Artistry vs. Design

Someone new to UX recently asked me how I come up with "ideas for cool designs." My response was simply that it's a philosophical question, something we should discuss when we had more time, but that fundamentally, "cool" is not the foremost concern of design, and that he should focus on making things useful, and leave aesthetics to the young PhotoShop jockeys who will turn his wireframes into comps. Then, we went along to our respective meetings, and it will probably be a long while before we can find an hour to sit and chat about it.

But it got me to thinking: The notion of "design" is too often regarded as artistry instead of craftsmanship. "Design" implies color and shape, the arrangement of elements into a composition that is visually compelling. I can't dismiss the importance of this - people gravitate toward beautiful things, and tend to want to interact with them, and instilling in users the desire to touch an object or click around a Web interface is important.

But it's also quite short-lived. Aesthetic appeal causes the user to become interested and interact with an object. But there, the contribution of the artist ends. If interacting with an artful object serves no purpose, or if it is difficult to achieve the goal of interaction because of compromises made to make it attractive, the object fails its purpose.

The initiation of interaction is where "artistry" becomes less important than "design," where a object that merely looks cool is found, in fact, to be entirely useless. The user abandons it, eventually if not immediately, and is left with a sense of disappointment or frustration. Whatever the case, he's lost interest in interacting with it, and is a little less likely to be fooled by appearances in future. In that sense, artistry and design can be in conflict.

My sense is that, usually, design is more important than artistry. Design delivers the value that people seek in objects, and I think that it is this delivery of value that creates the emotional connection between people and things. It is the reason why we are fond of the "old" - why we won't part with the jacket that is no longer in fashion, and is a bit the worse for wear, but which is comfortable and warm.

And my sense is that perception of this value is a matter of experience - why the old carpenter won't part with the trusty hammer he's been using since he was an apprentice, while the young apprentice brings to the job a chrome-plated model with a molded plastic handle stamped with the brand of whatever manufacturer has done the most advertising lately.

Ideally, both art and design can be accommodated. The two aren't always at odds, and are not necessarily in conflict. If the "cool" hammer is also well-designed, then it's likely that thirty years hence, it will still hang from the belt of today's "new" apprentice.

But where the two are in conflict, in an instance in which making something "look cool" means sacrificing what "works well," a compromise must be made. I would value design over artistry, but that's a decision made from my own perspective and based on my own experience. Ask someone else, and you'll get a different answer.