Why bad taste rules in business endeavors, and why that's a problem for creative industries.
John Gruber of Daring Fireball spoke at MacWorld recently and gave a brilliant talk called "The Auteur Theory of Design" -- about lessons we as creators of tech products can learn from the film making world.
The quality of any collaborative creative endeavor tends to approach the level of taste of whoever is in charge... whoever has final cut.
John Gruber
Final cut is the last say as to whether or not to ship. And this cuts to the core of how good design and great experience gets delivered in tech. THE FINAL CUT. Someone has final say for when a project is done and ready to go. At Apple, final cut is owned by Steve Jobs, and much has been made of the tyrannical brilliance and attention he pays to the details of the products they create. Final cut is what matters, because the person who makes the final cut can either ensure brilliance or ensure failure. The leader with bad taste / poor design sensibility will absolutely salt out the great work of brilliant teams. They'll add random crap to something that might already be quite good. Or will allow bad stuff to ship. Or, most likely, force a product out to market when it's not ready. A blind adherence to meeting release dates, for instance, can essentially assure the death of quality in a product. That's why adding product managers or project managers to an already failing project often is like a bucket of gasoline for a man on fire. In an ideal world, product managers and technology execs should be great designers who can identify and create amazing user experiences. They need to be user experience auteurs, because PMs and execs are de facto in charge when it comes to making final call on when to ship the product. They're the last line of defense against bad taste and bad design. Unfortunately, like Plato's mythical philosopher/kings, auteur studio exec is a rare breed, and the UX designer / tech exec is rarer still. Gruber closes his talk with an exhortation to the auteur within. Sometimes on teams, final cut isn't something someone will give you. But when you know you're right, sometimes you have to take it.
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Ray Massie
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linda palmer
said
Luke Groesbeck
said
While I like to imagine that I have a pretty decent eye, I'm not a designer and I know it. So what are folks like me supposed to do?
My approach is to work with people (e.g. designers like Loc) that I trust and, as much as possible, get the fuck out of their way.
Garry Tan
said
Luke -- I do think within reason design thinking can be developed. But also I think it takes someone who is willing to give a designer final cut. After all, indie film studios do it all the time. =)
Final cut is not often ceded, but it's a grand thing when it is.
Luke Groesbeck
said
So how can I develop design thinking, other than reading + checking out good design?
Garry Tan
said
I actually think it must be through a mix of reading and just practice. For me so much of it was just through the daily mechanical process I had to go through to sit down at Omnigraffle or Powerpoint or Photoshop to try to create user flows that made sense. Or even MS Paint, when I was at Microsoft.
Maybe next time there's a totally brand new thing, sit down with Loc and whiteboard it together? I think most people only learn how to do things by trying to do those things, iterating, and doing it again.
Vincent Chu
said
There's definitely a tension between dictatorial power (e.g., the power of the "final cut") and democratic power (e.g., letting ideas "bubble" up from a large group of people).
The trick, I think, is the harness the power of both. One needs to be exposed to a bunch of ideas, if only to see things you might have forgotten or not thought of.
But at some point, somebody (i.e., the dictator) needs to step forward and say "this is how it's going to be."
Mary Beth Folger
said
Also important to note, a lot of developing a designer's way of thinking is to just be open-minded and gather lots of information that's useful and applicable: what is the intent of this project? Are we looking to make people feel or think, and what? Does this product have a high perceived value? How is it displayed in the store? What do similar products look like and what are their pitfalls? ..... Good designers are thinking of all these details and incorporating design into it. Examples: big ticket items are conducive to lots of open space in the design, sleek fonts, minimal color use (think Mercedes or Apple) whereas items for kids are all about color and package aesthetic. In a perfect world, design communicates the need before its target has realized they had such a need.
That's my two cents anyways. Cheers.
That's my two cents anyways. Cheers.
No, designing by committee doesn't work - there's an optimum number (fairly low) of people for decision-making in much of everyday stuff too, if you ever want to get to an outcome that is.
Using the film director as an example worked pretty well. I also liked his first statement about being bad at being a manager and useless as an employee, made me smile in recognition.