6 ms·

>a rockstar designer should take more stake in a company than a >rockstar developer. That made me laugh. I imagine the post was written by a designer. I under

>a rockstar designer should take more stake in a company than a >rockstar developer. That made me laugh. I imagine the post was written by a designer. I understand how important design is, it's as important as the backend. But somehow the OP believes that it's only the design that made some apps successful. He also undermines the countless sleepless nights the "engineers" at Apple spent trying to make things work to fit the design. Without fair share of both, it's impossible to make a product successful. >A web site can be as clunky as it can be in terms of back-end >but if the front-end kicks ass, The OP also makes the mistake of thinking, that design is only buttons and borders. Front is a fairly delicate balance of UX, UI. Without an appropriately "designed" backend which is equally responsive, all falls apart.

jaequery 15y ago
oh, i am a developer, btw.
- sidmitra 15y ago
  That was a very weird argument in that case. 'Cos i'm a dev, and truly understand the value of designers(since i don't have the talent or haven't spent as much time on it). Also a reason most people don't take on designers on board is that design is fairly broad in iterations. Quite a lot of successful startups probably hire a designer to finish a design(plus a couple of iterations on it). But the involvement of the dev side is more granular, and continuous till the end. Ofcourse most companies when they take off, do bring a full time designer on board.
kls 15y ago
There is an event horizon that one passes at a certain time in their career in which they come to realize that the two disciplines are indistinguishable. Both are expression of creation, a person that does not see the creative value of one has not reached the pinnacle of the other.
- danso 15y ago
  Nicely said. I am a developer and a designer, and I used to tell people it wasn't worth learning HTML or CSS since it's taken care of in many CMSes and plugins. But now I've come to realize that people who have little working knowledge of HTML/CSS are unable to even conceive of using the Web to its full potential.
  - mattmanser 15y ago
    No offence, but find me a CMS or plugin that can make me facebook or basecamp. Or any app to be honest. If you want to make a nice application, that path is not in the slightest bit open to you. For simple websites I agree and say the same thing, otherwise, no.
    - talmand 15y ago
      Either I don't understand the meaning behind your response or you didn't understand danso's comment. My thought was that he was stating that you need both to make a complete project, which is true. Your last sentence suggests you think HTML/CSS is only good for simple websites? I don't quite understand what you mean. It seems danso was saying what you might be suggesting, based on whether I understand your comment. Either way, could you clarify what you mean? I think the "No offence" part is throwing me off.
    - danso 15y ago
      I think you misread my comment. I said I used to think that a CMS or plugin could take care of most people's HTML needs. In fact, it might be the case that someone has to rarely write raw HTML thanks to the tools out there. But if that person never learned HTML in the first place, then they are at a severe disadvantage. As would be someone who never learned how to write because he figured he could just dictate into the computer's speech-to-text program.
viscanti 15y ago
Design can be split-tested by someone with average skills and end up with above average results. The same is not true of development. Throwing together a bunch of things and trying them in production leads to unmaintainable code and many hard to track down bugs. One requires time and persistence, the other requires knowledge, planning and problem solving.
- sidmitra 15y ago
  >Design can be split-tested by someone with average skills and end up with above average results. I do think split testing is not the answer in every case. Firstly you have to know what to split test. A product like Dropbox cannot be designed just by split testing for example. See MS Windows file copy as an example, i still think it's broken. With dropbox, somebody noticed a problem and wanted the product to be so easy to use, even to the extent of being invisible. I would imagine split testing would lead to dozen tabs of configuration of file sync rules.
- felipemnoa 15y ago
  I'll dare to say that the two are just as important. Think of it as one being a heart and the other being a liver. Both are just as important since without one of them you'll die. Have a poor heart or a poor liver and you'll live a sub-optimal existence.
ebzlo 15y ago
This post was written by neither. If he's going to be critical, then I will be too. A rockstar developer would never think that and a rockstar designer would not have created stiqr.com. I'm pretty sure I counted 4 different sans-serifs.
- jaequery 15y ago
  you missed the point. the point was that designers need to do more than just "freelance" and startups should embrace them more as co-founders. not sure why you brought up stiqr, that is just something else entirely.
  - ebzlo 15y ago
    A startup is comprised of whoever you want. Startups are picky. Fulltime on a startup means money is tight and bodies need to be worth their weight in gold. There are enough people who can do both design and development work to seek out someone who purely does design.

