Good design

The more senior the designer, the more abstract the problem they should be solving.

To break it down more tangibly, let’s look at some examples of levels and appropriate responsibilities:

Designer Lvl 1: Design a form that lets people edit their profile. Pretty scoped—assumes there is a profile, and that the solution takes the shape of a form.

Design... See more

As a practical matter, I think it's easier to see ugliness than to imagine beauty. Most of the people who've made beautiful things seem to have done it by fixing something that they thought ugly. Great work usually seems to happen because someone sees something and thinks,

I could do better than that.

But what makes an interface successful? Beyond speed of performance, cohesive information sequences and anticipation of the human context and need, designing an experience that hopes to create feeling can only be done with feeling. The difference between good and bad becomes a matter of who can bring to bear greater focus and knowhow within the... See more