[locknitpicker]

> However, most folks (not just designers) have a difficult time with compromise, these days. It's become a value judgment (You're "weak," if you compromise).

I think you got it exactly backwards. I'll explain why.

Your bias (and the blogger's) rears its head by the way you chose words such as "compromise" to discuss design processes. Words reflect and shape thought processes, and by choosing words such as "compromise" or "concession" you are already framing the process as a battle of wills. Design instead works with affordances, patterns, constraints and tradeoffs. None of these require you to argue or disagree with others, or others with you. Your goal is to seek the best design given your tradeoffs, and there is no single optimal way to pull this off. Seeking consensus doesn't require battling out people's opinions.

So why do people choose to use conflict-driven words to describe the process? Do you carry a conflict-driven mindset when tackling a design problem? I mean, look at the way you frame the process: someone comes with feedback and opinions, and your gut response is that you feel compelled to fight them? That warrants some soul searching.

[TonyStr]

I don't think the blogger uses compromise to refer to conflicting personal opinions. Consider a complex UI like photoshop. If you have too many buttons available on the screen at all times, the UI becomes bloated and hard to navigate (cough, GIMP). If you cut out too many features, you'll loose users who rely on those tools. If you move items to sub menus, or sub sub menus, you make the UI cleaner, but risk users never finding those features, or you risk introducing too much friction for anyone to want to use them. So the compromise here is what features to present the user for quick access, and what features to hide behind indirection. This is a difficult problem, and requires deep understanding of your users and their needs/habits.

[ChrisMarshallNY]

I don’t consider it a conflict-driven process, but it seems that you know me, better than I know myself, so I won’t argue.