Is this a response to marketing lingo specifically or some other cultural phenomenon? There's a difference between what you want to do to advance your goals (e.g. compromising), and what you want to say for visibility for whoever's goals they are (e.g. "uncompromising" the customer's goals).
There might be a deeper point being communicated, not sure, but I see no issue here.
Well there's compromise that means multi-dimensional constraint optimization, and that's fine. But a lot of time what people mean by compromise is they compromised on cost, or on effort, or on attentiveness. Colloquially that's what people usually mean when they use the word with a negative connotation.
Not quite. Design is about optimization (of user experience, performance etc). Optimization implies constraints. Constraints are what made you think of "compromise".
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.
People seem focused on the interpersonal conflict angle in the comments here, i.e. winning and losing in a battle of wills.
I think its just as important to realize ideas themselves can be conflicted or contradictory, and that practical action requires compromise. Many seductive ideas may not be well-formed if you really dig deeply enough. It's not just economic or political pragmatism. Even the solo designer/thinker needs to compromise such untested ideas in search of a realizable system.
> 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 think you got it exactly backwards. I'll explain why.
Your bias (and the blogger's) rears its head by the way you chose words such as "compromise" to discuss design processes. Words reflect and shape thought processes, and by choosing words such as "compromise" or "concession" you are already framing the process as a battle of wills. Design instead works with affordances, patterns, constraints and tradeoffs. None of these require you to argue or disagree with others, or others with you. Your goal is to seek the best design given your tradeoffs, and there is no single optimal way to pull this off. Seeking consensus doesn't require battling out people's opinions.
So why do people choose to use conflict-driven words to describe the process? Do you carry a conflict-driven mindset when tackling a design problem? I mean, look at the way you frame the process: someone comes with feedback and opinions, and your gut response is that you feel compelled to fight them? That warrants some soul searching.
similar to what a person is capable of. we cant be good at everything, we're specialists; backend engineers, frontend developers, machine learning engineers, etc... as in design, it cannot appeal to every eye, being opinionated makes good design stand out.
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.
That’s not my experience. Every decision favors one use case or principle over another. The best design is when you have the vision and confidence to say what’s important for each those decisions and what you’re ok leaving out.
Another way to put it: design is the outcome of an optimization against a given set of objectives and constraints. This would also help to keep track of the reasoning underlying changes in the design to provide an audit trail.
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
That’s true. But in a business context I’ve found the opposite mindset is helpful. Anything which might be a constrain which is not contrary to your goal is probably a real constraint. Yes in theory you can rebuild X, Y, Z but what can we actually do in this initiative. I’ve taken to even taking social constraints as real and I communicate them to my management in that way.
The terminology can be confusing because in corporate speak being uncompromising can mean being opinionated. Not "we made no tradeoffs" but "we didn't split the difference."
The article means it as tradeoff rather than concession, so the argument is "to avoid design by committee you have to compromise on purpose."
Every decision is a compromise, if it's not a compromise then it's not a decision just pure delusion or worse mis-engineering or perhaps there was never a decision there to begin with.
Design is one of the clearest examples, since it's filled with decisions about stuff, but just picking how you type which keyboard you use everything is a compromise. If perfect things existed everything and everyone would have naturally converged on it over enough time, but we rarely seem to see that happen outside monopolies built on network effects or extreme subsidisation.
Higher-level design often involves dissolving apparent tensions or opposites through layering or more sophisticated mechanisms, while preserving the benefits of both.
Example ->
Proposition: "Phew, we have to choose between convenience and security."
Naive design: "Let's find a watered-down compromise."
Good design: "Let's layer security on top of convenience by designing the system so users don't have to choose, or water either one down."
Great companies have a history of dissolving apparent contradictions under a single roof via good design.
I think the hallmark of a good designer is knowing which things can be compromised and which things absolutely should never be. Different designers will have different opinions on what those things are.
>Compromise is neither good nor bad, it’s something we do every day. It’s decision making. Prioritizing. Deciding that one thing is more important than another.
It's AI slop.
Edit: as pointed to me, it says 2018. I'd be damned. Guess that makes it merely part of the "LinkedIn post" training set pushing AI towards such style!
53 comments
[ 1.6 ms ] story [ 85.4 ms ] threadThere might be a deeper point being communicated, not sure, but I see no issue here.
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Can%27t_Always_Get_What_Yo...
I think its just as important to realize ideas themselves can be conflicted or contradictory, and that practical action requires compromise. Many seductive ideas may not be well-formed if you really dig deeply enough. It's not just economic or political pragmatism. Even the solo designer/thinker needs to compromise such untested ideas in search of a realizable system.
I think you got it exactly backwards. I'll explain why.
Your bias (and the blogger's) rears its head by the way you chose words such as "compromise" to discuss design processes. Words reflect and shape thought processes, and by choosing words such as "compromise" or "concession" you are already framing the process as a battle of wills. Design instead works with affordances, patterns, constraints and tradeoffs. None of these require you to argue or disagree with others, or others with you. Your goal is to seek the best design given your tradeoffs, and there is no single optimal way to pull this off. Seeking consensus doesn't require battling out people's opinions.
So why do people choose to use conflict-driven words to describe the process? Do you carry a conflict-driven mindset when tackling a design problem? I mean, look at the way you frame the process: someone comes with feedback and opinions, and your gut response is that you feel compelled to fight them? That warrants some soul searching.
It's pretending there isn't one.
Every product optimizes for something. The interesting question is what it chose to sacrifice.
Understanding this seems to be essential for leaders in general.
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.
Design for others can be different than needing to impose your design on others.
How Designers Work – Making Sense of Authentic Cognitive Activities - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48352065
However, I also think it's a bit of a meta-commentary.
Ultimately it boils down to definition of the word "compromise", so a better article is one that establishes those semantics first.
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
The article means it as tradeoff rather than concession, so the argument is "to avoid design by committee you have to compromise on purpose."
Design is one of the clearest examples, since it's filled with decisions about stuff, but just picking how you type which keyboard you use everything is a compromise. If perfect things existed everything and everyone would have naturally converged on it over enough time, but we rarely seem to see that happen outside monopolies built on network effects or extreme subsidisation.
Higher-level design often involves dissolving apparent tensions or opposites through layering or more sophisticated mechanisms, while preserving the benefits of both.
Example ->
Proposition: "Phew, we have to choose between convenience and security."
Naive design: "Let's find a watered-down compromise."
Good design: "Let's layer security on top of convenience by designing the system so users don't have to choose, or water either one down."
Great companies have a history of dissolving apparent contradictions under a single roof via good design.
It's AI slop.
Edit: as pointed to me, it says 2018. I'd be damned. Guess that makes it merely part of the "LinkedIn post" training set pushing AI towards such style!