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10 DESIGN FOR HACKERS GIVEN THAT YOU’RE reading this book, you probably don’t need much convincing that design is, in fact, important. Good design has clearly been fundamental to the success of many of the world’s largest companies, and interest in and awareness of design has exploded during the past couple decades. But exactly what kind of impact can design have? More important, what really defines the bounds of design? Skillful use of good design can create experiences that are emotionally moving.
C H A P T E R O N E W H Y D E S I G N M AT T E R S this day – there’s something magical about seeing what is little more than a pile of stone, arranged in a certain way, have this affect on grown adults. What Design Really Is Steve Jobs once said, “In most people’s vocabularies, design is a veneer. It’s interior decorating. It’s the fabric of the curtains of the sofa. But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design.
12 DESIGN FOR HACKERS standing that the walls of the dome are 20 feet thick at the base of the dome and only 4 feet thick at the edge of the oculus. FIGURE 1-1 The Pantheon features the world’s tallest unreinforced concrete dome. Light (and sometimes rain) floods into the interior through a hole in the ceiling.
C H A P T E R O N E W H Y D E S I G N M AT T E R S The marble used within the Pantheon was in different colors, as well, so care had to be taken to ensure that there was harmony and beauty in how the various colors of marble interacted with one another. All these factors worked together and were considered so masterfully that the Pantheon is one of the most influential buildings in the history of architecture. From St. Peter’s (just down the road from the Pantheon, in Vatican City) to the U.S.
14 DESIGN FOR HACKERS other kids cheered. So, reluctantly, she tried to draw the boy. As you can probably imagine, the resulting drawing looked nothing like the boy at all. His eyes were lifeless, flattened footballs. His hair was a random mess of scribbles. “I’m not very good at drawing people,” she said, sheepishly. Everyone seemed disappointed, but they still wanted to believe that she was a good artist. I was too young to figure it out then, but eventually I got it.
C H A P T E R O N E W H Y D E S I G N M AT T E R S The Layers of Design It’s important to understand the layers that make up a design, because getting those layers to work together is the key to creating designs that look good, that solve problems, and that ultimately influence your users. On the web, more than anywhere else, using the layers of design appropriately is critical to success.
16 DESIGN FOR HACKERS How design affects credibility on the web In a study done at Stanford University, B. J. Fogg and his colleagues presented participants with two websites and asked them to rank the sites’ credibility, as well as provide comments about what they based their rankings upon. When the results were processed, Fogg found that design had an overwhelming influence in participants’ ratings of the credibility of the websites in the study.
C H A P T E R O N E W H Y D E S I G N M AT T E R S Purpose Every piece of design has a purpose or an intention. The Pantheon was built as a temple of the gods, the iPod was built as a portable device for playing music, and every website or application you create has its own set of purposes. The purpose of a design is wrapped up with economic factors as well. The forms of letters have been influenced throughout time by the need for efficiency in communicating language (see Chapter 3).
18 DESIGN FOR HACKERS In Chapter 4, I’ll go into more detail on how the technologies behind the Internet have created design trends, such as the Web 2.0 look. In Chapter 3, I’ll explain how the limitations of the pixel have made some of the longest-lived typeface designs incompatible with use on the web. In Chapter 8, you’ll learn about how the technologies with which we represent colors can influence our color choices designing across mediums or when choosing colors for information graphics.
