Design is…

A while back, there was a meme.

It involved designers of all types creating desktop wallpapers that finish the sentence “Design is…” As Flickr attests it ended up being fairly popular. While skimming across the surface of the Internet ocean, I saw this swimming on the surface and decided it was worth plucking up.

Good design is innovative.
Good design makes a product useful.
Good design is aesthetic.
Good design helps us to understand a product.
Good design is unobtrusive.
Good design is honest.
Good design is durable.
Good design is consequent to the last detail.
Good design is concerned with the environment.
Good design is as little design as possible.

As a designer, I find myself adding layers on top of layers of visual complexity and depth. After all, nuance is what separates a good design from a fantastic design…right? This may be old news to 99% of designers out there, but all design must be user-centric. Design a site around the way that users will want to use it.

I’m not saying beauty and sophistication are not worthy attributes to shoot for, just that we should think about how the user will appreciate what we create, and not whether or not it will dazzle our friends, or make a top rated CSS gallery site submission. It’s hard to remember sometimes that we as web designers make up a very small part, of the small percentage of Internet power users.

If you want some honest feedback about your design, show it to a spouse, a parent, or even better, a grand parent. Don’t tell them you made it, just ask them what they think. You’re bound to get some very interesting answers.

Good design is not just honest, it’s also humble. It’s willing to change and adapt to the audience, it does not dictate how you should use things, it makes it easy for you to use them. It accepts criticism even when it hurts and always uses the right tool for the job. We as humans have created millions of “techniques” for interacting with our technology. Tap into those existing techniques and shave seconds off of each user’s interface comprehension time.

Good design also encourages freedom. Let the user make mistakes and give them an easy way out of the situation if they screw up (or if you screwed up and they happened into it). Let them leave your site without keeping your site open in some buried window to be found later. If they need you, they know how to get back to you, your site isn’t the only one the ‘Net ya know.

Like I said, this is old news to 99% of you out there, common sense perhaps.

But it doesn’t hurt for me to say out loud to myself.

Can’t get enough? You may be interested in these posts as well:

Ignorance is Freedom

How to Destroy the Web

On Risk

On Purpose

Shooting Yourself in the Foot