The core job of a software designer is to make products that look good and work well to drive sales, a principle from industrial designer Henry Dreyfuss. This requires a holistic understanding of users, the medium, and business impact, mirroring the original practice of industrial design.
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Design success isn't just about creating a functional and appealing product. The ultimate measure, often forgotten, is market adoption and usage. A designer's responsibility extends to ensuring the product sells and is used by customers, making it a business-critical function.
AI tools are commoditizing the act of writing code (software development). The durable skill and key differentiator is now software engineering: architecting systems, creating great user experiences, and applying taste. Building something people want to use is the new challenge.
In the dot-com era, design was a superficial afterthought. Today, with increased software competition and user expectations set by companies like Apple, design is a critical factor for a product's success, influencing function and user experience, not just aesthetics.
Don't design solely for the user. The best product opportunities lie at the nexus of what users truly need (not what they say they want), the company's established product principles, and its core business objectives.
Design is often mistaken for aesthetics, like choosing a border radius. Its real function is architectural: defining the simplest possible system with the fewest core concepts to achieve the most for users. Notion's success, for example, comes from being built on just blocks, pages, and databases, not from surface-level UI choices.
True design isn't about aesthetics; it is the fundamental soul of a creation, revealed by how it works. It requires distilling a product or company to its simplest form through profound understanding. As AI automates coding, this ability to design systems becomes a critical skill for everyone, not just designers.
Instead of focusing on adding more features, the best product design identifies a desired outcome and systematically removes every obstacle preventing the user from achieving it. This subtractive process, brilliantly used for the iPhone, creates an elegant user experience that drives adoption and retention.
Inspired by architect Christopher Alexander, a designer's role shifts from building the final "house" to creating the "pattern language." This means designing a system of reusable patterns and principles that empowers users to construct their own solutions tailored to their unique needs.
As cloud computing and developer tools made software easier to build, competition surged. This shifted business value from pure engineering to design and user experience, which became critical for standing out. Design went from a cosmetic afterthought to a core strategic function.
The era of winning with merely functional software is over. As technology, especially AI, makes baseline functionality easier to build, the key differentiator becomes design excellence and superior craft. Mediocre, 'good enough' products will lose to those that are exceptionally well-designed.
