Thoughts on Design

I recently re-read The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch and was impressed with what he did with his classes that focused on User Interface Design.  The first day of class he would bring in an old VCR, put it on a table in front of class, and without saying a word he'd pull a sledgehammer from behind his desk and destroy it.  Needless to say it got the class's attention.  The message Randy was trying to convey in this demonstration is that poor end user design is detrimental to the product.  End User Design is critical.

There is another person who is a strong proponent of excellence in End User Design.  He is still alive today and he's be a driving force in perfection in Design in the IT industry.  He designs have been flying off of store shelves for the last 25 years or so.  If you haven't guessed yet, I'm thinking of Steve Jobs from Apple. I ran across a very interesting article about him in Bloomsberg Businessweek.  It's basically an interview with John Sculley, the CEO of Apple from the mid-80's to the mid-90's, and what it was like 'Being Steve's Boss'.  He talks a lot of Steve's philosophy and background in design, and Steve's influence on Apple in this area.  It's a great article.

It got me thinking...  In software I have not been super stringent about software design on the applications I've written.  Let me clarify - object oriented design is a must.  The train of thought I'm seeking to follow here is 'is it a requirement to implement design patterns in your code everywhere possible?' A major reason for this is I've worked with a number of people who think their job is refactoring and renaming classes and packages in a code base - to the determent of the project.  I often tell the students in my classes that there are numerous ways to 'skin a cat' as it were, when coming to a working solution in code.  I wonder though, is there always one perfect way?  Is this something to strive for?  Does it matter as long as the application works the way the client wants it to?  What do you think?

Personally, I think that the answers to these questions depends on a lot of things, not the least of which are your client, the project, and your team.  Elegant solutions look and feel so good when your done - both for you and for you client.  Perhaps the motivation and context for the project need to be analyzed before a decision is made whether or not you should 'shoot for the best designed, most elegant solution' possible?  Obviously if your project has constraints like budget, resources, and time, there's a limit to how much effort you can put into evolving your project into the best design in can be.  That is one big reason why design patterns and frameworks are so prevalent (and pretty much a requirement) in software engineering.

I like to read/sign out Fast Company from the Library - I'm actually thinking about getting a subscription.  Anyway, they have an annual 'Masters of Design' issue that is a lot of fun to read.  In it they highlight different world class designs and their designers.  Here's a link to their MOD tag cloud.