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It took a couple of experiences dealing with serious, fancy pants designers to convince me that most of them are charlatans. Even something as simple as wideni
by cloakandswagger 10y ago
It took a couple of experiences dealing with serious, fancy pants designers to convince me that most of them are charlatans.
Even something as simple as widening a button was stonewalled by "explorations", "design strategy meetings", "pattern library meetings", etc. The end result was getting even a single component mocked up took at least a week and was no better than what I could have come up with in 30 minutes.
- agravier 10y agoNot charlatans, but professional bikeshed painters :)
- johansch 10y agoQuite a few UX/design people who have actually gone through education/training (as opposed to learning by doing) seem to suffer by an extreme form of process overload. It makes sense I guess. It's really easy to teach processes and it probably makes the them feel "professional".
- yoz-y 10y agoIn many cases this applies to software engineering as well.
- wpietri 10y agoI don't want to blame UX people entirely for that. Designers have often had to elbow their way in to traditional software processes. One way to do that is by looking impressive to executives. It's sort of an extreme version of Calvin's clear plastic binder. [1] I think it's made worse by the ubiquity of the agency business model for designers. Consulting agencies are forced to learn learn looking impressive and process-y as a vital sales tactic. It's not just design, either. Software consulting agencies have the same problem; if your clients can't directly evaluate your work, then you end up getting judged on what the people hiring you can understand. And that's often how well you dress, how glibly you talk, and how impressive your process seems. [1] http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1989/10/31 http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1989/10/31
- dictum 10y agoI'm an UX/design person and I notice that too. I think you could put two capable teams to create a website for some company, one required to do a lot of research and documentation, and another left to design it as they please, and the result probably wouldn't differ much. It's akin to software engineers spending time to automate tasks that aren't that recurring.
- JauntyHatAngle 10y agoI don't think that's limited to designers. That sounds a lot like dealing with B2B consultancy companies too. IBM eat your heart out.