How people see Design Vs What it is
People really do have some funny thoughts as to what design is all about and what designers do. On this post i will be talking about some of the misconceptions people have about design and also try to correct these impressions.
These are my thoughts
Misconceptions about design
— Design is all about what you see
I mean, doesn’t that sound funny ? but in the real sense most people think of design as what is upfront in their faces, what a logo looks like, what the website or the app looks like, how the curves and the streamlining on a car looks. They tend to generalize design as how nice or beautiful something looks, without giving thought to how usable the product is.
— There is a cheat sheet to design
When it comes to design, you can only get pointers but never cheat codes to creating a good design. People who are familiar with design with no strong background, see websites such as Dribbble, Behance, Uplabs and those of the sort as a go-to place to get already made design and go ahead to replicate them for products. This is false, these places are meant to be sources of inspiration and resources and not some holy grail of already made designs.
— Design is the second option if you can’t get yourself to code
Software development is one of the branches of tech that requires critical thinking and some level of mathematics, so when people try it and they find it had to scale through, they jump into design because of their thoughts towards designs as being all about adding pictures and icons on different screen sizes.
What design entails
— Research
Design goes far beyond the user interface, it is all about the user. When designers design, they do a lot of research on the user, taking into consideration, the psychology of the user, how they respond to different types of colors and how they would feel while using the product. Yes, how a product looks is of importance in it’s development cycle but the user’s general experience of the product is far more important.
— Procedural
There is no short-cut or a cheat sheet to creating a good design; for one to create design that appeals to both aesthetics and purpose, there are procedures that need to be followed. The design process is a guideline designers use while creating their designs and Pablo Stanley took out time to elaborate on this on his medium post The Design Process. It is a very good read and i will encourage you read it.
— Design is a big deal
As there are different branches in tech such as game development, software development and the rest, so is design and as such shouldn’t be perceived as a “ next option” when these other branches in tech don’t work for you. Design has to do with some level of research and also requires maximum attention as it has to do with studying human behavior. So if you are looking for “something simpler” in tech to delve into, it definitely wouldn’t be design.
On this post i highlighted three views people who aren’t in design have towards it and also tried to correct some of these impressions. If this post was helpful to you in anyway or you think it makes a nice read, a clap or 5 wouldn’t be bad ;)
