Friday, July 13, 2007
How Not to Talk about Design
In design and business, we learn to speak a new language to communicate our ideas. But some of the stuff we say sounds pretty ridiculous when you take a step back and think about it. We've betrayed our high school English teachers in an effort to sound convincing and intelligent. Most importantly, we can run into big problems because of simple mix-ups in communication.With some help from the Kaleidoscope team, I've compiled this list of some of our favorites examples of how not to talk about design.
"I don't disagree with you, but..."
This double-negative is my personal pet peeve - it's bad grammar and incredibly passive-aggressive. Making statements like this sabotages communication in favor of being nonoffensive. This stems from the fact that we designers take our work too personally. To do great design, we should realize that critique is meant to be constructive and not a personal attack.
"As long as it functions well and looks great, our clients should be successful."
Product design is only a small part of a business. When we get caught up in aesthetics, we forget about all the other opportunities for success and failure when it comes time to market, manufacture, and fulfill the product. Styling and functionality are important parts of a product, but not the only things that matter.
"Ideally, we want cats to buy our product. But let's not alienate any dogs."
This is an amusing example, but we're often challenged to design products that appeal to opposing groups of people. Usually, 90% of the market is cats and 10% is dogs. It's hard to let go of those dogs (they're so cute!), but doing it will allow the design to go uncompromised towards giving our cat consumers what's right for them.
All in all, when we get caught up in sounding impressive we sacrifice a lot of what we mean. From now on, I'm committing to clear and concise language. I hope you'll try to do the same.
Labels: design management, product development
1 Comments:
This post is very relatable to the interactive industry as well. I mean, it's not unrelatable.
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