Design isn’t about the Designer

The world is full of pretty products that aren’t very functional. While customers may be initially attracted to those shiny objects, in the long run, if a product is an empty shell, it will not last. A useless product that looks great is a failure. And the failure belongs as much to the designer as anyone else.

In this talk, we’ll examine the common pitfalls of design for design’s sake. Over-abundant animations, the obsession with “clean” interfaces that lack function, making our products so opinionated that only we like them—all the things we designers tend to fawn over that don’t matter much to most people. Finally, we’ll talk about balancing the need to serve our customers’ best interests, vs. our own needs to survive as a company. You can’t build products for people, after all, if you go out of business.