Didn't take much either. All it took was a few people having a back and forth, sharing their opinions. If we all do more of that, this place will be far more alive.

There are many, many smart people here, with very deep bodies of knowledge. It would be doing our profession a major disservice if we just let that rot away.

Don't get your hopes up ;)

edit: I'm being playful btw.

These discussions seems to have zeroed in on the Junior aspect of my original comment, which — ironically — I only added as a kind of a throwaway side thought, rather than the main reason I posted the article.

In saying that, it's actually a really interesting discussion to have. It's also given me a chance to really put some thoughts I have had about the topic to words. Sorry if it sounds like I'm banging on.

With regard to your points - Sure. That is all true, it is a more accessible exercise. That I don't disagree with at all. Not just for Juniors but all designers. Otherwise there wouldn't be so many of them. I'm just of the opinion that spending time on the simpler and more accessible exercise doesn't nessessarily make better designers. I'd argue it wouldn't look as good for a junior to have a portfolio filled with context free, unsolicited redesigns compared to one with some real world projects. Whether those projects are success' or failures. There are far more lessons to learn in that process, and far more to show for your efforts.

That was mostly the angle I was coming from, but perhaps I poorly explained that?

This actually all brings up one of my great frustrations with our field in recent years. Seemingly, there seems to be this idea amongst people entering the profession — and some of those giving advice to them — that doing this kind of "redesign" work, and then posting to Instagram, Dribbble, or Medium, will get you hired by the very companies they are "redesigning". It probably won't. In fact, statistically, it almost certainly won't. For every person who does a "redesign" and gets hired from it, there are hundreds, if not thousands who won't.

The point of posting this article (I'm not the author) was more about helping get designers to help causes that need it, and direct their energies away from the simpler exercise of doing redesigns. Doing the harder thing is often the better thing. Particularly if the thinking is that it will get them work/jobs/clients.

Imo this works in large part because clients and (many) potential employers are not critical in regards to your point about the product's goals. So, although "worth close to nothing", it's still effective in the goal of impressing the masses. That's how I see it anyway.

On another note I have seen pretty good totally-new-feature-addition type redesigns. I agree with your comment more regarding purely visual (and minor functional) style redesigns.

I do think however you can make an interesting case redesigning a product you use very, very frequently, addressing a problem you personally have. As long as the work is prefaced with that, then I think these types of redesign are a harmless and still a good (and fun) exercise to improve ones' craft.

I love Abstract, I must not have seen that one yet.

Every designer who has the time should take on one of these non profits. Not just juniors.

But I see what you’re getting at. It’s usually the juniors who use unsolicited redesigns to learn and fill their portfolios.

I think we might need to differ here a bit between learning and helping. As a junior you should get as good as possible through learning. You're never learning as much as if you copy the big ones and figure out, why they did stuff they did the way they did it. Because their solutions are already there.

Therefore I like "redesigns" or interpretations of big solutions like spotify / app store / etc. Even though it smells a bit of arrogance, to think one would be good enough to replace a whole design-team of big corporations.

But it helps you getting better. I like it more as a way to learn, than "helping" non-profits. Learning while trying to help can be problematic - but I might be too puristic here.

If you're a junior or are taking the self-taught path in one of the various disciplines of design, organizations like those listed — and in your local area — are a much better use of your time and energy. Both in terms of real world impact on the work you do, but also in terms of getting real, practical, hands on experience with working on and dealing with real world problems.

Well said Reece. I wholeheartedly agree. One thing to note is that it's also more difficult for juniors to genuinely appreciate the value of this advice — which is thrown around a lot, for good reason — without having experienced value from both sides of this spectrum (e.g. surface level design to solving real problems)

The real question to pose, perhaps: How might we get juniors to trust in this way of thinking, without having experienced its benefits. It's been my experience anyway, that I only truly began to see the value in having "real, practical, hands on experience with working on and dealing with real world problems" much later in my career. Well past my junior years.

Then again ... blindly following advice isn't great. Especially when it goes against innocuous redesigns that will inevitably be phased out as the designer in question becomes more experienced.

Good :)

Yeah, good point. Spec is a major problem, and in a lot of ways that what these redesign projects are.

Does your concern about only working for payment extend to doing work on a more voluntary basis or mostly concerning redesign exercises?

I've often thought this also. Or alternatively, teachers reach out to an open source project or app to find out whether there is a need for help there, and then have their students work through that problem.

My tiny college does this, in small part. We had to go find a local client to do work for. Whether the work was paid or free was up to the student. Got my first 2 clients this way :) Was awesome.

The article is more about redesigns in general. Spotify is just used as an example.