This may come a little late already but here’s what I can write about it. Let’s start things off by saying may he rest in peace, and thank you for the work you have done here.
Function over Form
As a web designer and developer I have always chosen “function” over “form”. My colleagues, my girlfriend and people I do projects on would know that my works are not excitingly creative, but my designs are fairly simple, clean – sometimes empty (when it fails). Blame it on Steve Krug! Blame it on my friend who lent me Krug’s book “Dont Make Me Think”. When I create website mockups, and for example buttons, I always make them look like buttons and it has to say “Click Here”, “Register Now” “Submit”. Most of the times I will never let my buttons blend in with the overall design. It has to stand out. I would rather have a search box on the right that stands out than one that is nicely hidden in a plethora of beautiful dashes and boxes. Don’t get me wrong I like beautiful designs, creative designs, and wish I was part of the project or be the one who made that “nice-looking site”. However when I start to do my works, I am always stuck with Function. On the back of my mind there is a small voice that says “Hey, but craigslist works, doesn’t it?”
Later in my career as a Web Designer I had to evolve. Apart from adapting to Jquery, table-less codes, and that stuff, I had to somehow learn what the new guys are doing. See what this 16year old kid is designing and why he got featured in Smashing Magazine. Look up topics like “Modern Navigation”, “What websites will look like in 2011″. Otherwise, I will never grow and get stuck at tables and boxes of the 90′s.
A year ago I came upon a website by a famous web professional Andy Rutledge. I liked his website. Clean, simple and I loved reading his discussions as well. IT was kind of the education that I was yearning for since I never really got formal schooling on Web design or development. I graduated a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering by the way. I always think my love for Math and my Engineering background helped me in finding out solutions to given problems and in practical terms, finding the browser incompatibility bug. Anyway, so back to Andy, I emailed him what books he would recommend for me to read, as a person who is in the design field but never really got formal guidance. Surprisingly he replied, and he said that since he never really know what is my background or my current projects are he would recommend a more generic book about design entitled The Universal Principles of Design. I found a copy of the book only after a few months from his email and started reading it.
Universal Principles of Design
The book was a good read. Athough it is quite overwhelming for me, I get insights about the general laws of design from creating posters, websites, train and traffic signs, interior design, packaging, industrial design etc. For example I learned that the height of a room’s ceiling affects the mantra of the people working. Higher ceiling means more creative workflow, more freedom, artistic types will love it. Lower ceiling creates more control, like offices, accounting firms. I also learned about the difference of using a gentle baby face on an ad and when to use a man and a woman’s face.
One of the Principles that stuck to me was the one called “Aesthetic Usability Effects”.
Jobs and Aesthetics
When the first iPhone came out, if I am not mistaken in 2007, it was a hit. Like some would say, it did not only raise the bar, it created a different set of rules. It was the first phone or gadget I know of that people camp out in stores to wait in line for. Well there maybe others (but I have not heard). The iPhone was the most beautiful phone dating up to 15 years back and up until now. It paved way for smartphones and for people to realize that touch does work. My initial reaction to a touchscreen phone was – “What? that would be very inconvenient”. There were reports that ladies with long fingernails would find it hard to use, and you can not use it with your gloves on. Still it sold millions. And just recently the latest iPhone, the iPhone 4S was said to have sold 4million units in just 2 days. We go back to the iPhone of 2007, the old one, the one I have. When it began there was no copy-and-paste. No front cameras no video calling. And I bet it wasn’t even the fastest phone there is during that time ( i cannot remember). But what made it successfully in my opinion is that it appears to be something awesome for lack of a better word. I saw an iPhone sold in one of the pawnshops near our house and I almost bought it there and then. I cannot sleep thinking about the phone, and convinced my girlfriend that I should get one. So I bought a new one, and a few months later she bought one for herself too. Probably why it ended up in the pawnshop for one owner is that he never thought it was difficult to use. He never thought that it needed iTunes or a separate computer for him to put music, videos, and all other stuff into it.
Apple is excellent at sales and marketing I must say. But Jobs’ vision of what people should be using and his passion for things to look good are so intense that what comes out from them really is an experience. From seeing an Apple product in the stores to opening the nicely one packaging (which btw is also being copied now) to using the device. A device they say is so advanced it is “light years ahead”. Seriously it is not. Japan had video calling for a long time. The Macbook Pro the Mac Pro aren’t the fastest machines in its price range. I have an entry-level Mac Mini 2011 upped to 4GB at a price where I can buy a PC box that may have 1GB of VRAM already. But then again, the experience and the aesthetics I bet would not be the same.
What i learned from the book of Jobs
I guess it is not all about Function over Form, or Form over Function. It is just in choosing for a subject. Choosing a context and be good at it. In the context of most advanced phones that can do the most stuff – the iPhone will certainly fail. But in the context of “i want to be using one becase I love it” it wins. Even if Samsung tries to copy it. Even if the Galaxy Ace looks exactly like it. Even if most smartphones now look like an iPhone (when I always loved the slide). When tablets suddenly has to look like an iPad to sell. They could never be an Apple product.
It takes me a good amount of time to come up with a mockup for a website’s homepage, when most good designers can probably do in 3-4hours. Part of it is the developer in me that tells me – no you can’t do that, how would you code that – and part of it is me over thinking the functionalities that the page should say. In the real world, I am a bad web designer. I am slow and most projects drag along. But what is reaffirming for me lately is my latest project which the client said they loved. I did the homepage mockup in 2 days. I created elements on it which I am not sure how it would work – and my girlfriend asked me that and I just said, I will worry about that in the development stage. I am now hoping that this next product will have an “Aesthetic Usability Effect” like an iPhone, it will be well received, loved and used, and then slowly just develop what is lacking in it based on feedback.
The designer in me would say… I like to do it this way, and scream at the developer in me “You should make it work”.
Alright, before I get branded as a boring blogger with multiple personality disorder, I would like to close this writing again by saying Thank you Steve!
