

Design, and why I don't do it - codeoclock
http://hughrawlinson.me/post/49636781678/design-and-why-i-dont-do-it

======
demian
In my opinion, we are having some serious problems with the words we are
using.

We are mixing aesthetics and stylizing with things like ui flows and product
design. Just becasue it's called "Design" it doesn't mean it can only be done
by people with "Designer" on their titles. It seems that the only reason we
are separating "Development" as another dicipline incapable of doing some of
the things we call "Design" it's because we don't call it "Code Design".

A visual designer is as capable of developing a useful and functional ui
design as a developer. Even if one is called "designer" and the other is not.
Stylizing is another matter.

PS: My point is that some of the activities we are calling "Design" are VERY
different to some of the other activities we are calling "Design". We lump
them together because, well, they are called "Design". But they are not
equivalent, not even related really, or at least not more related that some of
those "Design" activities and "Programming".

As a metaphor, Architecture is not Interior Design, nor is Structural
Engineering. An Interior Designer, by definition, is as prepared to do
architecture as a Structural Engineer... and even less so in some cases. But
with the right training, both can become Architects. Or for an example closer
to software, Game Designers come from a lot of backgrounds, from art to
writing to technology. Their backgrounds affect the type of design they do and
their focus (Jon Blow, for example, prioritizes the "mechanical" design of the
game, while Edmund McMillen works mainly from an stylistic point of view), but
all of them are doing great game design.

~~~
codeoclock
I was talking about web design and web development. I have no desire to be any
other kind of designer.

~~~
k-mcgrady
I think he means there are different aspects to web design. You mention in
your post that when you tried to design a site well you "ended up with a
totally hideous website, using jarring colors, and too many fonts, with really
thick borders and dense type." That's not all there is to design.

For example I find I'm not very good at designing something that looks nice
but I can design a site/app to work well for the user. The UX is good. Steve
Jobs famously said "Design is not just what it looks like and feels like.
Design is how it works." You and I may not be good at the aesthetic part of
software design but that doesn't mean we should dismiss it all together.
Software developers can still be good at 'how it works' and it's possible they
might be better positioned than a UI designer to do this.

------
jongold
I really loved Mark Otto's sentiment here — design and development aren't
separate jobs like, say, deep-sea oil drilling and copyright lawyering are.
We're all working on the same spectrum with an increasing amount of overlap.
<http://markdotto.com/2013/04/22/designer-developer-spectrum/>

There's definitely room for specialisation but our work is so much richer when
we learn about the full stack. If you want to know more about design — just
ask a designer :). We don't bite, we've just been a bit lazy with learning
resources recently. HackDesign is a great start but the design community are
well aware that learning to design at the moment is a mix of formal education,
figuring shit out over years of making mistakes and a sprinkling of black
magic. There's no Railscast to grok typography, and that sucks. We're working
on it though :)

------
wells-riley
I don't mean to self-promote, but <http://hackdesign.org> may be what the
author is looking for. You can move at your own pace, and the lessons are
curated by some of the most thoughtful designers I know of.

We're pushing out a lesson on Color Theory on Monday, then David Kadavy
(author of Design for Hackers) is up the week after. We've already got 4
months of great content so far, and 8 more to go.

Let me know if you try it out - @wr on twitter.

~~~
misiti3780
im gonna try this out for sure - why is it free?

~~~
kenbellows
There's already all kinds of resources to purchase on design (including Design
for Hackers, which Wells mentioned). And if you're willing to pay for it,
that's awesome. But the thing is, most of us developers aren't, because we
don't think we'll be good at it, we don't think we need to be good at it, we
don't think it's worth the investment, we aren't "designers" and therefore
don't want to spend the cash on it, etc.

But we really need everyone to understand good design theory, at least at a
basic level. It streamlines the development process, and it may even prompt a
few developers who hadn't really thought about it to do a little more with
design.

What I love about Hack Design is that it is free and very casual, which means
I can look into it in my spare time because of my own interest and motivation,
without any investment and without any risk.

Also it should be noted that the course is largely comprised of a curated set
of already-out-there blog posts, articles, tools, and other materials. Curated
is the active word there; it's like a guided tour of the design community. The
toughest thing about getting started with any new area of learning is knowing
where to start, especially with something so vast and foreign to many of us as
design. Having someone to point you in the right direction, let alone guide
you step by step through the entire foundational process, is a huge leg up.

Okay, I'll stop gushing now. I just really enjoy and appreciate this course.

