What makes good design?
To answer this, we should look at what design can do. From the widely respected
Apple design choices of sleek, curved corners to the seemingly disastrous
rebranding of X (formerly Twitter), there's been countless examples of successes and failures
that resulted mainly from design choices. How does that work?
When you try something new or learn something new, you normally go in with some basic expectations, shaped by your prior experiences. Let's say, you're a software developer. With a lot of experience using all sorts of computer programs, you've gotten familiar with some design methodologies like Material Design shown by many popular apps, alongside fancy website and startup animations. Looking at older programs made in the Windows XP era, with the limited color scheme and basic rectangular buttons, it's rare to see programs today using older graphics.
So when you see a program that looks exactly like it came out of the early 2000s, your expectations naturally drop. Regardless of whether it still has modern releases and the functionality works, it fails on initial impressions, and makes the whole program seem outdated. Although this scenario doesn't happen often, generalizing this idea to non-software-app situations is good to consider when creating something new.
Alternatively, when you look at something like modern Windows, with its many advertisement popups, hidden settings, and janky Microsoft account setup, alongside the huge amounts of opt-out (rather than opt-in) services, its identity is unclear, due to its design being convoluted. Sure, maybe an OS only needs to focus on functionality, with design having less of an impact, but the point still stands. Trying to do too much creates bad design choices as well.
I can go on and on about different designs, from a user perspective, with hardly any professional designing knowledge. Everything that is put into each project, every design, each formula, every living space, has an impact on how we view it as a whole. That is the essence of design.
Now, what I've found works best is keeping everything simple and clean. People's definition of what counts as simple or clean does vary, of course, as it is purely based on each person's prior experiences shaping expectations, and general definitions do shift over time as a result of the general user's experiences shifting over time. However, maybe something like Todoist works well as an example, as the UI is up to modern standards, the whole idea of the app is simple, and it executes extremely well on the simple task.
In considering the design of whatever thing you are creating, there's always going to be limits for how simple it can get, and a tradeoff between cleanliness and functionality, among other considerations. But everything in life is about finding that balance, right?
Have other principles that you think are important to design? Want to discuss this topic? General feedback? Reach [email protected]!