I'm a victim of design02/13/2004 08:59:49 AMWritten By : Scott Good
That's of design, not by design. I'm amazed sometimes how anal I can be about certain things. Design, sadly, is one of them. 
In a silly way, it runs whole parts of my life.
An example? You want an example? OK, try this:
The database underlying this blog is one that's been worked on by a lot of very smart folks and made generously available for free (contributions accepted). OK, there's not a lot of documentation but, hey, it works great. You fiddle with the CSS settings for a while to get it to look how you want it to look and then just start typing. Miraculously, things fall into place and you really look like you know what you're doing.
Quite impressive, really.
And blogs, really, are about the ideas more than the look. Aren't they? Shouldn't it be enough to just have a place to type in your ideas and have them shared effectively with others? Shouldn't it really not matter how the input page looks as long as the result looks good?
Maybe, but...well...I can't stand it. Couldn't stand it. I "fixed" it.
"What are you talking about," you're probably asking right now. I'm talking about the form in the BLOGSphere database used to enter, well, blogs. It was a perfectly good form that did a perfectly good job. Except I didn't like to look at it. So I changed it.
Here: Let me show you.
before
after
Not enough I could make a very passionate argument about it. And, that's really my point. I keep being surprised by how much look-and-feel matters to me. It's in all the applications I build as much as anything because I can't stand for it not to be.
But it doesn't stop there. Oh no. I wish it stopped there. It extends to almost everything. My cars. I've had a lot of cars over the years (20?, 30? something like that). I have lowered almost all of them. Not the slammed-onto-the-ground-and-drag-on-every-pebble slammed like all the rice-rockets have these days, but lowered nonetheless.
Why?
Well, partially, obstensibly, for performance. Lower-riding cars handle better. I have been a racer of one flavor or another for most of my adult life, so better handling is something I can appreciate. But most (sports) cars handle amazingly well straight from the factory these days and lowering them usually makes them ride a lot worse.
I lower my cars because it makes them look better. At least to me. It's a design issue as much as anything. And it just about kills me during the time between buying a new car and getting it lowered when I have to look at it. Kills me.
not lowered (bad)
lowered (good)
The same is true of a whole lot of other things in my life. My woodworking and home remodelling efforts. The color of my house. The playhouse out back for my kids. My office. My...well, you get the idea.
It would be so much simpler to just not care. SO much simpler. And yet, I do. Dammit.
In a silly way, it runs whole parts of my life. An example? You want an example? OK, try this:
The database underlying this blog is one that's been worked on by a lot of very smart folks and made generously available for free (contributions accepted). OK, there's not a lot of documentation but, hey, it works great. You fiddle with the CSS settings for a while to get it to look how you want it to look and then just start typing. Miraculously, things fall into place and you really look like you know what you're doing.
Quite impressive, really.
And blogs, really, are about the ideas more than the look. Aren't they? Shouldn't it be enough to just have a place to type in your ideas and have them shared effectively with others? Shouldn't it really not matter how the input page looks as long as the result looks good?
Maybe, but...well...I can't stand it. Couldn't stand it. I "fixed" it.
"What are you talking about," you're probably asking right now. I'm talking about the form in the BLOGSphere database used to enter, well, blogs. It was a perfectly good form that did a perfectly good job. Except I didn't like to look at it. So I changed it.
Here: Let me show you.
before
after
Not enough I could make a very passionate argument about it. And, that's really my point. I keep being surprised by how much look-and-feel matters to me. It's in all the applications I build as much as anything because I can't stand for it not to be.
But it doesn't stop there. Oh no. I wish it stopped there. It extends to almost everything. My cars. I've had a lot of cars over the years (20?, 30? something like that). I have lowered almost all of them. Not the slammed-onto-the-ground-and-drag-on-every-pebble slammed like all the rice-rockets have these days, but lowered nonetheless.
Why?
Well, partially, obstensibly, for performance. Lower-riding cars handle better. I have been a racer of one flavor or another for most of my adult life, so better handling is something I can appreciate. But most (sports) cars handle amazingly well straight from the factory these days and lowering them usually makes them ride a lot worse.
I lower my cars because it makes them look better. At least to me. It's a design issue as much as anything. And it just about kills me during the time between buying a new car and getting it lowered when I have to look at it. Kills me.
not lowered (bad)
lowered (good)
The same is true of a whole lot of other things in my life. My woodworking and home remodelling efforts. The color of my house. The playhouse out back for my kids. My office. My...well, you get the idea.
It would be so much simpler to just not care. SO much simpler. And yet, I do. Dammit.
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