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You're using a very particular definition of "design". Let's take the typical interface of unix tools (default to outputting to stdout, default to inputting ove

You're using a very particular definition of "design". Let's take the typical interface of unix tools (default to outputting to stdout, default to inputting over stdin). Brian Kernighan talked about his they retrofitted all tools to use this model once they invented pipes. Is it not UX, is it not design? Why does design have to be graphical, and why does "UX/UI designers" get to say what it is? How can a tool even exist without an interface? And if a tool is used, surely it has a user ;) > most engineers don't practice design Citation needed.

smt88 6y ago
> You're using a very particular definition of "design" No, I'm using a common definition of it. I'm using the same one that the person I responded to was using, which is the type of design for which people hire UX/UI designers. People don't hire UX/UI designers to design CLIs. Maybe they should, but they don't. Is it UX and UI? Sure. But we're talking about an industry term at this point, not 100% of everything that is designable. > Why does design have to be graphical, and why does "UX/UI designers" get to say what it is? I honestly don't know who or what you're arguing against right now. This seems totally tangential to the comment I replied to. Companies hire engineers to write code and designers to create GUIs. Those are the domains we're talking about. I don't disagree with you philosophically at all. > > most engineers don't practice design My meaning was unclear here. I meant that most engineers don't study and repeatedly practice design, meaning that they don't have feedback loops with their designs. The goal is releasing their code, not building their skill at design. Designers, on the other hand, will create many iterations of something with feedback along the way, sometimes in an academic setting. Even setting that aside, most engineers work at large corporations where design is a bureaucratic process that engineers aren't expected to change. They just write the code. > Citation needed. No, it's not. First of all, I've in the software industry for 20 years, so I'm going to lean on first-hand experience here. Second, the burden of proof is on the person making the more uncommon claim. The inverse of "most software engineers don't practice design" is "most software engineers do practice design," and the latter would be more surprising to the typical person. Unless, as mentioned above, you expand the meaning of "design" far beyond what the original thread was about, which was web UI design.

smt88 6y ago

> You're using a very particular definition of "design" No, I'm using a common definition of it. I'm using the same one that the person I responded to was using, which is the type of design for which people hire UX/UI designers. People don't hire UX/UI designers to design CLIs. Maybe they should, but they don't. Is it UX and UI? Sure. But we're talking about an industry term at this point, not 100% of everything that is designable. > Why does design have to be graphical, and why does "UX/UI designers" get to say what it is? I honestly don't know who or what you're arguing against right now. This seems totally tangential to the comment I replied to. Companies hire engineers to write code and designers to create GUIs. Those are the domains we're talking about. I don't disagree with you philosophically at all. > > most engineers don't practice design My meaning was unclear here. I meant that most engineers don't study and repeatedly practice design, meaning that they don't have feedback loops with their designs. The goal is releasing their code, not building their skill at design. Designers, on the other hand, will create many iterations of something with feedback along the way, sometimes in an academic setting. Even setting that aside, most engineers work at large corporations where design is a bureaucratic process that engineers aren't expected to change. They just write the code. > Citation needed. No, it's not. First of all, I've in the software industry for 20 years, so I'm going to lean on first-hand experience here. Second, the burden of proof is on the person making the more uncommon claim. The inverse of "most software engineers don't practice design" is "most software engineers do practice design," and the latter would be more surprising to the typical person. Unless, as mentioned above, you expand the meaning of "design" far beyond what the original thread was about, which was web UI design.