I like that we are integrating more and more well designed products and utilities in our day to day life; beautiful, easy to use objects are no longer a luxury. That by itself is a glorious win.
People, however, tend to forget the old but gold adage: "Form follows Functionality". I mean, this talented designer ventured into poking fun of the work of other people without even taking the time to understand the problem, the proposed solution, and the constraints that were/are in place.
Yes, his design is infinitely more good looking. But did the designer took into consideration how applicable is it in the real world, with real logistics and real business scenarios? No. Of course he didn't.
The reason I'm saying this is because I suffer those atrocities every day in my work, were I'm tasked with the coordination between journalists and designers for a business magazine.
Where I work, we believe that infographics' main mission is to help readers wrap their heads around things they wouldn't if we presented them as text or tables. That's the point of them being there in the first place. Making them pretty is just a way to make people look at them, and be happy while they learn something new. It is so satisfying to create such pieces.
Designers, however, seem to discard all of that, caring only about how trendy the damn gradient is. I was even called ignorant and 'noob' by a designer, one that I fought to recruit a week earlier, because I suggested making numbers readable, something he deemed old-fashioned and would ruin his master-fucking-piece.
I really hope that people will be more aware that design is not a goal by itself; it's a tool to make people care, learn and be more happy.
To add on to what you said, I believe the designer forgot one more thing. From what I remember (haven't looked in awhile), these companies are on paper thin margins. They try to shave every last cent they can. By switching to the visuals that the designers came up with, it would add to an increased ink cost.
This calculation won't even try to be accurate, but rather for argument purposes. The design that has the large black rectangle of black could add an extra 8in^2 of black printable ink. okay... I'm too lazy to look this up, but let's say they print 20m of these a year, the ink cost would add up for that redesign.
> Designers, however, seem to discard all of that, caring only about how trendy the damn gradient is. I was even called ignorant and 'noob' by a designer, one that I fought to recruit a week earlier, because I suggested making numbers readable, something he deemed old-fashioned and would ruin his master-fucking-piece.
I suspect a lot of designers are really just designing for dribbble/Behance portfolios so they can finally climb the ladder to Art Director.
Absolutely, and that somehow makes me sad. I hope that the designers who don't yet, understand the grandiosity of their mission and give a goal to their pieces, beyond the instant gratification of fast rotting eye candy.
> People, however, tend to forget the old but gold adage: "Form follows Functionality". I mean, this talented designer ventured into poking fun of the work of other people without even taking the time to understand the problem, the proposed solution, and the constraints that were/are in place.
Can you list actual problems with the proposed solution? What is the function of a boarding pass? It has 3 users:
* Computers - they don't care much about the layout as long as all the information is there. See the comment about "CUTE".
* Humans who work at airports (security, boarding crew, flight attendants) - they too want to be able to parse them quickly. They'll easily adapt to every layout because after a single day they'll have seen a few hundred boarding passes with the same layout.
* The passenger - they want to be able to parse it quickly. I don't know how often I was looking for a specific information on my boarding pass and actually had to read all of the damn thing to find it. I fly with various airlines and I am the only one who cannot be reprogrammed or trained by looking at a few hundred passes. So I'd say the most important/constraining function is to be understood by the passenger.
The article spells out the problem the redesign tries to address: So I stared at it for a while. Rubbed my eyes, then stared at it some more. It was like someone put on a blindfold, drank a fifth of whiskey, spun around 100 times, got kicked in the face by a mule (the person who designed this definitely has a mule living with them inside their house) and then just started puking numbers and letters onto the boarding pass at random (yes, I realize that a human didn't lay this out, if a human had, judging by the train-wreck of design, they would have surely used papyrus). There was nothing given size or color importance over anything else, it was a mess.
The only problem I have with most of the redesigns proposed is the amount of ink used - I'd prefer a design that takes environmental impact into account because those boarding passes have to be printed, then are used once and thrown away.
> Yes, his design is infinitely more good looking. But did the designer took into consideration how applicable is it in the real world, with real logistics and real business scenarios? No. Of course he didn't.
> It was like someone put on a blindfold, drank a fifth of whiskey, spun around 100 times, got kicked in the face by a mule (the person who designed this definitely has a mule living with them inside their house) and then just started puking numbers and letters onto the boarding pass at random (yes, I realize that a human didn't lay this out, if a human had, judging by the train-wreck of design, they would have surely used papyrus). There was nothing given size or color importance over anything else, it was a mess.
Notice that only the last sentence attempted to actually critique the current design. Every single word before that was absolutely useless.
So no, if you actually read it properly, the excerpt doesn't even present a weak argument for why boarding passes should be redesigned.
Small anecdote: in my 15 years of flying using 5+ international carriers, I have never once had trouble getting the most important information from my boarding pass (gate and seat numbers).
The problem with these design critiques is that they are usually very subjective, and provide little rationale for the proposed changes rather than "it's better" in some nebulous way.
How about having a bake-off between the old design and the new design, measuring actual business metrics. Does the new design move the needle on things that actually matter to the business? The airlines no doubt have business measurements around boarding speed, airline employee efficiency, etc. A/B test the old and new design and then if the new design outperforms the old, then you have the start of a cost benefit analysis.
When I used to write mobile apps I'd always butt-heads with the UX designers who would say things like "this control is more usable" and "we should go with a warmer color here". Great, prove it! Test the 41 shades of blue[1]! Measure your hypothesis vs. what we have. If the new design's better usability will bring in more revenue than the old one, we should have no problem justifying it.
> Notice that only the last sentence attempted to actually critique the current design. Every single word before that was absolutely useless. [... ] the excerpt doesn't even present a weak argument for why boarding passes should be redesigned
It does? ~"The information important to the passenger does not stand out." The introductory rant may not suit your taste, but it can be a pleasant reading for people who don't feel personally offended by it. And, in my opinion, for a blog post, the signal to noise ratio is actually pretty good.
Nope, that's simply wrong; the important information does stand out.
Look at the original pass at the top of the post. What is the most important information? Is it emphasized more than the rest of the information on the boarding pass?
> The only problem I have with most of the redesigns proposed is the amount of ink used - I'd prefer a design that takes environmental impact into account because those boarding passes have to be printed, then are used once and thrown away.
Boarding passes don't use ink, they use thermal paper. There is a tiny increase in electricity usage from printing more on thermal paper but it's truly miniscule.
"I mean, this talented designer ventured into poking fun of the work of other people without even taking the time to understand the problem, the proposed solution, and the constraints that were/are in place."
People, however, tend to forget the old but gold adage: "Form follows Functionality". I mean, this talented designer ventured into poking fun of the work of other people without even taking the time to understand the problem, the proposed solution, and the constraints that were/are in place.
Yes, his design is infinitely more good looking. But did the designer took into consideration how applicable is it in the real world, with real logistics and real business scenarios? No. Of course he didn't.
The reason I'm saying this is because I suffer those atrocities every day in my work, were I'm tasked with the coordination between journalists and designers for a business magazine.
Where I work, we believe that infographics' main mission is to help readers wrap their heads around things they wouldn't if we presented them as text or tables. That's the point of them being there in the first place. Making them pretty is just a way to make people look at them, and be happy while they learn something new. It is so satisfying to create such pieces.
Designers, however, seem to discard all of that, caring only about how trendy the damn gradient is. I was even called ignorant and 'noob' by a designer, one that I fought to recruit a week earlier, because I suggested making numbers readable, something he deemed old-fashioned and would ruin his master-fucking-piece.
I really hope that people will be more aware that design is not a goal by itself; it's a tool to make people care, learn and be more happy.
Edit: OMGrammar!