I recently became involved in an interesting thread in the AIGA Design Education online discussion group. Basically the topic was the increasing complexity and bloating of design software. Here’s a few relevant comments from the discussion:

graphicdavid started it off:

“… it seems that Adobe is making the software increasingly
complex, instead of just making it work better.

They seem to think that we all want cross-hybrids of their software.”

from citizendesign

“A number of years ago, Adobe seemed to be headed the other direction. Making things simpler and leaving features up to other developers to ‘plug-in’.”

artgibel

“As far as InDesign, you have pinpointed one of the reasons I still prefer teaching print production starting with Quark and moving to InDesign later.  I always tell students, the issues are the same in both programs; if your document is not set up properly for the printing process you are using, it will not print well. With InDesign, they have made it so much easier to make a mess.”

Here’s my thoughts:

I can sympathize with the desire on the part of some designers for Adobe to “simplify” its software. Occasionally I fire up my Mac SE and long for the days when computing was simple. But would I actually trade my current Mac for an SE? Of course not! Neither would I trade Photoshop for MacPaint. I may not use all the features Photoshop CS3 offers but I certainly appreciate the features I do use.

Instead of moaning about bloat, why not try to come up with a list of the features you would like Adobe to REMOVE from their programs? I’m sure, if you could get the profession to agree, Adobe would be happy to offer stripped down “Designer” editions. Of course you’ll never get the profession to agree.  The fact is your “bloat” is another designer’s necessity.

I’m also shocked that anyone can suggest plug-ins as the answer to simplifying programs. Plug-ins don’t simplify the user interface or improve the user experience. While a well-designed plug-in can fit seamlessly into a program, it’s rare and the potential pitfalls are numerous including (but not limited to):

• Installations issues
• Inconsistent user interfaces
• Additional costs
• Incompatibilities with other plug-ins or program updates

Consider the nightmare of trying to maintain your suite of Adobe applications along with a set of “core” plug-ins. I’m willing to bet that, once a plug-in became a standard, you’d be among the throng clamoring for Adobe to make the functionality native.

I was also surprised by the kind comments for Quark. Perhaps things have changed since the days when I used XPress but back then the user interface was crap and the company was notorious for its lack of responsiveness to customer concerns. That’s the reason Quark has gone from having a stranglehold on page design software to being an also ran. Adobe, on the other hand, has created well-designed programs and been responsive to its customers.

And, speaking of responsiveness, we should admit that the true cause of program bloat is that we, the users, demand it. If we own Photoshop, we don’t want to buy Illustrator just to add one small bit of functionality, we want Adobe to add that functionality to Photoshop. That new functionality may be “bloat” and it may duplicate functionality already available elsewhere but as Photoshop users we’re grateful. Everyone else can feel free to ignore it.

Finally, simpler isn’t necessarily better. Sure it’s easy to do some bad things using InDesign but it’s also possible to stab someone with an X-acto knife. Neither action is the fault of the tool. There is a learning curve with any tool. It’s possible to ignore InDesign’s learning curve and produce substandard work but that’s not Adobe’s fault. Design professionals need to accept that the software learning curve now extends throughout their professional lifetime. The only alternative is obsolescence.

Back in June I mentioned being surprised by the low number of visitors to this site using 800 x 600 pixel monitors. At the time the exact number was zero. Well it’s increased a bit since then. Now a whopping 0.67% of visitors here have the mini-monitors. In spite of that, I think I’ll still feel comfortable ignoring them when I get around to the redesign.

I still find those results a bit startling, so I decided to do a quick survey of a few other sites I manage. Here’s the results:

Percent of users with 800×600 monitors
Website: 2007 to date / for July 2007 (target audience)

SEOrefugee.com: 2.01% / 2.01% (search engine optimizers)

NetDetours.com: 10.31% / 7.07% (general interest)

TOONrefugee.com: 7.34% / 6.08% (general interest with focus on sports, computers, etc.)

Extrapolating (unscientifically) I’d guess that most sites have already reached the magic 10% level where it suddenly seems OK to ignore the resolution-challenged in their audience. And I wouldn’t rule out that most of them will be at the 5% level by the end of the year.

To help confirm my conclusions, I check five other sites whose information I can only share in a general manner. The highest concentration of the smaller monitors was 13%. Another site was right at the magic 10% level. A third was at 7% and the other two were below 5%.

So it looks like 1024 x 768 is the new 800 x 600.

It makes me feel old, I remember when 800 x 600 was the new 640 x 480.

“Untitled Document” is the default page title for web pages created in Dreamweaver and a variety of other web page editors. According to Google “about 32,900,000″ with that title now populate the web. And, if you’re interested (which apparently few people are), according to Yahoo! the number is “about 44,700,000.”

From time to time we’ll recognize significant accomplishments in bad design with nominations to our Bad Design Hall of fame. The potential nominees are almost limitless and we invite Design Refugees to make their own nominations. And, just to be fair, DesignRefugee.com isn’t exempt. When we blow it, feel free to let us know.I’ve been a fan of Adobe’s user interface design since Illustrator 1.1, about twenty years ago. Designing a usable and somewhat intuitive interface for graphics programs is a daunting challenge and few have done it as well as they have. Of course the task has gotten more difficult as new features have bloated my favorite programs. Still, especially considering some of the competing interfaces from the likes of Macromedia (before the takeover) and Microsoft, Adobe remains a leader. That’s why I’m so disappointed in the palettes Adobe has inflicted on Mac users with the CS3 bersions of Photoshop, Illustrator and Flash (apparently Windows users have been suffering through something similar for a while).
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