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I'm not sure that "design" is necessary up-front. There are plenty of good strategies for rapid application development. I think what _is_ necessary is plenty

by gdp 17y ago

I'm not sure that "design" is necessary up-front. There are plenty of good strategies for rapid application development. I think what _is_ necessary is plenty of up-front _thought_, as in "why am I creating software?" and "what does it need to do and why does it need to do that?", then you are in a much better position to keep referring back to your original goals when making design decisions during the implementation process (without committing to an inflexible design should your needs evolve).

alabut 17y ago
I'm not sure that "design" is necessary up-front. Most programmers aren't. And it's often a tug-of-war between designers and programmers to gain respect for their roles: have a designer always come later in the process and you'll get more of a limited traditional visual designer; have one always come earlier in the process and hand down visual specs like they're stone tablets, now you've got old school art directors from the Mad Men era and programmers are treated like code monkeys (still mostly the case at ad agencies today, actually); have one on your team that can design upfront while doing usability testing to validate features, all on a tight schedule, now you're talking about today's interaction designers, but they don't come cheap and most startups have a hard time landing one.
dbz 17y ago
I disagree, if not a visual design, then a design for the code itself is needed- well, it's needed for big enough projects. If one were to skip planning out the project and how to code it, one could easily mess up whatever protocol system there is an just code the entire system poorly. Sadly I did this once! I coded the entire thing, and it worked. No plans, no designs, no nothing- one bug, and the entire project was ruined because I didn't plan ahead and design my code to be flexible in the least. Basically what I am saying is that if I had taken a minute to plan it- I would never have had to rewrite LOTS of code. It's always a good idea to design something before coding, a visual of the project helps and the actual code structure outline helps. Moral of the story: Always have a design up front. I didn't have a design so the structure of my code was incorrect for the "visual" the other person had in mind, so it broke. If that visual is solid, especially when working with/for another person, then fewer mistakes will be made down the road.

by gdp 17y ago

alabut 17y ago

I'm not sure that "design" is necessary up-front. Most programmers aren't. And it's often a tug-of-war between designers and programmers to gain respect for their roles: have a designer always come later in the process and you'll get more of a limited traditional visual designer; have one always come earlier in the process and hand down visual specs like they're stone tablets, now you've got old school art directors from the Mad Men era and programmers are treated like code monkeys (still mostly the case at ad agencies today, actually); have one on your team that can design upfront while doing usability testing to validate features, all on a tight schedule, now you're talking about today's interaction designers, but they don't come cheap and most startups have a hard time landing one.

dbz 17y ago

I disagree, if not a visual design, then a design for the code itself is needed- well, it's needed for big enough projects. If one were to skip planning out the project and how to code it, one could easily mess up whatever protocol system there is an just code the entire system poorly. Sadly I did this once! I coded the entire thing, and it worked. No plans, no designs, no nothing- one bug, and the entire project was ruined because I didn't plan ahead and design my code to be flexible in the least. Basically what I am saying is that if I had taken a minute to plan it- I would never have had to rewrite LOTS of code. It's always a good idea to design something before coding, a visual of the project helps and the actual code structure outline helps. Moral of the story: Always have a design up front. I didn't have a design so the structure of my code was incorrect for the "visual" the other person had in mind, so it broke. If that visual is solid, especially when working with/for another person, then fewer mistakes will be made down the road.