in the social web economy wants to have a good image and design is the best way to instantly get a great image. While a great logo doesn’t mean you run a great company, having a good initial image is important part of any business.
Since everybody wants their company to look good, designers frequently get to know just about everybody in the social web economy. They design everything from websites to applications, from user interfaces to color combinations, from logos to brochures. Everybody can give you their own opinion on how important design is for your company. A venture capitalist may tell you that having an amazing looking presentation with great slide transitions isn’t as important as having good content. That doesn’t mean they will take you seriously if your presentation looks like a third grader designed it.
While developers are hard at work ensuring that products work properly, the designers are making sure that the product looks good. Interestingly enough, developers are frequently one of the sources of tension for designers. Some times extravagant designers are not easily implemented and as such designers are forced to work with constraints, which is something no designer enjoys.
The primary source of design for designers? Clients. Regularly, a client will come to a designer with preconceived ideas of how they’d like something to look. This immediately places more restrictions on the designer, something I just said they don’t enjoy. You will find designers working within just about all the companies in the social web economy. While you can debate the importance of top tier designers, you can’t debate whether or not design is an important aspect of the social web economy.
Next Post: “The Social Web Economy: Consumers“
Add New Comment
Viewing 4 Comments
Thanks. Your comment is awaiting approval by a moderator.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Creating generalizations for any group is bound to attract contention. This article proved it. Thanks for the feedback and I'll be sure to update this. This is still only the beginning of what's to come from this series.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
As for the role of designers, I second Jonathon and Martin's comments that good design is much more than aesthetic - it's about using design to make the most effective communication to the users. Critical to this process is a designer who understands how to ask the right questions, to be able to find out the real needs of the users and the most effective means of satisfying those needs.
I'd also modify your statement that no designer likes working with constraints. I think that the best designers are the ones who enjoy the challenges of working with constraints and maximizing the possibilities within those constraints (as well as setting up the work to be able to easily change if constraints are lifted in the future). And again, it is critical that a designer know how to ask the right questions early on to discover what implicit and explicit constraints exist - all too often, projects get held up or need last-minute modifications if constraints are discovered mid-stream in the process.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Real designers working on real initiatives are using visual aesthetic design to increase visual communication; a design tells a story, delivers a message and even persuades an audience. Real design is about designing an interface that is interesting, informative and intuitive. Design is about presenting the content, mission and business objective with respect to the audience expectations and desires.
Again, I agree with the fundamental point of your post, but getting a little personally upset when the job of a designer is trivialized too much.
A pretty picture does nothing for your business objectives or your audience, a real design does so much more and is much more powerful.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Add New Comment
Trackbacks