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This silo-ed paradigm is one of the bigger issues the UX community keeps embracing and promoting. By exception of some applications design (branding and corpor

This silo-ed paradigm is one of the bigger issues the UX community keeps embracing and promoting. By exception of some applications design (branding and corporate identity), I think this silo-ed approach that UX offers is hurting the product design/development process. The more silos and "roles" you add to a any process, the more efforts need to go into coordination (meetings) and documentation to keep things consistent and flowing. This impacts time-to-market and increases overall project cost. Also, it doesn't allow to react to changes effectively (if at all). A designer should be educated in all the different disciplines involved in digital product design. Look at Architecture, Fashion or Industrial Design: they spend years getting training across multiple disciplines (aesthetics, semiotics, ergonomics, design theory, research, history of arts, project management, budgeting, etc) including technical disciplines as it applies to their careers (structural analysis, materials, construction techniques, functional and tangible prototyping, technical drafting, and other).

ChrisNorstrom 15y ago
Everything you said is absolutely correct in theory but realistically flawed. Every designer wants to be disciplined and master all those roles, but that takes decades of experience. And to expect that type of person to come work for your startup is like expecting to seduce a senior programmer from Google to come join your startup. To achieve those God-like design skills that include everything from being a good artist (which everyone is NOT) to creating good logos and understanding branding and identity (which is difficult to master) to front end coding including css+xhtml+javascript+jquery is ludicrous. You might as well ask that your designer do the back-end of the site, incorporate your company, and handle your taxes and bookkeeping. At some point people have to realize that we can't do it all. Designers that CAN do it all, are freelancing and getting paid a ton of more money doing interesting and different things every month /OR/ starting their own companies with their skills and getting paid a crap load more with 100% complete creative control and freedom. Why would they want to commit themselves to working at the same company working on the same problems? Being "educated" in all disciplines is possible. I can correctly choose fonts, logos, icons and graphics. But I'm not specialized in producing those from scratch. To be specialized in that is a whole other career path that takes years to learn and master. Digital Art. So yes I do eventually wish to become the senior designer that you described. And in 10-20 years I'm sure I'll acheive that level of understanding. But that's the problem. It'll take 10-20 years.

ChrisNorstrom 15y ago

Everything you said is absolutely correct in theory but realistically flawed. Every designer wants to be disciplined and master all those roles, but that takes decades of experience. And to expect that type of person to come work for your startup is like expecting to seduce a senior programmer from Google to come join your startup. To achieve those God-like design skills that include everything from being a good artist (which everyone is NOT) to creating good logos and understanding branding and identity (which is difficult to master) to front end coding including css+xhtml+javascript+jquery is ludicrous. You might as well ask that your designer do the back-end of the site, incorporate your company, and handle your taxes and bookkeeping. At some point people have to realize that we can't do it all. Designers that CAN do it all, are freelancing and getting paid a ton of more money doing interesting and different things every month /OR/ starting their own companies with their skills and getting paid a crap load more with 100% complete creative control and freedom. Why would they want to commit themselves to working at the same company working on the same problems? Being "educated" in all disciplines is possible. I can correctly choose fonts, logos, icons and graphics. But I'm not specialized in producing those from scratch. To be specialized in that is a whole other career path that takes years to learn and master. Digital Art. So yes I do eventually wish to become the senior designer that you described. And in 10-20 years I'm sure I'll acheive that level of understanding. But that's the problem. It'll take 10-20 years.