[anthemcg]

This feels unnecessary. Everyone gets it: you can't actually redesign a website with a few random mock-ups and visual updates. That so often is not the point of an unsolicited redesign.

Most of these people are young designers looking to practice, have fun or create something tangible to demonstrate some of their skills. Its clear that changing a button or making a visual change doesn't equate to UX expertise. However, for a lot of designers this material gets them attention and gives potential employers common context to evaluate them and maybe they are a UI designer who wants to display their visual skills. There are a lot of reasons to take it too seriously but I encourage young designers to do it. A redesign can help me evaluate certain skills in a junior candidate and they are fun to look at. Redesigning stuff is fun, who cares if you want enjoy yourself.

So, I'm not sure who this for. Convincing a designer not to do a redesign of a website and post it on their blog? What's the harm? These redesigns don't actually change the industry understanding or perception enough to matter. We need to calm down and just enjoy these redesigns for what they are.

[tptacek]

There's no real harm, except potentially to the up-and-coming designer, who is signaling something about their design process by writing something like this. Wikipedia has a lot of design constraints that other sites don't have. A big part of the job of being a professional designer is discovering and navigating design constraints. So when you pick Wikipedia as your "bucket list" portfolio spec design example, you might want to be careful that you're not communicating something about your process (specifically: obliviousness) that you don't mean to communicate.

Spec designs are fun to read and while I'm not a designer and have no business offering career advice to one, I'm happy to encourage people to keep doing them so I can keep reading and snipping at them. But there are safer targets to pick than Wikipedia.

[anthemcg]

I have to agree that Wikipedia is not a good target for a redesign. Also, I don't think its on every designer's bucket list. But, Its fair to assume that a lot of people select Wikipedia specifically because it has such an uncommon set of constraints.

To make assumptions about design process based on something like the choice to do a "redesign" of Wikipedia sounds generally useless : Especially coming from a junior designer who I guarantee is not thinking that hard about it.

I am just saying : Everyone is getting way too serious about unsolicited redesigns. I think the article makes valid points about what design is and what defines user experience but It feels mean-spirited and the targeting at redesigns is mis-directed.

[vickytnz]

The real problem with Wikipedia redesigns is that they don't address their real issue: editing. Wikipedia have serious considerations encouraging a wider audience of editors, and to do so in a verifiable and generally professional manner. Show me a good means of encouraging people to edit and use Mediawiki, then I'd be interested.

[sesqu]

I'm not sure who is changing the industry understanding or perception, but showpieces definitely have impact. Redesign rants probably do more good than the redesigns themselves, because they can stop imitation.

That said, I feel L&F mockups are to be encouraged, except with the understanding that they should be multitudinous.