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What is Design Smell?

 , updated on January 22, 2017
Design smell is a term for poor designs that violate principles of design or that generally appear to be overly complex, unskilled or bizarre. It can be applied to any type of design including technical, information and visual design.
The term "smell" suggests that evaluation of design is subtle and subjective. It is notoriously difficult to define rules of good design as it's something of an art. As such, design smell is best detected by the process of peer review.
Overview: Design Smell
Type
Design
Definition
A design that is low quality in the opinion of other designers.
Related Concepts
Peer Review
Design Debt
Quality
Risk

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