💾 Archived View for gemlog.blue › users › ava › 1702240383.gmi captured on 2024-08-18 at 20:08:32. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2023-12-28)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
This is a comprehensive list of all the things that make an excellent design, not just a good one, an excellent one. It can be products of all kind: technology, software, hardware, mechanical devices or really anything else. You can use it as a checklist or just pick a few points to work on. They're formulated as questions with short texts explaining what to do if you answer them wrong, some of them need testing, some of them you can answer on your own. They're not ordered in any way.
I'm writing this mostly as a reminder to myself for when I'm designing things. But I thought other people could also use it. Or get an insight into what, at least I think, makes excellent design. Not all of the points are so obvious.
If not perhaps you should rethink your company structure or funding methods
If intentional, fuck off. If not, this is a hard one to solve, solutions can be very subtle
This is the classic thing about competition breeds innovation and so on
If you answered I dont know. Are you even doing design? (that was a philosophical question)
Form over function == bad design && Function over form == bad design. You need both function AND form in your design plan
If not it's either the product or the goals that are the problem
If you can make it simpler it's almost always the right thing to do. Often when you actually make a simplification, thinking that it'll make the product worse, it turns out that it made it better after all. Sometimes worse is better. Usually simpler is better
If it is, find out why
Design is hard, but if the answer's no, continue doing it. And dont ignore that one little part no one's gonna see anyways, someone will see it, it does matter
The sounds, the smell (maybe even the taste), the motion, does it feel good to touch, to operate, all of the senses matter. Aesthetics isnt only about the visual, design is not art
It might be self explanatory, but it doesnt have to be, it doesnt even have to be intuitive. What matters is that every user can easily get a thorough, but understandable explanation of how to use the product
A big fat warning might be all that's necessary, or maybe you have to "child proof" it a bit
If that can happen it's not reliable enough
If not it's not reliable enough
Be a bit harsh on yourself here, because the norm isnt. Personally I'd say that 3 nines is minimum for non critical things and 5 nines for critical things
Wikipedia article explaining what "class of nines" means
Design is hard, but if the answer's no, continue doing it. I will add though, if the product is unavoidably fragile then you should design procedures or other products to keep it safe. For example: a CPU die is very prone to cracking if you overtighten its cooler, so you should design something to prevent overtightening, like a torque wrench
Design is hard, but if the answer's no, continue doing it
Then document it, and if that's too much of a pain that's probably because you got the above question wrong
This is kind of a sub question of the repairability one. Also think about your downtime requirements here, a perishable part should be quick enough to replace that you dont get too much downtime from doing so, or better yet no downtime at all.
This depends a lot on what kind of a product it is (but it does also apply to software)
If not. Easy fix: create it
Find out why. The customer isnt always right, but they probably are
If you dont have a community to help you with this you'll have to do it yourself
This wasnt meant to be an easy thing to achieve, there are a lot of points. But if you think I missed some let me know and I'll add or correct if I agree.