We’re Better At (Visual) Design, And That’s Not Good

Good reminder by Clay Allsopp, which amounts to “Don’t judge software by its cover”.

“When everything moves toward beautiful, it chips away at our ‘product survival’ instinct and makes it harder for us to tell the gold from the crap.”

I’m glad that I’m seeing more and more people make the distinction between visual and interaction design. We still mostly judge software by how it looks, and we should strive to build great-looking software, but that’s not the first thing we need to get right. I’ve always been fond of how the Shakers approach design, which I wrote about some time back: The Shaker Design Philosophy