I have not yet read the piece, so can’t make a proper judgement on it. But based on the quote, my issue is that art/visuals are part of a design. While I agree that usability is an important, and often overlooked, component, it’s just that: A component.

I was just having a conversation with a coworker today about why we’re so fond of Moleskine notebooks and beyond the toughness and the pocket, we both felt like the most important aspect is that it felt like a notebook important ideas should go in. It takes more than just ‘engineering’, or ‘art’ for that matter, to create that feeling.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that design does not require artist skill, but that depends on what the term ‘artistic skill’ means to each of us. If creativity is an artist skill, then his statement is completely wrong.

Photorealistic painting requires a lot of skill with a paint brush, but the artistic part (the creative part) of the equation is choosing what to paint.

So it is with design. Design is not about artist self-expression. Design is creatively solving business problems. Part of this equation is “knowing” what to keep and what to disgard, and as Joel rightly points out, it’s about resolving conflicting constraints. “Knowing” is the creative part, the artistic skill.

I’m looking forward to his essay on user models vs. programmer models.

Well, Noah, if you’ve followed my links before, you’ll know that I try to pick the juiciest one that strikes up conversation. It may not be Spolsky’s end argument, but it’s the most interesting blurb that I found…

Also, I’m not sure what Spolky’s reply to your comment would be, but my guess is that he would say something like the moleskin affinity you have could be considered a result of your tactile constraints, and therefore is a good design choice .

Josh, a couple of thoughts (and I did read the article).

I think Joel is both onto something and missing the boat.

What is he onto. Design is not art. of course it doesn’t depend on what you are designing and to what level. But for the way he is talking about it I can undrestand what he is talking about.

There are two parts of his outline that I really think misses the boat.

1. there is nothing about aesthetics. Design w/o mention of aesthetics is just well wrong. I mean that at a very philosophical level. Even if you are not thinking about aesthetics, you are creating aesthetics. They might be bad, but they are there.

2. PROCESS!!!! Design is not the result, but the process and its process is VERY different from engineering. Engineering uses linear analysis (well much the way that Joel did in his example, which is why it sorta proves that he just isn’t getting what design is.) Design processes are non-linear, iterative, tangential, and creativity based.

Design has to acknowledge constraints, but designs greatest benefit comes from when it ignores those constraints and moves beyond them. Marissa Mayer of late has been saying that Design to constraints is what innovation is all about. I totally disagree. Design is not soley about constraints and to focus on constraints or specifications as Joel has done in his article is not design, but business analysis.

Where design succeeds over where engineering and business analysis often fails is that constraints are not the end, but the beginning. Constraints are used as a means of problem statement deconstruction in design, where by in engineering they are used as the definition of the problem itself. This ability to look deeper, over, through, around, between, intraphasicly, in, out, over, etc. constraints is at the heart of the design process.

Lastly, we need to consider that design and artistic skill do come together in very very important place. That is modeling. While a solution can be derived without ever setting a model to reality, w/o one the probability of success is quite limited. Models are quired for reflection and communication. Precision in these models improve their success. The master is in the details and when a designer misses the details in their models often it causes problems sometimes down the road.

This last road is why I’ve been more and more against the idea of “wireframes” as a deliverable, but rather an internal team tool. outside the internal team, the lack of fidelity of a wireframe becomes problematic as a useful communication tool.

I like Joel a lot. He is very smart. But why are people who never went to a design school, or went through any type of design studio training trying to define what or what is not design? This is sorta like an English teacher defining physics.