The dangers of Dribbble-esque designs

Dribbble-esque: adjective — A characteristic of the poor usability and nightmarish qualities that come with Dribbble posts.

After some research about this topic, I found out that I am not the only one who thinks there's a problem with the Dribbble trend. There are also other designers that have shed a light on this particular matter.

Miklos Philips, Lead UX/Product designer at Financial Times talks more in-depth about the problem with apps like Behance and Dribbble in his article on Toptal “A Rant Against Pretty App Designs”.

Tobias van Schneider, in his Medium article, "The Problem With Dribbble", shares his thoughts surrounding the platform and I found this statement to be spot on.

“I’d rather work with a designer who understands her craft and is eager to learn about UX & real problem solving, than a designer who can only talk theoretical bullshit but gets no shit done.”

Michael Abehsera also argues in his article "Dribbble and The Creation of The Useless Designer" that the platform is creating a new wave of designers that care little about the process and produce a ton of work merely to please the eye.

As I totally agree with their statements and I feel like we need to keep the conversation going, I have decided to share my thoughts on the matter.

First of all, I don't want to say that there's a problem with Dribbble. The platform is cool. It offers thousands of beautiful designs that can help you get inspired when you’re not. And you can also gain visibility and most importantly, apply for design jobs and become a part of the community. But there are underlying issues with designing merely to get likes and just plain "beautiful" interfaces. Here are a few:

There is no thought process

Design needs to have a thought process. A purpose. And one of them is to solve a problem. Are we asking ourselves these questions when we jump onto designing?

“Who is this for?”, “How will people use my product” and “Is it actually usable?”

Here's an example below. More than 10.000 weather widget designs. All to please the eye, but with little or no use in real life. Let's be honest, how many different interfaces do we need to check the weather? Instead, why don't we try to approach design by researching issues that people are facing using a specific product and start designing based on that?. By doing so, you'll be able to build your portfolio with well crafted case studies.

Weather app UI's on Dribbble.

Usability issues

Glassmorphism, neumorphism and all the rest of new trends ending in -morphism are not taking accessibility into account. The lack of contrast can be particularly inconvenient for visually impaired and color-blind people. We need to design with accessibility in mind and to achieve that, we need to include all the potential users that could be interacting with our product.

“It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.” — Steve Jobs.

Let's play a game. Can you read the word fridge in this glassmorphic interface?

Smart home app shot on Dribbble

These posts ultimately serve one purpose. Feed the ego.

We must remember that we need to design with users in mind. And with that said, our products shouldn't just serve the purpose of getting likes and views just to feed our ego. It's easier said than done. We all like to be rewarded and to be seen. But we must not forget why we came here. And don't get me wrong, I've been there and done that. I wanted to be a part of it and to be seen. But in my journey, I have learnt that the process is bigger than UI concepts and beautiful posts that would reward me for a few minutes.

I hope I'm helping to spread the word about the problem with Dribbble posts and the current state of affairs in the design industry. I'd also like to share some advice. Instead of breaking your brains trying to generate useless posts every day for the sake of getting likes, check out these awesome resources to learn more about UX design and how to become the best designer you can be:

1. NN Group. World Leaders in Research-Based User Experience.
2. Laws of UX. A collection of best practices that designers can consider when building user interfaces.
3. iOS Human Interface Guideline by Apple.
4. Material Design by Google.
5. IBM Design Language.

I'd like to hear your thoughts :)

You can find me on LinkedIn or email me at silviagiraldodsgn@gmail.com

The UX Collective donates US$1 for each article published on our platform. This story contributed to Bay Area Black Designers: a professional development community for Black people who are digital designers and researchers in the San Francisco Bay Area. By joining together in community, members share inspiration, connection, peer mentorship, professional development, resources, feedback, support, and resilience. Silence against systemic racism is not an option. Build the design community you believe in.