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RE: What design is: 911 vs. Fleetwood
Let's see if I follow you. In Windows, MSFT has created a
great product that makes people happy today?
Maybe what you mean to say is that design is not the only
thing that can cause something to be a commercial success.
I would not dispute that. MSFT (and many companies before
them) show that a sufficiently crafty and ruthless company
can shove bad design down the market's throat. But we
weren't talking about business strategy. We were taking
about design.
Your examples suggest that you misunderstood what I meant
about designing to please yourself. I didn't mean designing
literally for your own use. I meant designing according to
your own ideas of good design. Henry Ford was in fact one
of the most notorious examples of this. "Any color you
want, so long as it's black."
--pg
--- "S. Alexander Jacobson" <alex@shop.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 13 Dec 2001, Paul Graham wrote:
> > The alternative to designing for a hypothetical idiot isn't
> > to design something just to please yourself. The way to
> > good design (good work in any field in fact) is to aim to
> > please yourself and a small group of fairly sophisticated
> > colleagues. That's what mathematicians aim for; that's
> > what Leonardo etc. aimed for; that's what the Porsche 911
> > designers were thinking; that was Jane Austen's method.
> > I think you'd be hard pressed to find an example of great
> > work that wasn't created this way.
>
> Its just a question of what market you want to hit. There are lots
> of
> examples of successful products designed for a market rather than the
> owners of the companies that created them:
>
> Cars: The Ford Model T
> Food: McDonalds
> Beverage: Coca-cola
> Software: MSFT Windows
> Clothing: Blue Jeans and Khakies
>
> Creating great art may place you in history. But creating great
> products makes people happy today.
>
> -Alex-
>
> ___________________________________________________________________
> S. Alexander Jacobson i2x Media
> 1-917-783-0889 voice 1-212-697-1427 fax
>
>
>
> > --pg
> >
> > --- Christopher Barber <cbarber@curl.com> wrote:
> > > > All three of the reasons you give for why Ada was more
> > > > expensive (no one used it by choice, no one wrote
> > > > libraries for it, and no one wrote compilers for it) are
> > > > just the symptoms of real hackers not liking it.
> > >
> > > Only if you believe that "real hackers" are the only people who
> make
> > > business decisions regarding language choice. I don't believe
> it.
> > > On the
> > > first commercial project I ever worked on, we were forced to use
> > > COBOL
> > > because that is what the client demanded. This kind of thing is
> not
> > > at all
> > > uncommon.
> > >
> > > > It may have shown up in the DoD's books as "language too
> > > > expensive" but the root cause was "language sucked."
> > >
> > > I don't know the language well enough to say that, but it still
> does
> > > have
> > > its adherents so it can't be that bad.
> > >
> > > > The "average programmer" is a fuzzy target, and vague
> > > > aims always lead to bad work.
> > >
> > > Yes, but who says that you have to have only one target
> prototypical
> > > programmer in mind? Designing anything with only one person in
> mind
> > > is
> > > usually stupid, whatever the product.
> > >
> > > If you design a language for yourself, you are least guaranteed
> that
> > > you
> > > will like it, and presumably others like you, but it would be
> foolish
> > > to
> > > assume that everyone will like it.
> > >
> > > - Christopher
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
> > __________________________________________________
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>
>
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