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Well, that sure made me feel all fuzzy and warm inside. Whenever I had to design anything, it looked like utter crap in the worst case and like something "obvio

Well, that sure made me feel all fuzzy and warm inside. Whenever I had to design anything, it looked like utter crap in the worst case and like something "obviously designed by a programmer" at best. Not because I'm lazy, but because I just don't have talent for it. I tried. The best results I ever got was my Flash game, Particlz. That one often got criticized for "substandard graphics". Now I'm thankful that I'm doing a job that doesn't require user interface design. But in the future, if I need to work on something that need a nicely designed user interface and there's a designer available, you bet I'll try to leave it to him. You know why? Because I'll spend 2 hours on something and get worse results than he'll get in 15 minutes. Bottom line: I suck at design. I don't need to you to come and tell me I'm just being lazy.

sgdesign 16y ago
It's not really a question of talent you know. It would be like a designer saying they can't understand an if/else statement because they have no "talent" for coding. Painting the Mona Lisa takes talent, but designing a log-in form does not. Like coding, design is about following simple rules. It's just that those rules are less obvious.
- Dylanlacey 16y ago
  This seems obvious in retrospect, however I would honestly love somewhere to learn those rules in plain-spoken language. I don't currently have an eye for design, or even, really, a good understanding of where to start. I would really appreciate a good "Design for (kick-arse) developers" linkset. As a token of good faith, if you can help me I'll stop putting two spaces after a full stop, at least in most cases;)
- CodeMage 16y ago
  I had to start writing this reply from scratch several times, because I couldn't decide which issue to address first and yet do it in the politest possible way. I offer apologies in advance, just in case I don't manage to achieve that goal anyway. First of all, you're oversimplifying my comment, just like you oversimplified the original issue in your post. I never claimed I was unable to understand simple concepts. But the ability to understand a simple concept is quite a long shot from the ability to apply it properly to achieve quality results. Second, you neglected the better part of my comment where I talked about effort, results and time. Yes, I'm pretty sure I could do design; at least, as long as nobody (including myself) minds waiting for me to give it my best shot and produce results that are still not as good as those you could get from a good designer in less time. Maybe it doesn't take talent to design a log-in form, but talent sure helps do it faster and better. In the end, "faster" and "better" just isn't something you can toss out of the window. Third, if you really think that you can reduce either design or coding to following simple rules, then I'm wondering why you're bothering writing about this at all. Just follow some simple rules to code an application that follows some simple rules to churn out both quality design and code. Every now and then, I see someone write or hear someone talk about how they can do work in more than one discipline and, therefore, there's something wrong with people who specialize. Working in game development has given me tremendous respect for multi-disciplinary projects and the complexities involved. From that vantage, I can tell you that I don't mind when people are proud of their multifaceted nature; it's when they start dismissing specialization that it becomes a problem.

sgdesign 16y ago

It's not really a question of talent you know. It would be like a designer saying they can't understand an if/else statement because they have no "talent" for coding. Painting the Mona Lisa takes talent, but designing a log-in form does not. Like coding, design is about following simple rules. It's just that those rules are less obvious.

Dylanlacey 16y ago
This seems obvious in retrospect, however I would honestly love somewhere to learn those rules in plain-spoken language. I don't currently have an eye for design, or even, really, a good understanding of where to start. I would really appreciate a good "Design for (kick-arse) developers" linkset. As a token of good faith, if you can help me I'll stop putting two spaces after a full stop, at least in most cases;)
CodeMage 16y ago
I had to start writing this reply from scratch several times, because I couldn't decide which issue to address first and yet do it in the politest possible way. I offer apologies in advance, just in case I don't manage to achieve that goal anyway. First of all, you're oversimplifying my comment, just like you oversimplified the original issue in your post. I never claimed I was unable to understand simple concepts. But the ability to understand a simple concept is quite a long shot from the ability to apply it properly to achieve quality results. Second, you neglected the better part of my comment where I talked about effort, results and time. Yes, I'm pretty sure I could do design; at least, as long as nobody (including myself) minds waiting for me to give it my best shot and produce results that are still not as good as those you could get from a good designer in less time. Maybe it doesn't take talent to design a log-in form, but talent sure helps do it faster and better. In the end, "faster" and "better" just isn't something you can toss out of the window. Third, if you really think that you can reduce either design or coding to following simple rules, then I'm wondering why you're bothering writing about this at all. Just follow some simple rules to code an application that follows some simple rules to churn out both quality design and code. Every now and then, I see someone write or hear someone talk about how they can do work in more than one discipline and, therefore, there's something wrong with people who specialize. Working in game development has given me tremendous respect for multi-disciplinary projects and the complexities involved. From that vantage, I can tell you that I don't mind when people are proud of their multifaceted nature; it's when they start dismissing specialization that it becomes a problem.