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I've worked with really truly horrible designers who started as coders. But the worst UI designer I ever worked with knew how to draw pretty pictures and utter

by nmcfarl 13y ago

I've worked with really truly horrible designers who started as coders. But the worst UI designer I ever worked with knew how to draw pretty pictures and utterly refused to view the web as a separate media from print. Technical constraints were utterly ignored as were, frankly, a number of business constraints (Which is what really got him in trouble). A total failure. Knowing the stuff that goes on around your UI is actually an asset. And knowing the tech deeply enough to code it is of immense value. Of course you still have to be good at your core craft.

seanmcdirmid 13y ago
If you are a front end programmer, do you think knowing how to sketch and design grids helps you implement good designs? Perhaps, but can you actually hire those people and have them be the best programmers at the same time? Much harder. Why would you expect from designers what you don't expect from designers? Keep in mind that good designers are as hard, if not harder, to hire than good programmers. Designers do understand the domains they are working in, otherwise they aren't very good. The developers are not that far away, so there is interaction if the spec goes somewhere where they can't (hardware constraints for phone UI, for example). On the other hand, knowing how to program would help a designer check the dev's bullsh*t that something can't be implemented, and they are just being lazy or toxic.
- nmcfarl 13y ago
  A good question. The reason I expect a good designer know something about the media they are working in is because this is been very traditionally part of the job. Designers have been expected know what inks can and can't be reproduced on which materials. Or which printing process will be most economical etc. As you point out only the truly bad ones don’t know the baseline capabilities of their platform be it app or web design... But for as for the good ones, that do know their media, - well, I don't find it odd that some would find the best way that they could learn the constraints of their media was to play around with HTML and CSS directly (or Interface Builder). And I do think that people who have of done that are actually a bigger asset that's than people who have just read up. I assume this is because they have a more visceral feel for the costs of their designs. This does not mean that I expect my designers to code, or do production work. It just means that those designers who are capable of hacking out a toy system seem to be more capable of designing things that implement easily. And that saves me money.
  - seanmcdirmid 13y ago
    I see where our disconnect is: I haven't worked with web designers, rather designers for much more technical software products where the coding tasks are much more involved. So I would also expect a web designer to play around with HTML/CSS, but then that is completely irrelevant when we are building a computer vision product, or a toolkit to support the app platform of a mobile phone. The designers might use HTML/CSS as a prototyping tool, but there are other better suited tools out there since...none of them are close to production reality anyways. There even some domains, like NUI, where separate prototyping roles are required because traditional design tools aren't good enough. So ya, given simple web/phone apps where HTML/CSS or interface builder are relevant, you could expect designers to be more involved with tweaking production assets directly. But I've never worked on those applications before, and the technical barriers for what I have worked on are quite high; expecting the designer to participate in modifying code assets is a bit crazy!

by nmcfarl 13y ago

seanmcdirmid 13y ago

If you are a front end programmer, do you think knowing how to sketch and design grids helps you implement good designs? Perhaps, but can you actually hire those people and have them be the best programmers at the same time? Much harder. Why would you expect from designers what you don't expect from designers? Keep in mind that good designers are as hard, if not harder, to hire than good programmers. Designers do understand the domains they are working in, otherwise they aren't very good. The developers are not that far away, so there is interaction if the spec goes somewhere where they can't (hardware constraints for phone UI, for example). On the other hand, knowing how to program would help a designer check the dev's bullsh*t that something can't be implemented, and they are just being lazy or toxic.

nmcfarl 13y ago
A good question. The reason I expect a good designer know something about the media they are working in is because this is been very traditionally part of the job. Designers have been expected know what inks can and can't be reproduced on which materials. Or which printing process will be most economical etc. As you point out only the truly bad ones don’t know the baseline capabilities of their platform be it app or web design... But for as for the good ones, that do know their media, - well, I don't find it odd that some would find the best way that they could learn the constraints of their media was to play around with HTML and CSS directly (or Interface Builder). And I do think that people who have of done that are actually a bigger asset that's than people who have just read up. I assume this is because they have a more visceral feel for the costs of their designs. This does not mean that I expect my designers to code, or do production work. It just means that those designers who are capable of hacking out a toy system seem to be more capable of designing things that implement easily. And that saves me money.
- seanmcdirmid 13y ago
  I see where our disconnect is: I haven't worked with web designers, rather designers for much more technical software products where the coding tasks are much more involved. So I would also expect a web designer to play around with HTML/CSS, but then that is completely irrelevant when we are building a computer vision product, or a toolkit to support the app platform of a mobile phone. The designers might use HTML/CSS as a prototyping tool, but there are other better suited tools out there since...none of them are close to production reality anyways. There even some domains, like NUI, where separate prototyping roles are required because traditional design tools aren't good enough. So ya, given simple web/phone apps where HTML/CSS or interface builder are relevant, you could expect designers to be more involved with tweaking production assets directly. But I've never worked on those applications before, and the technical barriers for what I have worked on are quite high; expecting the designer to participate in modifying code assets is a bit crazy!