Design is compromise

I fundamentally disagree with the premise. Why are we attempting to change the meaning of the word compromise? “compromise” and “has trade-offs” are NOT synonymous. The antithesis of compromise is to make strong decisions that WILL alienate people, but will better target your intended audience. That, IMHO, is a great thing.

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.

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.

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

Not necessarily.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

Defaults are compromise, but design isn't.

"Design depends largely on constraints." - Charles Eames

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.

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.

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

Good compromise is finding local maxima.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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..

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

design is focus. engineering is compromise.

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>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!