4 ms·

It is a fair comment. In design you at least have a chance at clean work safe from messy reality.

danso 10y ago
It's a condescending comment because there are many designers who have to design for the real world. It's no less condescending than saying someone should go into programming where they just have to type out code all day and not face the real world.
- angersock 10y ago
  That's exactly why software engineering is more attractive than hardware engineering though? A condescending comment would be something like: "Maybe you should stick to your pretty R graphs for 'journalism' and leave discussion of software engineering to the professionals who actually get paid to build systems and who haven't, as a profession, fucked up on every metric in the last decade even without including the most recent election." That would be a condescending comment--the one you are remarking on can be interpreted as "hey, designers get to make pretty things unfettered by layers of shaky abstractions and stupid imposed by business and deadlines". Please don't rush to aid the theoretically aggrieved; especially when there are folks in this same subthread going "yep, as a designer, that's the truth".
  - dwaltrip 10y ago
    If a designer doesn't confront reality while creating a design, then I would say they have failed miserably. Perhaps you are right, and few designers are successful in this regard.
dack 10y ago
I'm not sure about that - designers have to build a UX that works in the real world, and sometimes there are really complicated processes that need to be exposed in a nice way. I imagine this has similar tradeoffs as programming (i.e. difficulty in implementation, balancing power/intuitiveness)
- user5994461 10y ago
  As a designer, one can live exclusively in "photoshop", ignoring the complexity of the process and the reality of usage. It's not like you can "test" a drawing with a real user. As a programmer, you gotta get all the little details right or the application is not possible to use. There is no way around it, whatever is forgotten will just hit you right in your face. And last but not least. Drawing is dead easy. A programmer could design a UI in a drag&drop devtool maybe as fast as a designer. The challenge when creating an application is not the drawing of the UI but the handling of the user interactions and the data.
  - angersock 10y ago
    Thank you for illustrating my (apparently unpopular) point.
  - dcole2929 10y ago
    This is such a massive simplification of what a designer does it's actually amazing. You're first and last paragraphs are simply wrong. First of all a designer doesn't get to live exclusively in photoshop or some other tool. They don't get to ignore the "reality of usage". In order to be a competent designer they have to not only completely understand the problem domain, but also the given software solution and how a user can use the software to achieve the desired goal in the most concise manner. They have to worry about how to signal to users how to perform any given interaction and the overall complexity any activity has. Also they absolutely do test designs with real users. There is like a whole field of study in design around exactly this. As to your last point, drawing != designing. Designing is actually really hard. This is a problem I see with programmers all the time. The oversimplification of others contributions. Yes you can put together a UI with drag and drop tools. You can build a website with drag and drop tools too and you'll probably get the same quality as the drag and drop UI. A drag and drop design will probably have most of the various pieces. But will it be obvious what actions a user can take from any given screen? Will it properly optimize screen space, and be color correct? There are a 1001 questions that a designer has to ask that most programmers wouldn't even think to ask. There are many challenges when writing an app, and good design has proven over and over again to matter just as much to the success of a business as solid code.

danso 10y ago

It's a condescending comment because there are many designers who have to design for the real world. It's no less condescending than saying someone should go into programming where they just have to type out code all day and not face the real world.

angersock 10y ago
That's exactly why software engineering is more attractive than hardware engineering though? A condescending comment would be something like: "Maybe you should stick to your pretty R graphs for 'journalism' and leave discussion of software engineering to the professionals who actually get paid to build systems and who haven't, as a profession, fucked up on every metric in the last decade even without including the most recent election." That would be a condescending comment--the one you are remarking on can be interpreted as "hey, designers get to make pretty things unfettered by layers of shaky abstractions and stupid imposed by business and deadlines". Please don't rush to aid the theoretically aggrieved; especially when there are folks in this same subthread going "yep, as a designer, that's the truth".
- dwaltrip 10y ago
  If a designer doesn't confront reality while creating a design, then I would say they have failed miserably. Perhaps you are right, and few designers are successful in this regard.

dack 10y ago

I'm not sure about that - designers have to build a UX that works in the real world, and sometimes there are really complicated processes that need to be exposed in a nice way. I imagine this has similar tradeoffs as programming (i.e. difficulty in implementation, balancing power/intuitiveness)

user5994461 10y ago
As a designer, one can live exclusively in "photoshop", ignoring the complexity of the process and the reality of usage. It's not like you can "test" a drawing with a real user. As a programmer, you gotta get all the little details right or the application is not possible to use. There is no way around it, whatever is forgotten will just hit you right in your face. And last but not least. Drawing is dead easy. A programmer could design a UI in a drag&drop devtool maybe as fast as a designer. The challenge when creating an application is not the drawing of the UI but the handling of the user interactions and the data.
- angersock 10y ago
  Thank you for illustrating my (apparently unpopular) point.
- dcole2929 10y ago
  This is such a massive simplification of what a designer does it's actually amazing. You're first and last paragraphs are simply wrong. First of all a designer doesn't get to live exclusively in photoshop or some other tool. They don't get to ignore the "reality of usage". In order to be a competent designer they have to not only completely understand the problem domain, but also the given software solution and how a user can use the software to achieve the desired goal in the most concise manner. They have to worry about how to signal to users how to perform any given interaction and the overall complexity any activity has. Also they absolutely do test designs with real users. There is like a whole field of study in design around exactly this. As to your last point, drawing != designing. Designing is actually really hard. This is a problem I see with programmers all the time. The oversimplification of others contributions. Yes you can put together a UI with drag and drop tools. You can build a website with drag and drop tools too and you'll probably get the same quality as the drag and drop UI. A drag and drop design will probably have most of the various pieces. But will it be obvious what actions a user can take from any given screen? Will it properly optimize screen space, and be color correct? There are a 1001 questions that a designer has to ask that most programmers wouldn't even think to ask. There are many challenges when writing an app, and good design has proven over and over again to matter just as much to the success of a business as solid code.