Comments on: It’s Easy

By: Tom Carmony

Tom Carmony — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 06:55:06 +0000

Great post, Matt. I’ve been struggling with some of these same issues on recent client projects. You quite eloquently articulated a lot of my own frustrations.

By: Matt

Matt — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 01:04:29 +0000

@Geof: Agreed — there seems to be agreement that development is complicated, expensive, iterative and time-consuming. Somehow though, design is rarely afforded this patient consideration — many still see it as a “style” layer, and not a full-cycle consideration.

By: Evan Sharp

Evan Sharp — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 01:03:59 +0000

Great article, Matt.

It sounds to me like you are arguing that there is a flavor of Service Design related to web design that needs to be addressed in any great web design project.

I love your point that web designers need a “systematized workflow to help designers experiment”. In essence, what AA, Zappos, and recent Craigslist redesigns are saying is mostly: “your website is confusing and its presentation is overly-complex: here, look how easy it was for us to clean-up!”. And, while this is definitely true, and I enjoy watching these designers go through the exercise, all professional designers know that the difficult part of any redesign is not making things simpler, it’s making EVERYTHING simpler; it’s finding that elusive balance between layout, typography, color, and interface elements that lets each piece communicate its function while also performing its function.

Word.

By: Nishant Kothary

Nishant Kothary — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 00:47:03 +0000

Amen, brother. I couldn’t have put it better myself. That. is. all.

By: Geof Harries

Geof Harries — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 23:50:06 +0000

This is precisely why I made the decision to grow my company beyond just a lone designer. After being involved in countless large enterprise software projects, I’ve grown to dislike the “vision and visuals” role that design is relegated to in the engineering lifecycle. You’re more than welcome in the beginning and at the front-end, but by the time the system is actually built and being maintained, it’s game over. Interface & interaction design needs to be, as is development, iterative and ever-changing. We need to be in there the entire time. We cannot be afraid to get our hands dirty, both in process and code - and agencies & clients need to embrace that ideal.