5 ms·

Bullshit of the highest order. If your only goal is to get a "pretty website" when you hire a designer, not only will you hire the wrong person, but you lose th

Bullshit of the highest order. If your only goal is to get a "pretty website" when you hire a designer, not only will you hire the wrong person, but you lose the benefits a good designer can provide. But sure, go ahead and buy that $50 template. Find someone with familiarity in building good UIs, designing a consistent brand for your product, and making absolutely sure that your product's message comes through clear as day.

mootothemax 15y ago
Find someone with familiarity in building good UIs I'm inferring from your comment that one can't have basic knowledge of decent UI without being a designer. Surely a coder can have a good idea about how to lay out a decent interface without having the skills to actually do so? It's this missing skill that a theme gives them.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- blankenship 15y ago
  Surely a coder can have a good idea about how to lay out a decent interface My experience says mostly no. They're different skillsets. Occasionally they overlap in an individual.
  - Wolf_Larsen 15y ago
    "Occasionally they overlap in an individual" and "Surely a coder can have a good idea about how to lay out a decent interface" are basically the same sentence.
- chc 15y ago
  A coder will generally have an idea about how to do so in the same way that a designer can understand how to architect and code a 900kloc enterprise app — it will be very superficial. In general, other people's jobs always look easy because you don't realize how much you actually suck at them.
  - nirvdrum 15y ago
    I assume for the purposes of this discussion, design and usability have been melded into a single concept. However, sability principles are certainly something a developer can learn and scientifically derive. The SIGCHI proceedings are a great resource. Making that attractive is a completely different skillset and one I certainly don't have. However, based on the amount of flowery yet wholly unusable crap I come across, it seems many designers don't really have a good handle on usability either. Getting someone great at both is a rare find indeed, but it's not as if there's this huge cognitive gap between the two.
    - danilocampos 15y ago
      (Good) Design is much more about how it works than how it looks.
    - chc 15y ago
      This is kind of what I'm talking about. There is some subset of usability principles that you can "learn and scientifically derive" without actually delving in and becoming a usability expert, but that just makes you the UX equivalent of a cowboy coder hired because his uncle heard he knew computer stuff — you might get stuff done, but you will not be a substitute for an expert unless you actually become one.
      - nirvdrum 15y ago
        Well, on the other hand, I've grown weary of "UX" experts that think that means just making things look pretty. The term HCI shouldn't be foreign to them. Usability studies shouldn't just be grabbing three colleagues and asking them what they think (few ever even get that far). There is a lot of psychology that goes into usability. I'll take someone that studies that over someone that only reads other usability blogs (i.e., an echo chamber) any day of the week. And again, I contend there are people that do both extraordinarily well. And then there's a ton that think they can, on both sides of the fence.
      - nirvdrum 15y ago
        And I perhaps chose the incorrect term in saying "derive" earlier. I don't think conducting a usability study is going to magically surface a design for you. You need some sort of background to influence your hypotheses. But you can test and measure usability and you don't need to be well-versed in CSS 3 or Photoshop to do so was more my point. And you can draw upon well-established principles to get yourself started.
jk8 15y ago
I assume that the author of post will switch design and work with a UX engineer when the site starts making money. When you have nothing $50.00 for a theme sounds great. Imagine, no one knows about your site so there is no point in building a site from day one which will scale to handle a million users. Launch first, iterate later.
- mootothemax 15y ago
  You've got it in one. Whilst I understand that designers are, rightfully, proud of their profession, it seems odd that guys starting out like me should be expected to shell out $$$$ before even launching.
grannyg00se 15y ago
The post does not suggest avoiding designers completely. It is about timing. Of course this depends on the type of startup, but in many cases you can absolutely ignore brand message until you have some level of basic functionality and alpha testing done.
- martinkallstrom 15y ago
  I put more faith in alpha testing based on a design without a single line of code written, than on code without a single thought put into the design.
  - ori_b 15y ago
    False dichotomy. Unless you're saying that a developer is by definition unable to think about design. A developer might not do as good a job at it as someone who focused their career at it, but I would be surprised if developers couldn't put together something that was at least passable if they put a modicum of effort into it.
    - martinkallstrom 15y ago
      I didn't say a designated designer needed to do the thinking.

mootothemax 15y ago

Find someone with familiarity in building good UIs I'm inferring from your comment that one can't have basic knowledge of decent UI without being a designer. Surely a coder can have a good idea about how to lay out a decent interface without having the skills to actually do so? It's this missing skill that a theme gives them.

