Does your OS affect your output?
It strikes me again and again how different the output (general design, UI) from a Mac based Art Director can be from a designer working in Windows. At first I was certain it was coincidence, then that it was down to experience or skills. That was until a designer I know told me of her experiences from working in both environments.
Having accepted an 8-month project as an in-house web designer she realized that she would be forced to work in Windows. Being a pro, it didn’t take long for her to get comfortable in this semi-new environment.
It was not until she had finished the project and gone back to her regular freelance work that she realized how the switch in platforms had impacted her work.
I wish I could include some of the screen shots she showed me, but for confidentiality reasons I can’t. It is quite apparent that while she worked on a PC her designs became more cramped, less visually pleasing, and overall less inviting. Nothing is blatantly wrong with them; they just don’t feel and function as well as her other work. (She had done quite a lot of work for this company in the past so comparisons were easily made.)
After some agonizing soul searching she, with the help of a few other designers who had been in the same situation, came to the conclusion that looking at the Windows UI and dealing with apps such as Outlook and other “system first, user last” apps, she had allowed herself to be negatively affected.
Before you scoff and call her an amateur, she is a very well known designer who many of you have probably heard of and admire. So easy on the vinegar, thank you very much ;-)
I mentioned this to a friend who is also in the business, but usually as a buyer of design services, and he was surprised I hadn’t noticed this before!
According to him, his (very well known) company did not commission any design or UX work from companies or contributors working in Windows. All things aside, their experience was that results from the Mac based people always trumped the output from their PC riding colleagues.
This is remarkable, yet it makes sense, as I have written about previously.
I don’t think it is possible to generalize and say that Mac based designers always do a better job, that simply is not true. But I fully agree that if you work in a OS that puts the user first, your mindset, frame of reference and your expectations are different.
The unfortunate thing is if your OS of choice - Mac, Windows, Linux, whatever - makes you do a worse job than you are capable of doing.
