When you search Google for what famous people have said something on Design, you may find that the world have different views. For some — it is to express creativity, for some — it is where art and science break even, for some — it is the starting point of a conversation or for some —Design is to solving problems and so on. The design has invariably many definitions but all draw somewhat similar lines and shapes. Some of us who are in design can easily understand and relate.
I love what Steven jobs said: “Design is a really, loaded word. I don’t know what it means. So we don’t talk a lot about design around here, we just talk about how things work. Most people think it’s about how they look, but it’s about how they work”.
Everyone is a designer and everyone has one or many views on design. You can’t put an end to the endless suggestions that keep coming to you from non-designers/stakeholders during the several rounds of design iterations except a few good tip-offs. However, in the end, either you have to put a stop and say no to all these endless suggestions or succumb to the pressure and make the desired changes.
What suffers the most? The Design obviously, but no one comes to realize the cause of it when the Product fails. Whether it was the content, design, stakeholders or the designer — The collective contribution of everyone leads to the Product failure or falls short of generating Product leads.
Whether or not Steve Jobs’s views on design are right, he was surely an early advocate who proposed design thinking. Under Jobs, Apple’s products, interfaces, and marketing were meticulously designed to first and foremost meet the needs and wants of the end-user. To the millions of Apple-loyal customers around the world, their products just feel right.
The UX architect — Don Norman also emphasized and stressed upon providing the best user experience to the end users and highlighting the importance of UX role for any Product’s success.
In this post I will try to address few things, just to relate the beauty and the real experience with it. What is actually not looking good but successful, or what is looking astonishingly beautiful are not of a greater value.
I was on a trip to the State of Panjab, India when I saw this lovely colorful collage of car number plates on a t-shirt. I really liked the colorful representation of the number plates shown on a Panjab map. As Designers see things from their aesthetic vision sense, I looked at it too, but there comes a faux pas. The number plates of cities shown on the map were not placed on their exact locations, which means — Amritsar, Chandigarh, Roop Nagar or all the other cities shown on the map via number plates were falsely located. On real map of Panjab, the cities shown on the t-shirt actually exists at different locations. I was left disappointed by experiencing the same. As that most beautiful looking t-shirt now gave me the bad experience.
It happens in the real world also, when we see beautiful things/people, which have some wow elements attached to them that makes us feel attracted. However, when we experience the same things or interact with same beautiful people we actually personally experience the reality of it. Ultimately we realize that things, which were looking so beautiful from outside are actually not that beautiful as they don’t provide the best user experience or people who are not so good looking are actually the most beautiful people you have ever come across in recent times when you personally experience their humility.
Neil Nitin Mukesh, one of the hottest looking Indian actor in the Indian Film Industry, who made his debut 2007 in the critically acclaimed thriller Johnny Gaddaar is still struggling to find his ways to establish himself in the film industry. Whereas actor Nawazuddin Siddiqui, who is not so good looking, made his debut in 1999 in Sarfarosh is one of the finest actor currently. He has been widely acclaimed for his roles in several movies. Hollywood’s famous actor Peter Dinklage, who portrayed Tyrion Lannister in the HBO Game of Thrones series was born with achondroplasia, a common form of dwarfism. He struggled in his initial part of career due to his height and the movie roles which he was getting, but he is a big name in the Hollywood today. Game of Thrones can’t be imagined without him. He has received many awards for his performances. Moviegoers get their best experience when they feel their ticket money worth in form of brilliant scripts, cinematography, music or acting. Actors through their acting provide an opportunity to the users to experience their acting skills from the character’s role that actors are playing. Beauty of the actor doesn’t hold any much of a significance here, but acting surely do.
Cluttered old Reddit website in the Internet and Telecom > Social network category still holds the highest rank (rank 12) in the world in Top sites ranking for all categories in the United States as per Similar Web website. Whereas comparatively beautiful looking websites like Linkedin, Instagram, Pinterest fall short of rankings in the same category.
Steve jobs aimed for creating beautiful looking things and providing the awesome user experiences. As a result of his aim, he was extremely successful in establishing the brand Apple and inspiring others to follow his footprints later on. We should learn from this and aim for making things beautiful but never forget and compromise with the ultimate experience that we are going to provide to the end users.
“Things that look beautiful and don’t provide a good user experience comes with an expiry date” — My Quote
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Views expressed in this article are my personal.