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
blankenship 15y ago
Surely a coder can have a good idea about how to lay out a decent interface My experience says mostly no. They're different skillsets. Occasionally they overlap in an individual.
- Wolf_Larsen 15y ago
  "Occasionally they overlap in an individual" and "Surely a coder can have a good idea about how to lay out a decent interface" are basically the same sentence.
chc 15y ago
A coder will generally have an idea about how to do so in the same way that a designer can understand how to architect and code a 900kloc enterprise app — it will be very superficial. In general, other people's jobs always look easy because you don't realize how much you actually suck at them.
- nirvdrum 15y ago
  I assume for the purposes of this discussion, design and usability have been melded into a single concept. However, sability principles are certainly something a developer can learn and scientifically derive. The SIGCHI proceedings are a great resource. Making that attractive is a completely different skillset and one I certainly don't have. However, based on the amount of flowery yet wholly unusable crap I come across, it seems many designers don't really have a good handle on usability either. Getting someone great at both is a rare find indeed, but it's not as if there's this huge cognitive gap between the two.
  - danilocampos 15y ago
    (Good) Design is much more about how it works than how it looks.
  - chc 15y ago
    This is kind of what I'm talking about. There is some subset of usability principles that you can "learn and scientifically derive" without actually delving in and becoming a usability expert, but that just makes you the UX equivalent of a cowboy coder hired because his uncle heard he knew computer stuff — you might get stuff done, but you will not be a substitute for an expert unless you actually become one.
    - nirvdrum 15y ago
      Well, on the other hand, I've grown weary of "UX" experts that think that means just making things look pretty. The term HCI shouldn't be foreign to them. Usability studies shouldn't just be grabbing three colleagues and asking them what they think (few ever even get that far). There is a lot of psychology that goes into usability. I'll take someone that studies that over someone that only reads other usability blogs (i.e., an echo chamber) any day of the week. And again, I contend there are people that do both extraordinarily well. And then there's a ton that think they can, on both sides of the fence.
    - nirvdrum 15y ago
      And I perhaps chose the incorrect term in saying "derive" earlier. I don't think conducting a usability study is going to magically surface a design for you. You need some sort of background to influence your hypotheses. But you can test and measure usability and you don't need to be well-versed in CSS 3 or Photoshop to do so was more my point. And you can draw upon well-established principles to get yourself started.

jk8 15y ago

I assume that the author of post will switch design and work with a UX engineer when the site starts making money. When you have nothing $50.00 for a theme sounds great. Imagine, no one knows about your site so there is no point in building a site from day one which will scale to handle a million users. Launch first, iterate later.

mootothemax 15y ago
You've got it in one. Whilst I understand that designers are, rightfully, proud of their profession, it seems odd that guys starting out like me should be expected to shell out $$$$ before even launching.

grannyg00se 15y ago

The post does not suggest avoiding designers completely. It is about timing. Of course this depends on the type of startup, but in many cases you can absolutely ignore brand message until you have some level of basic functionality and alpha testing done.

martinkallstrom 15y ago
I put more faith in alpha testing based on a design without a single line of code written, than on code without a single thought put into the design.
- ori_b 15y ago
  False dichotomy. Unless you're saying that a developer is by definition unable to think about design. A developer might not do as good a job at it as someone who focused their career at it, but I would be surprised if developers couldn't put together something that was at least passable if they put a modicum of effort into it.
  - martinkallstrom 15y ago
    I didn't say a designated designer needed to do the thinking.