Why Good Design Is All About Making the Right Compromises
Design Is Compromise
Compromise is simply decision-making and prioritizing, not a failure. Every design choice inherently rejects other options, creating necessary tradeoffs between strengths and weaknesses. Trying to appeal to everyone often means being exceptional at nothing. True good design is opinionated, proudly choosing the right balance for a specific audience rather than pretending no compromises exist.
My favorite products are opinionated. They make a clear statement about what they are not good at, in favor of being much better at something else.
- ChrisMarshallNY
Absolutely spot-on.
However, most folks (not just designers) have a difficult time with compromise, these days. It's become a value judgment (You're "weak," if you compromise).
I learned, when I was a kid, that I can't always get what I want (I think that someone even sang about it, way back then).
The art of compromise, is one of the most valuable skills I had, during my career, and I'm still at it. In fact, I was just texting with a team member, a few minutes ago, where we have to come to a compromise.
- tikotus
Compromise is the last tool in the designer's toolbox. Before settling with a compromise, the designer should relentlessly try to narrow down what the problem being solved is, while trying out all possibilities, until it looks like there is no solution that matches exactly the problem (or they run out of time).
More often than not, a compromise means that the problem wasn't scoped out well enough, and it ends up partially solving a problem that didn't need solving.
Edit: I do think it's about trade-offs though. Choosing to solve one problem, acknowledging another problem will be disregarded.
- bryzaguy
I fundamentally disagree with the premise. Why are we attempting to change the meaning of the word compromise? “compromise” and “has trade-offs” are NOT synonymous. The antithesis of compromise is to make strong decisions that WILL alienate people, but will better target your intended audience. That, IMHO, is a great thing.
- ttoinou
Once constraints are fixed you can choose your tradeoff among dimensions, that’s the compromise.
But constraints are not fixed, you can optimize, discover new techniques and change the space of requirements.
For example thanks to computer scientists we get better and better algorithms for compression, and thanks to hardware companies we get new / faster chips with different models to do new kinds of computation
Thus, you can move the compromise space, by working harder
- Yokohiii
So the compromise in Obsidian is to throw everything else under the bus for aesthetics?