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dgellowyesterday at 8:56 PM2 repliesview on HN

Mind expanding on this? I’m not a designer and that sounds interesting


Replies

eduyesterday at 9:39 PM

Not the OP, but here are my 2 CT’s on what is design:

Design is the process to you follow to solve a given problem/need/desire balancing the user needs with the business/tech constraints. The output could be a a digital UI, a physical object or an intangible process. But often people think about design just as the aesthetics of a product.

A common pattern is the Empathize (Research, Diverge), Define (Converge), Ideate (Diverge), Prototype (Converge), Test (and then iterate).

The main benefits come from the divergent phases: empathize and ideate. But it’s far too common already that some executive has an “illumination” of how something should be and just wants to build as is, without any research or validation.

They can use Claude Design (and similar) to just build a prototype of their first idea, skipping all the design process and end with something that looks good but doesn’t solve the problem adequately or fits the actual user needs/context.

Of course, LLMs are useful tools that can be used in the right way: to build better prototypes in less time, to synthesize research insights, to explore ideas…

kingkongjaffayesterday at 9:36 PM

This book is a good read for anyone building anything, software, hardware, whatever: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Design_of_Everyday_Things

Design is its own thing. Fundamentally it's problem solving, but design is thinking about the user of the 'designed' thing and how will they use it, what will they do with it, what will it enable them to do, how will they learn how to use it, how can it be ergonomic to the environment it will be used in and the user.

A lot of people can conceptualise a factory making widgets or a programmer writing code, but drastically few people really see the design process: sketches on paper, wireframes in figma, design as a solution to a problem, design as story telling, or aesthetics. But those outputs are not the point.

The output of a few hours in figma is not really the images of a website made, it's more about communication or articulation of the the problem being solved and the solution that will solve it.

Which is why it doesn't really matter about the tool, design is an expression, the medium whether it's a sketch or a figma mock up or a vibe-designed UI in claude design is less critical than the thought that went into it.