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It's much harder to find somebody who is really good at design and development than it is to find somebody good at just one of the two. As soon as you have enou

It's much harder to find somebody who is really good at design and development than it is to find somebody good at just one of the two. As soon as you have enough fulltime design and fulltime development work, you can have people who specialize in each rather than people who split their time between the two.

seivan 14y ago
It costs more not to. And specialise is such a bullshit thing to say. A developer has a better approach to design than a designer that doesn't know the ecosystem as good as the guy coding.
- potatolicious 14y ago
  As a full-time mobile developer, I have to call bullshit on your claims. The vast majority of mobile devs I've met are only semi-competent on design, if not entirely incompetent. Sure, the perfect mobile person is someone who has a deep understanding of the code and incredible design skills and taste - but what you're talking about is a unicorn. I'd be surprised if there were more than a few dozen of these people in existence. Here in the real world your choices are: - Mediocre-to-shitty engineer with solid design skills. He/she will shit all over your codebase and mask a boatload of technical debt by how beautiful the app is (until your crash reports roll in, or it's time to add features). - Good-to-great engineer with mediocre-to-shitty design skills. He/she will create a solid, stable, extensible codebase but the app will range somewhere between "buttons goes in right places" and "buttons WTF". On the other hand, there is an increasing demographic of designers who do understand the ecosystem. I'm lucky enough to work with some of them, who understand the nuances of touch target sizes, gesture-based control, etc. They're a little harder to find than your typical web designer, but they're a hell of a lot more common than your unicorn engineer-designer-fused-archon-deity. A good engineer pairing with a good mobile designer is a combination far easier to achieve than hunting a near-mythical figure.
  - gdubs 14y ago
    Those are massive generalizations. Yes, plenty of engineers have terrible taste. Plenty of designers have no deep knowledge of data-structures. It's status quo to compartmentalize talent. This attitude is so entrenched in my experience, that it's best to pretend that you don't know anything about design if you're working in an engineering department. But, a different level of insight in design can occur when the designer intimately understands the technological constraints.
  - seivan 14y ago
    Hahaha, those are the choices you give me? I am not going to debate this any further, you've made up your mind. "near-mythical" huh? Good to know.
- snowwrestler 14y ago
  You don't need to know how to write Objective-C to understand conceptually how a mobile app goes together--and good interactive designers do. Maybe you have not worked with any yet?

seivan 14y ago

It costs more not to. And specialise is such a bullshit thing to say. A developer has a better approach to design than a designer that doesn't know the ecosystem as good as the guy coding.

potatolicious 14y ago
As a full-time mobile developer, I have to call bullshit on your claims. The vast majority of mobile devs I've met are only semi-competent on design, if not entirely incompetent. Sure, the perfect mobile person is someone who has a deep understanding of the code and incredible design skills and taste - but what you're talking about is a unicorn. I'd be surprised if there were more than a few dozen of these people in existence. Here in the real world your choices are: - Mediocre-to-shitty engineer with solid design skills. He/she will shit all over your codebase and mask a boatload of technical debt by how beautiful the app is (until your crash reports roll in, or it's time to add features). - Good-to-great engineer with mediocre-to-shitty design skills. He/she will create a solid, stable, extensible codebase but the app will range somewhere between "buttons goes in right places" and "buttons WTF". On the other hand, there is an increasing demographic of designers who do understand the ecosystem. I'm lucky enough to work with some of them, who understand the nuances of touch target sizes, gesture-based control, etc. They're a little harder to find than your typical web designer, but they're a hell of a lot more common than your unicorn engineer-designer-fused-archon-deity. A good engineer pairing with a good mobile designer is a combination far easier to achieve than hunting a near-mythical figure.
- gdubs 14y ago
  Those are massive generalizations. Yes, plenty of engineers have terrible taste. Plenty of designers have no deep knowledge of data-structures. It's status quo to compartmentalize talent. This attitude is so entrenched in my experience, that it's best to pretend that you don't know anything about design if you're working in an engineering department. But, a different level of insight in design can occur when the designer intimately understands the technological constraints.
- seivan 14y ago
  Hahaha, those are the choices you give me? I am not going to debate this any further, you've made up your mind. "near-mythical" huh? Good to know.
snowwrestler 14y ago
You don't need to know how to write Objective-C to understand conceptually how a mobile app goes together--and good interactive designers do. Maybe you have not worked with any yet?