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Let me be the first to totally disagree with this article. The world is full of great outsourced design: websites, adverts, car designs, buildings, bridges, sp

by sambeau 16y ago

Let me be the first to totally disagree with this article. The world is full of great outsourced design: websites, adverts, car designs, buildings, bridges, spacecraft. You name it. UX is not something magical. It is just another application of design. A good designer will have no difficulty getting into the head of both client and user. That is their passion.

mceachen 16y ago
I'd tend to agree. Getting customer feedback against the UX should NOT be outsourced, though. It's human nature to disregard negative feedback unless it's direct. Contact with customers should be as close to the development and product team as possible to mitigate this. The initial UX and UI design, though, could absolutely be done on a contract basis. Some of the best UX ideas I've seen were through the use of a stable of very talented artists -- several would be selected and pinged by the art director to come up with ideas, and the best idea would be the starting point for UX/UI iterations.
rgrieselhuber 16y ago
Do you have specific experience where outsourcing design has worked for you, in the context that I describe in the article? I'd love to hear about it.
- sambeau 16y ago
  I'm the other side - the UX guy for hire. Like all design the problems occur when you ask a designer to step in towards the end of a project, when all the fundamental mechanics are locked down. Good design can improve things at any stage. However, great design needs to tackle the whole problem: give me a problem, ask me to solve it. The most important thing for a UX designer is access to real users. Sometimes we can imagine it; often we can't. If we have to guess we might solve the wrong problem. Often, outside designers bring an unencumbered view: one nicely away from development talk and developer think. We can create UIs that work like humans think rather than the internal structures that drive the software. It is that lack of distance that often makes programmers the worse people to design UIs (and generally causes the tension).
kingsidharth 16y ago
The person whom you outsource to is usually not involved in core discussion of development of idea, app or such. And these are actual defining moments of UI and UX, as a designer - that's where I find my inspiration (read: soultion to problems). Outsourcing how your app interacts with user is not going to work at all, all that is gonna happen is one will keep telling designer to move half a pixel he will swear under breath, and in name of complete the project and get paid he will move it. That is not at all how UX and UI work. These are core elements, need to be done by someone deeply involved in team. Hire a designer - get them into all the discussions. Design doesn't happen sitting in corner - design happens in football ground.
- ThomPete 16y ago
  This is simply not true from my experience. One of the very reasons why I love doing startups is that I get to influence the very early stages of the product but tactically and strategically.

by sambeau 16y ago

mceachen 16y ago

I'd tend to agree. Getting customer feedback against the UX should NOT be outsourced, though. It's human nature to disregard negative feedback unless it's direct. Contact with customers should be as close to the development and product team as possible to mitigate this. The initial UX and UI design, though, could absolutely be done on a contract basis. Some of the best UX ideas I've seen were through the use of a stable of very talented artists -- several would be selected and pinged by the art director to come up with ideas, and the best idea would be the starting point for UX/UI iterations.

rgrieselhuber 16y ago

Do you have specific experience where outsourcing design has worked for you, in the context that I describe in the article? I'd love to hear about it.

sambeau 16y ago
I'm the other side - the UX guy for hire. Like all design the problems occur when you ask a designer to step in towards the end of a project, when all the fundamental mechanics are locked down. Good design can improve things at any stage. However, great design needs to tackle the whole problem: give me a problem, ask me to solve it. The most important thing for a UX designer is access to real users. Sometimes we can imagine it; often we can't. If we have to guess we might solve the wrong problem. Often, outside designers bring an unencumbered view: one nicely away from development talk and developer think. We can create UIs that work like humans think rather than the internal structures that drive the software. It is that lack of distance that often makes programmers the worse people to design UIs (and generally causes the tension).

kingsidharth 16y ago

The person whom you outsource to is usually not involved in core discussion of development of idea, app or such. And these are actual defining moments of UI and UX, as a designer - that's where I find my inspiration (read: soultion to problems). Outsourcing how your app interacts with user is not going to work at all, all that is gonna happen is one will keep telling designer to move half a pixel he will swear under breath, and in name of complete the project and get paid he will move it. That is not at all how UX and UI work. These are core elements, need to be done by someone deeply involved in team. Hire a designer - get them into all the discussions. Design doesn't happen sitting in corner - design happens in football ground.

ThomPete 16y ago
This is simply not true from my experience. One of the very reasons why I love doing startups is that I get to influence the very early stages of the product but tactically and strategically.