Design Is Compromise

aankitg12 about 3 hours ago 34 commentsRead Article on stephango.com

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ttoinou•25 minutes ago

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

ChrisMarshallNY•about 2 hours ago

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.

defjm•9 minutes ago

> 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).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Can%27t_Always_Get_What_Yo...

card_zero•about 1 hour ago

Compromise is a lose-lose. It originally meant a promise between two parties to follow the decision of an arbiter. Sometimes this is the best we can hope to do, and right and necessary in order to have nice things: see for instance the Wikipedia essay "The Wrong Version", https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/The_Wrong_Version or the Northern Ireland peace process. However, a mutual preference is a win-win, and is a creative new idea instead of merely splitting differences, and is way superior, if you can get one. Often people don't make the distinction and call both things compromises.

...why the downvote, please (mystery downvoter)? I can only read that as saying "No! You must not arrogantly hope to be creative and solve problems for mutual benefit! It's important that everyone be quiet and learn to suffer!"

thesumofall•about 1 hour ago

No, a compromise can also be a win-win. It balances potentially extreme positions, it adds further perspectives, it forces all parties to consider what is most important to them. If the only alternative to a compromise is no agreement, it may actually be the only way to win

card_zero•about 1 hour ago

Eh, alright, I agree. That's pretty much what I said, there's a place for compromise, because some disagreements are intractable, but compromise is suboptimal.

jrpear•17 minutes ago

Yes, when you can, find "The 3rd Alternative". It's a nice idea I first read about in one of Steven Covey's books. Looks like he eventually wrote a book by that name.

card_zero•9 minutes ago

He of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. I also spotted it in How to Win Friends and Influence People. I guess it is the kind of idea found in self-help books. :/ I still think it's a good one all the same.

chuckadams•about 1 hour ago

Framing everything as a binary win/lose outcome is pretty naïve no matter how much terminology you dress it up with. Also, complaining about downvotes is a good way to attract downvotes.

card_zero•41 minutes ago

No it isn't (and no it isn't). I only complain because I hand you all what I believe to be a valuable idea and then somebody reacts by silently making a rude finger gesture at it, and they don't even say why, that's the irritating part.

So, what are you saying about framing everything as binary? That actually sounds like what I'm saying is bad: to be uncreative and stubborn and reject any new idea on principle, a Not Invented Here sort of mindset, even if when you thought about it you'd prefer the new idea. That stubbornness is what leads to difference-splitting.

levmiseri•3 minutes ago

Great compromise is finding the global maxima in a space with competing constraints.

Good compromise is finding local maxima.

tikotus•about 2 hours ago

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.

groundzeros2015•5 minutes ago

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.

suzzer99•39 minutes ago

It depends on how you define compromise. Is it a compromise to consider things like screen size, load wait times, or the average expected user's attention span? If so, then design is a big juggling act of compromise.

If not, and compromise is just stuff like "add yet another floating ad footer to make the c-suite happy," then absolutely it should be the last tool.

pixl97•about 1 hour ago

When you give someone a problem, they can find a solution, but if you give them a dilemma then a compromise is almost a given.

20k•44 minutes ago

True dilemmas are rare though, often it just means insufficient investigation of your requirements

airstrike•32 minutes ago

I really like the article, as it resonates with me.

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.

eventualcomp•about 2 hours ago

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.

tracerbulletx•about 2 hours ago

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.

rswail•about 2 hours ago

"Design depends largely on constraints." - Charles Eames

zkmon•about 2 hours ago

Not quite. Design is about optimization (of user experience, performance etc). Optimization implies constraints. Constraints are what made you think of "compromise".

ChrisMarshallNY•about 2 hours ago

Constraints != Compromise.

Compromise is stuff like what I'm going through, right now. The user needs to know that a set of locations on a map, can also be displayed as a sortable list, but the affordances for that access are not working with the overall design. It's extremely easy to add a button, but it messes with the screen layout.

We'll figure it out, but we can't ignore it. It's too important to our users, so we may have to make a graphical compromise. It's really tempting to think that "stupid users should know better," but that's a fairly destructive mindset.

majormajor•about 2 hours ago

Optimization implies constraints. But multiple targets implies compromise. How do you optimize for multiple measurements without compromise? You have to decide how to weight each against the other.

"How can I maximize my widgets-produced-in-six-months output given that I'm constrained by having $x budget?" - constraint that could give you a different solution than higher or lower budget.

"How can I maximize my widgets-produced-in-six months output AND my customer satisfaction given that I'm constrained by having $x budget" - now you have to compromise one or the other.

Here I'm talking about the physical design of how the widget is made as it's the first super-concrete example that popped to mind, but almost any sort of design operates in a similar multiple-goals world.

amelius•about 2 hours ago

"Design is compromise" is basically saying that the thing you're optimizing is not at its optimum for all the variables separately which is often true, and therefore it is not a remarkable thing to say, and it is also not necessarily true.

Waterluvian•about 2 hours ago

To join in the pedantry: I always see optimization as being about compromise. Free wins that are strictly superior aren’t optimizations, they’re just doing it properly. Optimization is to make certain properties better, usually at the cost of others.

zkmon•about 2 hours ago

Optimization is not same as compromise. Optimization is about having freedom to tweak the parameters with the goal of maximzing somthing. Compromise focuses on lack of freedom. The terms focus on different areas of the overall situation. Design happens within the optimization context, which is shaped by the constraints.

quantum_state•40 minutes ago

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.

kiaansaraiya•38 minutes ago

I like this phrasing.

justindotdev•about 2 hours ago

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.

j45•about 1 hour ago

Design for the many vs design for the few vs design for one's self can be one of the issues.

Design for others can be different than needing to impose your design on others.

inclinq•about 2 hours ago

The problem isn't compromise.

It's pretending there isn't one.

Every product optimizes for something. The interesting question is what it chose to sacrifice.

groundzeros2015•3 minutes ago

Agreed. And making explicit that a trade off needs to be made tends to make people uncomfortable. They want to keep their options open.

Understanding this seems to be essential for leaders in general.

rramadass•38 minutes ago

A very comprehensive and cognition-based work is the following by Henrik Gedenryd;

How Designers Work – Making Sense of Authentic Cognitive Activities - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48352065

dooscooby•about 2 hours ago

the way i see it is that design actually never get treated what its meant to be treated as - a service to help make business more money..