4 ms·

What skills to offer (and where to grow) I suck at UI design (for example making a good looking OK button in photoshop), but I'm a pretty good programmer. How

What skills to offer (and where to grow) I suck at UI design (for example making a good looking OK button in photoshop), but I'm a pretty good programmer. How would you approach that? Do you think subcontracting a UI designer would work? Or usually it's the other way around (UI designer subcontract the programmer to build the web site logic).

chopsueyar 16y ago
In the first article, the author mentioned how unfairly your technical skills will be evaluated, based on the UI of your portfolio apps/sites.
mechanical_fish 16y ago
I've never actually tried subcontracting a design myself, but my understanding is that it's pretty typical. You still have the risk problem -- the designer might turn in terrible work, or might turn in great work that the customer thinks is terrible -- but I'm guessing that much of the risk is mitigated: image prototyping and UI sketching starts pretty early in the process and features lots of iterations, so you get early warning if something is going wrong; moreover, most web frameworks are designed around the assumption that design elements will change very frequently, because people have learned how much customers love to change the color of the bikeshed at the last minute. Oh, how they have learned. The scary part of subcontracting is when you subcontract something tricky and coding-intensive, like the entire event-planning module, or the video-sharing module. Then maybe you end up a week away from launch with two weeks of programming left to do. Or maybe your subcon delivers something that looks superficially correct, but which falls over dead during load testing when it sees more than one query at a time, and now you have to rearchitect it under deadline...
access_denied 16y ago
It's basically: who is the project manager? This is another job that comes with every project. WHo is really managing the thing? It could be the designer, it can be you. It's not hardwired into the backend nor the frontend skillset. It's just another area of responsibility. However, outsorcing design is simpler. In the end it is the backend "sys admin" person who has to deal with the suits about the last few stitches, who has to come into office physically and so on. OTOH at the beginning of projects it's easier if the designer can show visual approaches to the suits in person. I myself always opt in for the project management role, because sub-contracting to a backend guy is just one thing, but selling the suits additional SEO stuff and whatnot is a nice opportunity (onece the suits deal with me anyway).
izak30 16y ago
My answer was to partner with a high quality designer who was interested in becoming a front-end web developer, and also had a good pension for freelancing.
thibaut_barrere 16y ago
When faced with the same situation (3 years ago), I decided to train myself to at least be able to create decent looking UI. It's not that hard, if you read a few books and practice a bit, to be able to cover 80% of design needs (and you can stay in the code these days, ie: work in CSS3 and take screenshots for instance - staying away from Photoshop). You can also subcontract to a UI designer for the inspirational bits and do the rest of the work yourself.
- heyitsnick 16y ago
  Any specific book recommendations?
  - swaroop 16y ago
    I just started reading "Web Design for Developers" published by PragProg ( http://pragprog.com/titles/bhgwad/web-design-for-developers http://pragprog.com/titles/bhgwad/web-design-for-developers ) and would recommend it.

chopsueyar 16y ago

In the first article, the author mentioned how unfairly your technical skills will be evaluated, based on the UI of your portfolio apps/sites.

mechanical_fish 16y ago

I've never actually tried subcontracting a design myself, but my understanding is that it's pretty typical. You still have the risk problem -- the designer might turn in terrible work, or might turn in great work that the customer thinks is terrible -- but I'm guessing that much of the risk is mitigated: image prototyping and UI sketching starts pretty early in the process and features lots of iterations, so you get early warning if something is going wrong; moreover, most web frameworks are designed around the assumption that design elements will change very frequently, because people have learned how much customers love to change the color of the bikeshed at the last minute. Oh, how they have learned. The scary part of subcontracting is when you subcontract something tricky and coding-intensive, like the entire event-planning module, or the video-sharing module. Then maybe you end up a week away from launch with two weeks of programming left to do. Or maybe your subcon delivers something that looks superficially correct, but which falls over dead during load testing when it sees more than one query at a time, and now you have to rearchitect it under deadline...

access_denied 16y ago

It's basically: who is the project manager? This is another job that comes with every project. WHo is really managing the thing? It could be the designer, it can be you. It's not hardwired into the backend nor the frontend skillset. It's just another area of responsibility. However, outsorcing design is simpler. In the end it is the backend "sys admin" person who has to deal with the suits about the last few stitches, who has to come into office physically and so on. OTOH at the beginning of projects it's easier if the designer can show visual approaches to the suits in person. I myself always opt in for the project management role, because sub-contracting to a backend guy is just one thing, but selling the suits additional SEO stuff and whatnot is a nice opportunity (onece the suits deal with me anyway).

izak30 16y ago

My answer was to partner with a high quality designer who was interested in becoming a front-end web developer, and also had a good pension for freelancing.

thibaut_barrere 16y ago

When faced with the same situation (3 years ago), I decided to train myself to at least be able to create decent looking UI. It's not that hard, if you read a few books and practice a bit, to be able to cover 80% of design needs (and you can stay in the code these days, ie: work in CSS3 and take screenshots for instance - staying away from Photoshop). You can also subcontract to a UI designer for the inspirational bits and do the rest of the work yourself.

heyitsnick 16y ago
Any specific book recommendations?
- swaroop 16y ago
  I just started reading "Web Design for Developers" published by PragProg ( http://pragprog.com/titles/bhgwad/web-design-for-developers http://pragprog.com/titles/bhgwad/web-design-for-developers ) and would recommend it.