------
calinet6
This is a very self-aware article, and very astute. I would add that
developers should not be afraid of design: in many ways, it is no different
from programming, in that it follows some logic and rules, and that you can
learn it, with time and the gumption to do so. Learn by copying the greats,
learn who the greats are by watching who others watch, and just study what
makes things look good.

Design is not some scary magical quality you're either born with or not—I am
convinced you can develop an eye, and you can learn by imitation and
attention.

But by all means, don't overstep the boundaries of your expertise. Good advice
for any work.

------
vinceguidry
Design is different enough from programming that if you're trying to learn
both at the same time, you'll eventually give up. I believe that if you want
to be effective, you have to get to a point where you can express yourself
fluently in code, without any hiccups _at all_ , before you can give design a
shot.

Because basically, design (at the beginner's level) is a whole bunch of little
tweaks until something looks _just right_. If you are designing in the same
environment you code in, say by making your tweaks directly to the HTML/CSS,
you're just going to get frustrated if your tweaks take any longer than a
second or so to make and reload your page. To use a car analogy, it's taking
your mechanical know-how and suddenly jumping into a NASCAR pit crew. You're
not just fixing the car, you're doing it lightening-fast and super-accurate.
If you're not already shit-hot, you're just going to burn out.

~~~
adrianhoward
_Because basically, design (at the beginner's level) is a whole bunch of
little tweaks until something looks just right. If you are designing in the
same environment you code in, say by making your tweaks directly to the
HTML/CSS, you're just going to get frustrated if your tweaks take any longer
than a second or so to make and reload your page_

That's actually a moderately good analogy - even though I disagree with your
conclusion.

Approaching design like that is like the developers who approach learning
development by writing crap and then randomly tweaking and tweaking and
tweaking until it sort of runs and does what they want.

Neither is a particularly good approach to learning design or development.

------
endlessvoid94
I can recommend The Non-designers design book by Robin Williams (if you can
find it). It's excellent.

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terolacu
I, as a self-taught programmer, would learn design if I knew _how_. I just
couldn't find any good material on this. I'm wondering if it is because
designers are bad teachers or what. I subscribed to one of those courses that
popped up here in hacker news. It was terrible. All it did was send me weekly
emails with videos about how cool apple products are, or tasks that were way
too far away from the actual work. I'm sorry don't remember its name.

Does anyone know of a good book/tutorial/course to learn the very basics? How
the hell do I choose a good colour combination? I've read about the colour
theory. Now what?

~~~
quahada
This reminds me of the time I taught myself photography through online
resources. All of the 'photo' tutorials taught how to use the camera, which a)
doesn't teach you fundamentals on what makes a good picture and b) is not
necessary with modern cameras.

What I found much more useful was tutorials on how to paint, because they
started off by teaching artistic fundamentals, such as composition, colors,
etc.

------
kailuowang
Design for Hackers is a good book. I learned a lot from it, one of them is
that design isn't that hard, there are some tricks, but they are not that hard
to learn, and they do help a lot.

IMO, a hacker should learn every aspects of software making, design included.

PS, I am not saying that this book is what you can used to learn how to become
a designer, it's a good one for a developer to reasonably understand how
design works. "Design for Hackers" is exactly what this book trying to
achieve.

------
virtualwhys
More often than not you'll either be strong in design/art, OR strong in
programming.

There are of course amazing artists that are brilliant coders, but this would
be far more rare than the norm, which is one or the other.

Saying that, I'm a bit of a hybrid, not a great designer, and not a great
programmer ;-)

I suspect hybrid types are born of necessity; i.e. when one knows neither how
to design a website, nor how to program. BA/MA graduates building websites for
a living likely occupy much of this space.

I suspect pure programmers are those with a CS degree who found work right out
of college, diving directly into Java/C-family projects for Big Co., what need
for design/art?

~~~
adrianhoward
_More often than not you'll either be strong in design/art, OR strong in
programming._

The question is though whether that's a natural law, or an artefact of the
culture of those communities of practice. Personally I lean towards the
latter.

I'm seeing a lot more dev folk get more than competent on the design side (and
a few UX folk getting competent on the dev side).

------
willholloway
I am in the same boat as the author. You can get a lot better at design by
starting to look with a curious and critical eye at well designed web sites
and things like movie posters.

I'm still not very good, but I'm able to put together nice sites with the help
of Twitter Bootstrap and wrapbootstrap.com templates.

Here is an example of what a non-designer hacker can put together in a couple
hours with a wrapbootstrap theme, icon finder and images from around the web:

<http://willholloway.net>

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guptaneil
_Hopefully, this will be my first step into acquiring an ability to make
things [...] that people see and say “wow!”_

Overall, great article, but keep in mind that the goal of good design isn't to
make people go "wow," it's to be invisible. The best interfaces are the one
people don't even notice. Remember that you're designing for your users, not
for other designers. It's surprisingly easy to forgot that.

Also, I recommend checking out "Design of Everyday Things" by Donald Norman.
It's an excellent introduction into usability design.

