Adding stuff to a design not for the sake of design, usability or the need of the users (or even the client) but just to make it exceedingly beautiful. So beautiful that people (read other designers) like it, rebound it on dribbble and tweet it and sing songs of praise about it, when it could be all just superficial while the design itself lacks the soul.
“It’ll be glorious! My goal, isn’t for readability or usability but for CSS Galleryability.” (via @maxvoltar)
*Though the chances of that happening are seriously one in a billion or more like trillion.
What Tim tweeted some months back made me wonder, how often I have been guilty of this. In the end it is not they who we are designing for, also it is not the clients (though we have a different set of obligations towards them). If you are a designer then the one and only thing you need to think of is how usable, accessible and aesthetically pleasing it is for your users. If the aesthetics come at the cost of usability, screw them. If the accessibility comes at the cost of usability (of the super core user group of your product), screw it too.*
At the same time, we as designers must learn to not jump up with our own sets of suggestions even when we do not have the slightest of idea of the project. Time and again this has happened over at Dribbble, yet we have learnt to forget it. Give suggestions, give advice but make sure you add in your own premise of assumptions made based on what you think the project is about.
As purveyors of design, it is our interim duty to ensure that the craft that we practice is not tainted by peer-pressure.
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