Is There a Design Class System?
From the DDM blog …
My final panel of the day was one I had really been looking forward to. It was entitled, “High Class and Low Class Web Design†and the description read, “Elite web designers are baffled by the success of seemingly “undesigned” sites like Google, Craigslist, and eBay. Usablity expertsexplain the success of such sites as a triumph of function over style, others claim that a good business model always beats good design. This panel will investigate a third possibility: Just as Apple, BMW, and The New York Times market high-end products to elite customers,Wal-Mart, Fox News, and World Wrestling Entertainment target their working-class customers very… differently. Is there a design class system?â€
The answer, as I hope that you, Dear Reader, are already painfully aware of, is YES – there indeed is high-class, and low-class design (at least, I firmly believe so). But beyond that I didn’t really get too far. The panel seemed completely surprised by each question that was asked of them by the moderator (who seemed to be the only one of them who has really given these topics any great deal of thought). Khoi Vinh seemed especially uptight and even unhappy to be here.
However, it wasn’t at all a total waste of time, because although they weren’t necessarily answered, I think many interesting questions were asked. Questions like:
- Do you design for yourself or for your audience? If you design for your audience, how do you discover who they are and how their “class†comes into play?
- Do you respect your audience? Are they your equals?
- If you make design decisions based on which designs generate the best click-through rates (etc), do you completely lose control over the design?
- If low-end design is based on statistical responsiveness (user-testing, data return, etc) is high-class design based on expertise (and perhaps testing isn’t even done, as in the case of Apple)?
- Do you move towards your audience or draw your audience closer to you? Do you aspire to uplift their sensibilities or do you desire to match what you know they already like based on data etc?
- Is design taste based on your class background and what you’re exposed to? Or is there an inherent good/bad value in design?
These types of questions or worth thinking about, and certainly worth discussing. If I wasn’t so completely exhausted and slightly inebriated, I would weigh in with some of my thoughts on them right now. But if I were only to share one opinion, it’s that I firmly believe that if there is ever a choice to make between attempting to elevate your audience’s design sensibilities, and dumbing down your own sensibilities to suit your audience, then I would choose the former. And I would like to think that I would do this regardless of click-through rates, conversion averages, or whatever other financial motivations there might be to create bad design.
March 11th, 2007 at 8:24 am
Mani,
As you and I discussed (I’m the guy from Cleveland who sat next to you) I totally concur with the concept of working to elevate the overall experience for ALL classes. I think we should always continue to work to improve ourselves as HUMANS… and not just on the Web. Could the Wal-Mart site ever look like Crate and Barrel? Sure. Would it alienate its demographic? Maybe. But that is a risk we take with EVERY design isn’t it? We make a subjective guess as to what they want to see in many cases. And run some level of risk each time. Sure there are those projects were we do usability testing and then take what 12 people say FAR TOO LITERALLY. But in general, I think we SHOULD work to evelate the classes (at least with our humble design) at every opportunity. That said, I can clearly remember doing desings for Ballpark Hotdogs for Sara Lee and totally immersing myself in what I thought was design for the hotdog grillin’ dude they TOLD me was their target audience. No worry that 99% of hot dogs get purchased by women/mothers. Ballpark even did a whole TV campaign around the dude in his back yard under the slogan (if you can believe it) “Real Men Eat Real Meat”.
I really would have liked to been in the room when the Ad agency presented THAT idea. AND somehow sold it. Like I said, nevermind that the people who buy hotdogs skew SO FAR to the female side that it almost isnt worth measureing. But… I digress.
Suffice it to say that I HAVE some experience pandering to the masses. And it sucks. It really does. Because I would really like on some level to believe that even design has the power to change people. To improve their lives. To bring the classes closer together. And I would argue, and it is my personal experience as a human and as a upper-middler (i guess) that we ALL tend to aspire to a level higher than we are. I would MUCH rather be “Challenged” by a design that made me feel above my class… than to be pandered to and frankly feel as if I was being spoken down to.
Ok, enough of that. Just my take here at this point.
It wasn’t, apparently, a waste of a topic after all. But perhaps Mani and I should have been on that panel.
March 11th, 2007 at 2:11 pm
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