Unsolicited Redesigns ⇥

Inspired by Tim van Damme’s recent unsolicited redesign of Instapaper for iPad and Marco Arment’s response, Lukas Mathis explores why he finds unsolicited redesigns to be an uncomfortable matter:

The original designers probably invested weeks or months into a design. They may have years of experience with the subject matter. At most, I’ll invest a few hours. They know a lot more about the requirements, about the constraints, about how the product is actually being used, about implementation details that could limit what features the design can offer, about the business situation, and a ton of other things I simply have no idea about.

As always, a fantastic read.