{"id":161,"date":"2008-03-09T00:30:49","date_gmt":"2008-03-09T06:30:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.regnskygge.net\/?p=85"},"modified":"2008-03-09T00:30:49","modified_gmt":"2008-03-09T06:30:49","slug":"sxsw2008-notes-blood-sweat-and-fear-great-design-hurts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/techory.com\/sxsw\/?p=161","title":{"rendered":"SXSW2008 notes &#8211; Blood, Sweat and Fear:  Great Design Hurts"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote class=\"abstract\">\n<h4>Saturday, 8 March 2008 - 3:30<span class=\"smaller\">PM<\/span><\/h4>\n<p>Abstract:<br \/>\nThe core dilemma for talented designers in any field is this: If you strive for greatness in your design, you will meet resistance; if you strive to avoid resistance, you can&#8217;t do great design. Different is scary. Great design has to fight with the idea that many see &#8220;better&#8221; as meaning &#8220;more of the same&#8221;. The better your work and the higher your standards, the more you&#8217;ll have to fight against the urge to stay within the warm, safe confines of mediocrity.<\/p>\n<p>John Gruber - Raconteur, <a href=\"http:\/\/daringfireball.net\/\">Daring Fireball<\/a><br \/>\nMichael Lopp - <a href=\"http:\/\/apple.com\/\">Apple, Inc.<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>They are talking about Mentos and Scott is going nuts. He even used <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Image:Mentos.jpg\">Scott&#8217;s Mentos pic from Wikipedia<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Needed: A process to keep designers from killing engineers.<\/p>\n<p>Design is a present:  it is an unintentional discovery.<br \/>\nPackaging porn - Apple makes products who like to wait to iPod until Xmas.<br \/>\nWWDC keynotes are a storytime about what you are going to get for Xmas.<\/p>\n<p>How does Apple do that?<br \/>\nA: They screw up a lot.<br \/>\nAnd they do it in the face of Fear of design feedback, fear of blue (subjective color demands), fear of critical feedback, fear of ponies - &#8220;I want a pony&#8221; comes from multiple places\/people that are your higherups and represent the amorphous mandate.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Where to sweat:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>pixel-perfect mockups - this removes ambiguity<\/li>\n<li>10 ot 3 to 1 - 10 mockups for every feature, get to three from iteration and then to 1 again<\/li>\n<li>Paired design meetings - brainstorm meetings in one meeting and then pair this with the production meeting. pair these togther eery week<\/li>\n<li>The Pony meeting - Pony people do not actually want a pont - they want their opinion to be heard.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Design is a Present - an unexpected discovery that you have<\/p>\n<p><strong>Gruber:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>It is incorrect to think that the better the design work the les resistance it will meet. example:  the Beatle white album<\/li>\n<li>It is only in hindsight that this is true about this album&#8221;Better neccesarily implies Different&#8221;, but, &#8220;Different = Scary&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>What we get to stay comfortable is &#8220;Exactly the same, but dibetter which does not make sense &#8220;Exactly the same, but different.<\/li>\n<li>The Plea Bargain - basically the prisoner&#8217;s dilemna - the lesser route is statistically safer.<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Don&#8217;t try to be orginal, just try to be good.&#8221; - <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Paul_Rand\">Paul Rand<\/a><\/li>\n<li>&#8220;A logo derives it&#8217;s meaning from the quality of the thing it symbolizes, not the other way around.&#8221;  <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Paul_Rand\">Rand<\/a><\/li>\n<li>&#8220;It reminds me of the Georgia chain gang.&#8221; - said about the IBM logo.<\/li>\n<li>One problem that designers face is that ehy are expected to be clever (example:  Apple&#8217;s logo)<\/li>\n<li>Design is making decisions and packaging them as a whole. Hitchcock got final cutby meticulously planning his movies through the use of storboarding so that there was only one way to put the movie together.<\/li>\n<li>Ford:  If i had asked people what they wanted, they would have told me a faster horse.<\/li>\n<li>Are you willing to be called an asshole?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Saturday, 8 March 2008 &#8211; 3:30PM<br \/>\nAbstract:<br \/>\nThe core dilemma for talented designers in any field is this: If you strive for greatness in your design, you will meet resistance; if you strive to avoid resistance, you can&#8217;t do great design. Different is scary. Great design has to fight with the idea that many see &#8220;better&#8221; as [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[11],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/techory.com\/sxsw\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/techory.com\/sxsw\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/techory.com\/sxsw\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/techory.com\/sxsw\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/techory.com\/sxsw\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=161"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/techory.com\/sxsw\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/techory.com\/sxsw\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/techory.com\/sxsw\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/techory.com\/sxsw\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}