Beautiful Interfaces

Is it even possible to successfully apply the principles of open-source software to design? Or does really great design require a certain level of Steve Jobs-like tyranny, a sense that one vision is masterminding everything, or at least a single point of responsibility?

(By “design”, I’m referring to visual/experience/industrial/graphic/architectural/service/fashion design — all of the fields that deal primarily with creating some sort of effect or experience for a human being. I am not referring to things like the design of circuits or of hardware. Those fields are different.)

The relevant difference that I see is that really great software is usually quite modular. Software engineering principles like encapsulation and loose coupling mean that lots of people can work on something, each one taking a part, and still come out with something that integrates quite well and does what it is meant to do. This is probably what makes open-source projects work as well as they do.

On the other hand, really great design is incredibly integrated. If you look at a great experience, one of the striking points is the way in which every single aspect, from building architecture to package design to software interfaces, makes an integrated and coherent contribution to the experience. It has a personality — one personality, not a schizophrenic array of different voices all talking at once.

I wonder, given its coherent and integrated nature, whether great design is fundamentally incompatible with the open-source model. After all, “designed by committee” is a common insult, but there isn’t really an equivalent phrase relating to programming.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 24th, 2010 at 11:12 pm and is filed under design, development, organizations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.