~~~
adrianhoward
_Overall, great article, but keep in mind that the goal of good design isn't
to make people go "wow," it's to be invisible_

Or rather - it's only to make people go "wow" if making that happen is part of
what the goal of the design is. Designs being invisible that should "wow" are
just as bad as "wow" designs when they should be invisible.

------
ams6110
I am a developer and I also prefer to leave the design to the designers. I
learned long ago that I have no sense for it, and moreover I find it tedious,
so my energies are best directed elsewhere.

~~~
StavrosK
Eh, I have no sense for writing programs in Go, and I find it tedious. I spent
three days at it, and now it comes much more easily. The same goes with
learning Spanish, or playing the guitar, or learning anything for the first
time.

If you find the process enjoyable, you'll be good at it soon enough. If not,
well, there are plenty of other things you can do, but it's not because you
"can't".

------
tomasien
The point of this really shouldn't be "I leave it to designers because they're
better at aesthetic design" it should be "I leave it to designers because I'm
already a good coder, and my time is more valuable".

Designing a really great product beyond choosing fonts, colors, and shapes
(which is extremely hard, but you can Google good font pairings and color
palettes) just takes time and lot of thought. Experience counts, but you have
it. If you spent 2 weeks working on a UX, you'd do great work, I promise you.

~~~
tomasien
I think my choice of the word "great" in the second paragraph was off, but
I'll stand by the rest. I have a legitimate learning disability when it comes
to aesthetics, going as far as not being able to recall what shape almost
anything was 5 seconds after seeing it. I'm also excellent at web design,
because it's really a logical, emotional, and time/test driven process more
than aesthetic.

~~~
adrianhoward
_I'm also excellent at web design, because it's really a logical, emotional,
and time/test driven process more than aesthetic._

Once you dig into some design theory - you'll find that visual design (and
other elements of design) are a lot more "logical, emotional and time/test
driven" than you think ;-) There are lots of rules of thumb and heuristics.
Lots of applied knowledge rather than just judging things from an aesthetic
POV.

Indeed the process of becoming a good designer is basically building up that
aesthetic POV from the ground up. In a similar way that experienced developers
see "ugly" code much more directly than beginners do.

Obviously I don't know you - but I've worked with folk who have said very
similar things to what you've said about having no eye for aesthetics who have
ended up with some fairly good basic design chops.

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muraiki
I've been going through the free book Designing for the Web, and while it has
some older material in terms of code examples about CSS, it contains a great
amount of useful information about and theory behind design. A section of the
book that was very helpful to me is about how to research and gather ideas for
the design process. <http://designingfortheweb.co.uk/>

------
BenSS
I had similar thoughts. However, in the last year I've made a big effort to at
least understand what makes design tick. I don't expect to ever become a guru
designer, but there are benefits. A little knowledge goes a long way towards
working better with designers, and much more useable prototypes.

------
bbbhn
Great design is art. You can master the principles, techniques, and skills,
but in the end great design comes down to vision and imagination.

However that doesn't mean developers can't be really good designers. Anybody
can learn how to emulate the good design of the present and create products
which fulfill the design demands of consumers.

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EliRivers
This would be better titled "UI colour schemes and layout, and why I don't do
it".

~~~
codeoclock
I should've specified web design and found an actual definition of it before I
posted. Ah well, next time :)

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Aeiper
Tell me how the "Design for Hackers" book goes along @aeip@live.com

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droopyEyelids
"Now, I leave design to the designers. I recognise that design and user
interaction is a really insanely important part of a project, and that it
should not be left to people who do not know how to do it. This includes
developers, bosses, and even clients."

I'd rephrase that to "...bosses, clients, and around 65% of those who call
themselves designers"

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kijin
Your blog looks strange in Firefox 20.0.1 (latest stable as of today) on
Windows 7.

<http://i.imgur.com/XwBytbO.png>

~~~
codeoclock
That is bizarre, I have no idea why that would've happened.

~~~
kijin
Sorry, false alarm. It seems to have been caused by a possibly corrupt
Baskerville font on my computer, which caused certain character combinations
like "er", "te", and "is" to have ridiculously wide spaces in between. Still,
I have no idea why only Firefox was affected and not Chrome and IE.

Suggestion: Use web fonts. "Baskerville, Times New Roman, Times, serif" ain't
a web-safe combination.

