Beautiful design is not 100% a good design. It could be a good one, but the not definitely.

To be a good design, the design must fulfill the single golden criterion

It achieve its objectives

Amazon helps you find the stuff you want to buy, Google helps you find the stuff you want to know, keyboard helps you input stuff into computers, and dictionary helps you find the word you don’t understand.

They all achieve their own objectives. A fancy design which couldn’t delivery the functionality will always fail, ultimately.

To achieve the good design, usually there are 3 steps, iteratively and recursively.

And they are observe, prototype, and evaluate.

#Observe

  1. Be curious
  2. Put down all your assumptions, prejudices, and pre-knowledge.

#Prototype

  1. be FAST
  2. Build A LOT

#Evaluate

  1. Call in the people
  2. Do the math