Are you a designer 2.0 too?

From time to time, we get a bit ‘deep’ about design – at RedLemonade, it doesn’t have to be Friday evening, after work, to bring the philosopher out in us.

One of the questions we’ve been asking ourselves is: in a world where social networking is prevalent like never before, who decides what accounts for ‘good design’?

Whereas before, this would be an easy answer – conventions would dictate that it was the designers, and the designers alone, who could set the tone and make the rules. But these days, that’s no longer the case.

With so many social networking sites now offering users the possibility to adopt and adapt their own design, so that it might better reflect the user’s personality, it could certainly be argued that all design conventions have been usurped and that it is now the user who sets the criterion for all ‘good design’.

In part, this is because social network users are now simply so comfortable and knowledgeable about the established norms they encounter on these sites that now, they feel confident enough to challenge, and in some cases, improve these same sites.

Of course, in the early days of web 2.0 users were simply happy to have a new outlet for networking that enabled them to discover new ways of self-expression. Now this self-expression has been taken to the next level and the structures of these sites now need to be constantly re-evaluated to reflect the very individual needs of their users.

The upside of this development is that these are now very exciting times to be a designer - as well as mapping trends we find ourselves predicting them more than ever – creating smarter, sharper applications.