jaequery 15y ago

oh, i am a developer, btw.

sidmitra 15y ago
That was a very weird argument in that case. 'Cos i'm a dev, and truly understand the value of designers(since i don't have the talent or haven't spent as much time on it). Also a reason most people don't take on designers on board is that design is fairly broad in iterations. Quite a lot of successful startups probably hire a designer to finish a design(plus a couple of iterations on it). But the involvement of the dev side is more granular, and continuous till the end. Ofcourse most companies when they take off, do bring a full time designer on board.

kls 15y ago

There is an event horizon that one passes at a certain time in their career in which they come to realize that the two disciplines are indistinguishable. Both are expression of creation, a person that does not see the creative value of one has not reached the pinnacle of the other.

danso 15y ago
Nicely said. I am a developer and a designer, and I used to tell people it wasn't worth learning HTML or CSS since it's taken care of in many CMSes and plugins. But now I've come to realize that people who have little working knowledge of HTML/CSS are unable to even conceive of using the Web to its full potential.
- mattmanser 15y ago
  No offence, but find me a CMS or plugin that can make me facebook or basecamp. Or any app to be honest. If you want to make a nice application, that path is not in the slightest bit open to you. For simple websites I agree and say the same thing, otherwise, no.
  - talmand 15y ago
    Either I don't understand the meaning behind your response or you didn't understand danso's comment. My thought was that he was stating that you need both to make a complete project, which is true. Your last sentence suggests you think HTML/CSS is only good for simple websites? I don't quite understand what you mean. It seems danso was saying what you might be suggesting, based on whether I understand your comment. Either way, could you clarify what you mean? I think the "No offence" part is throwing me off.
  - danso 15y ago
    I think you misread my comment. I said I used to think that a CMS or plugin could take care of most people's HTML needs. In fact, it might be the case that someone has to rarely write raw HTML thanks to the tools out there. But if that person never learned HTML in the first place, then they are at a severe disadvantage. As would be someone who never learned how to write because he figured he could just dictate into the computer's speech-to-text program.

viscanti 15y ago

Design can be split-tested by someone with average skills and end up with above average results. The same is not true of development. Throwing together a bunch of things and trying them in production leads to unmaintainable code and many hard to track down bugs. One requires time and persistence, the other requires knowledge, planning and problem solving.

sidmitra 15y ago
>Design can be split-tested by someone with average skills and end up with above average results. I do think split testing is not the answer in every case. Firstly you have to know what to split test. A product like Dropbox cannot be designed just by split testing for example. See MS Windows file copy as an example, i still think it's broken. With dropbox, somebody noticed a problem and wanted the product to be so easy to use, even to the extent of being invisible. I would imagine split testing would lead to dozen tabs of configuration of file sync rules.
felipemnoa 15y ago
I'll dare to say that the two are just as important. Think of it as one being a heart and the other being a liver. Both are just as important since without one of them you'll die. Have a poor heart or a poor liver and you'll live a sub-optimal existence.

ebzlo 15y ago

This post was written by neither. If he's going to be critical, then I will be too. A rockstar developer would never think that and a rockstar designer would not have created stiqr.com. I'm pretty sure I counted 4 different sans-serifs.

jaequery 15y ago
you missed the point. the point was that designers need to do more than just "freelance" and startups should embrace them more as co-founders. not sure why you brought up stiqr, that is just something else entirely.
- ebzlo 15y ago
  A startup is comprised of whoever you want. Startups are picky. Fulltime on a startup means money is tight and bodies need to be worth their weight in gold. There are enough people who can do both design and development work to seek out someone who purely does design.