Good Design

Desire Lines On My Estate

"Designers want to overide the wishes of users."
Allsopp, J. (2000). A Dao of Web Design. [online] A List Apart. Available at: https://alistapart.com/article/dao/

What we understand to be good design means that we create with users in mind. I have a bit less tolerance for bad design than others. Some might say I give up easily, I say I just won't tolerate bad design choices. This is a picture of the grass verge as I walk into the estate where I live. As you can see, there are paved paths where the council wants us to walk, and then there is this stretch of dirt where we all prefer to walk. It is an example of good design created by users and why the original designers should have considered users to start with. a picture of a line of worn out grass walking towards a housing estate from the main road

I use this path because often when I am walking this way I am coming home from work, and I just want to get home quickly, or I am coming from the large Tesco's and I have a lot of shopping on my back, so I want the quickest path. What I really like about this is that the council have not tried to correct this, they could replant the grass or put in a barrier, but why bother? The people have spoken, and the path to our estate makes sense to be here. There are some issues with the path though, because it hasn't been paved, when it rains it can get muddy. However I often walk this way anyway as I am often wearing shoes that are made to endure bad weather.