{"id":19766,"date":"2017-05-02T15:19:03","date_gmt":"2017-05-02T22:19:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taterboy.com\/blog\/2017\/05\/prototyping-is-killing-design\/"},"modified":"2017-05-02T15:19:03","modified_gmt":"2017-05-02T22:19:03","slug":"prototyping-is-killing-design","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taterboy.com\/blog\/2017\/05\/prototyping-is-killing-design\/","title":{"rendered":"Prototyping Is Killing Design"},"content":{"rendered":"
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We\u2019re not designing anymore?\u2014?we\u2019re just making cool looking stuff and asking our users to get\u00a0onboard.<\/h4>\n

I\u2019ve written and erased this article about three times now, because I feel this is a subject that deserves such a staggering amount of clarity and harsh truths, that it might see me getting flamed, and for someone relatively early on in their design career, I stand to lose a lot by pissing people off. Let\u2019s get right into\u00a0it:<\/p>\n

Designers aren\u2019t doing their jobs anymore. We\u2019re all just drawing pictures and doodling on whiteboards.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I know this because that\u2019s what all we care about. When we go to UX\/UI meetups and the talks are all about \u201cUX Best Practices from So-and-So.\u201d When we check our Medium feeds and it\u2019s a dozen articles with the title of \u201cStreamline your workflow with in 5 minutes!\u201d When we go to Dribbble and it\u2019s row after row of Nike Ad mockups with variations of Google\u2019s card\u00a0design.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s all about process and tools, because we don\u2019t actually design anymore. Instead, we make stuff with all our sweet methodologies and prototyping apps to create something which we try to market to the user, with the intention of them readily accepting the product\/service like it was the one thing missing in their life. That\u2019s not design, and that\u2019s certainly not\u00a0UX.<\/p>\n

Design nowadays is dictated to us by three major companies: Apple, Google, and Microsoft. They tell us what design is and we respond \u201cwith Sketch or Photoshop?\u201d We focus on the tools and processes of our trade because that\u2019s the fun part! Who doesn\u2019t feel cool sitting around a white board, trying to brainstorm that magical feature that\u2019ll take the world by storm? Who doesn\u2019t start salivating at the thought of sharing their visually striking Sketch mockups on Dribbble? The problem with this is readily apparent within five minutes of browsing the internet: everyone\u2019s websites, apps, mockups, services\u2026they\u2019re all the same! We find the popular design templates of the month, and lazily slap it on to everything, kick back with a beer, and call it a day. It\u2019s a common theme seen in the startup community, where they prototype first, fail, and then spend the rest of their funding trying to salvage a product that was never actually designed in the first place. We don\u2019t care though, so long as our mockups look good, we feel good, and everything gels with the whims of the Design community, we\u2019ll just keep on drawing those pictures, doodling on the board, and calling ourselves \u201cdesigners.\u201d<\/p>\n

Design is actually a pretty tough thing to do because it\u2019s about solving problems. Design isn\u2019t a mockup, a tool, a process, or style guide. It\u2019s a solution<\/em>. The basis of any well thought out design-solution is steeped in user research, in order to best understand the underlying problem we want to solve for our target audience. This<\/em> is the crux of Design: doing the research and using the data we extrapolate to inform<\/em> our designs. We run kicking and screaming from doing this because it doesn\u2019t give us the emotional feedback that we get from making dope screens or finding \u201cah-ha!\u201d moments in our brainstorming sessions. It\u2019s tedious work, and it doesn\u2019t translate well visually, when nowadays, your Design skills are judged solely by the aesthetic content in your portfolio.<\/p>\n

If we want our products to succeed and our websites to stand out, we need to do the research before building them. This should be common practice to anyone who calls themselves a designer, but sadly, research is left out in favor of our own gratification. We prototype first because it\u2019s fun and because we validate our design skills on stylish mockups with no thought given to substance. We eschew user research because we\u2019re biased towards what we<\/em> think is best for our users. We fail fast, fail often because we\u2019re obsessed with the process, not the results. We have<\/em> to drop these bad habits if Design is to move forward. To clarify, there\u2019s nothing wrong<\/em> with following the work done by Apple, or Google, or other big name companies; they do great work! We cannot follow them blindly though. Popular design can influence<\/em> our designs, but it should be user research that informs<\/em> our\u00a0design.<\/p>\n

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We\u2019re not designing anymore?\u2014?we\u2019re just making cool looking stuff and asking our users to get\u00a0onboard. I\u2019ve written and erased this article about three times now, because I feel this is a subject that deserves such a staggering amount of clarity and harsh truths, that it might see me getting flamed, and for someone relatively early… Read the full article…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":19767,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[371],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-user-experience"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t