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I don't think the unicorn designer myth is true. We exist, there's just lack of people willing to pay for it. I design and develop and still find it difficult t

I don't think the unicorn designer myth is true. We exist, there's just lack of people willing to pay for it. I design and develop and still find it difficult to find work. As you mentioned, it's a cost issue. As an aside, I hate the idea of a visual designer that doesn't know markup, and someone else being responsible for building it - this does not make sense.

adrianhoward 14y ago
It's not just a cost issue - depending on the size of the unicorn. For example I know nobody who is really good at all of: * user testing * interaction design * visual design * HTML/CSS * JavaScript * user research * branding * information architecture * cognitive psychology * ethnography * marketing I know folk who are really good at a subset. I know folk who have some knowledge of everything. I keep seeing folk trying to hire for a stack of skills that rarely come up in a single person. The person who does user testing five days a week fifty weeks a year is going to be way better at it than those folk who do one every other month. You can't expect that level of skill from an individual if you expect them to be really good at visual design, interaction design and generative user research too. As an aside, I hate the idea of a visual designer that doesn't know markup, and someone else being responsible for building it - this does not make sense. It's a hellishly useful combination to have certainly - and it's my preferred way of operating. But other ways can and do work. I've paired with fantastic visual designers without HTML/CSS knowledge and produced great results in the past. They've had other skills outside of HTML/CSS that they could help the business with. You need all of the skills for building a product on a team. They don't necessarily all need to be in the same person. Folk hired into design roles are sometimes expected to have an unreasonable number of skills in my experience.

adrianhoward 14y ago

It's not just a cost issue - depending on the size of the unicorn. For example I know nobody who is really good at all of: * user testing * interaction design * visual design * HTML/CSS * JavaScript * user research * branding * information architecture * cognitive psychology * ethnography * marketing I know folk who are really good at a subset. I know folk who have some knowledge of everything. I keep seeing folk trying to hire for a stack of skills that rarely come up in a single person. The person who does user testing five days a week fifty weeks a year is going to be way better at it than those folk who do one every other month. You can't expect that level of skill from an individual if you expect them to be really good at visual design, interaction design and generative user research too. As an aside, I hate the idea of a visual designer that doesn't know markup, and someone else being responsible for building it - this does not make sense. It's a hellishly useful combination to have certainly - and it's my preferred way of operating. But other ways can and do work. I've paired with fantastic visual designers without HTML/CSS knowledge and produced great results in the past. They've had other skills outside of HTML/CSS that they could help the business with. You need all of the skills for building a product on a team. They don't necessarily all need to be in the same person. Folk hired into design roles are sometimes expected to have an unreasonable number of skills in my experience.