Design is easy. Good design is easy. Great design is even easier.

“Good artists copy; great artists steal.” – Pablo Picasso

Design isn’t just about how things look or how things work. Anyone that adds design on top of a finished product to make it better cannot have a great design. It must be thought out and refactored from the starting process.

Now good design should also be innovative. There are certain requirements of functionality that everyone should take when they design.

• [Skrien]
  • Completeness
  • Usability
  • Robustness
  • Efficiency

Or as I like to call it “The Cure” Not to be confused with the artist whose famed for “Friday I’m in Love” title along with many others.

Those that are able to adapt best to their surrounding will always come out on top. I felt for a while that I was missing something that I wasn’t in the right place at the right time for some reason. The reason was “me.” Once I found this out I did some refactoring.

• [Skrien]
  • Scalability – able to grow with any size in any situation
  • Readability
  • Reusablility
  • Simplicity
  • Maintainability – along with that is should be easy to fix.
  • Extensibility

In order not to become another cargo cult there should another basic understanding.

Picasso’s quote was  more than likely stolen from:

“Immature poets imitate, mature poets steal.
the good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different than that from which it is torn.” -T.S. Elliott

Design should be a part of your everyday life. This may take some trial and error, but it will be well worth it if you start now.