Design decay
14 July 2017 | 1 min read
There is often a massive discrepancy between how a design works and feels at the end of the design stage and how quickly it starts to show signs of ageing.
Recently I revisited one of our older design projects and realised how weak the design had become. I was surprised how quickly this happened.
The project’s weakness was mainly due to the quality of the xml feed which had been fed into it. The information was inconsistent, and some important parts were missing.
While I appreciate that designer should ensure the design consistently performs at its best, the reality is, it is often outside of the designer’s control.
Other non-designer contributors add content, text, images, and other elements via content management system which can potentially disrupt the performance of the design.
Little details get lost as more people interact with a design, catalysing ageing.
Perhaps that’s why the average lifespan of a website’s design is 2 years and 7 months.
Design begins to decay as soon as the designer stops working on it.
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