The right design at the right time
This is a great simple overview of how design enters product development – different choices for different reasons. First published in Wired, I saw this on GV- by John Zeratsky.
!f you’re a technology entrepreneur or CEO trying to figure out what kind of investment to make in design, you might be tempted to focus on visual design: beautiful products, a sophisticated brand, and indescribably cool style.
There are plenty of successful companies with beautiful products. And visual design is the most noticeable kind of design — it’s what we often think of first when we think of design.
What about those successful companies that don’t have great visual design? They appear to have succeeded despite poor design. And in some cases, that’s true. Maybe they didn’t have any competitors; maybe their technology was so useful that it didn’t matter how it looked; or maybe they were lucky.
Many of the successful yet “poorly designed” companies used as examples — e.g. Craigslist, or Google circa 2004 — chose not to focus on making beautiful products. They focused their design efforts elsewhere, in areas that were critical to their business. They were doing the right design at the right time.