
On Being A Designer And A Developer: Not Quite Unicorn Rare - uxdiogenes
https://diogenes.squarespace.com/blog/on-being-a-designer-and-a-developer-not-quite-unicorn-rare
======
integraton
If a developer is designing and creating software solutions, then he or she is
a designer. The characterization of software development as something other
than design is incredibly unfortunate and misguided.

What's actually happening here is that many people now erroneously use the
word "design" to mean "visual design in the tradition of waterfall-centric,
industrial graphic design where ideation and production are separate," which
in the context of software is extremely ambiguous, anyway, since it could
refer to illustration, user experience design, graphic design, information
architecture, and plenty of other things.

Yes, there are specializations. But the stereotypes of technologically
illiterate "designers" and neckbeard, tasteless "developers" are outdated,
though unfortunately still pervasive in the industry. There's no reason that
anyone identifying as a "designer" can't gain a deep understanding of modern
web or native development technologies and environments. There's no reason
that someone identifying as a "developer" can't learn about "design" and the
creative process.

~~~
wladimir
_But the stereotypes of technologically illiterate "designers" and neckbeard,
tasteless "developers" are outdated, though unfortunately still pervasive in
the industry_

The problem is that one person cannot possibly learn about everything. One has
to make choices. If you spend time learning graphical design rules, you cannot
use that time to learn some new algorithm, or how to do business, or some
other thing life asks of you. The idea that everyone can be a jack of all
trades is equally misguided. I agree that learning everything around your
trade up to a certain level is a good idea (to have a clue what people are
talking about), but people that specialize in an area tend to underestimate
how much time it took them to become experienced in that area, and trivialize
how easy others can learn to be adept in their area of expertise.

~~~
randomdata
> One has to make choices. If you spend time learning graphical design rules,
> you cannot use that time to learn some new algorithm

For what it is worth, in my misspent youth, I started learning about design in
elementary school and started learning about development early in high school.
I do believe you are correct, but perhaps underestimate just how much time is
at one's disposal.

------
alexkearns
The beauty of being both a coder and designer is that you can conceive, build
and launch a product completely on your own. This makes setting up your own
start-up (or lifestyle business) a lot simpler.

My advice for any developer who wants to do their own start-up is - once you
have reached a good standard - to forget honing your development skills and
start learning to design.

Learning another programming language or mastering another object orientated
design pattern does not bring you much closer to being able create a product
yourself. Learning an entirely new but relevant skill like design does.

~~~
StavrosK
With ThemeForest and the like, design is the easiest skill to fake in the
requirements set of launching a product. I can get a theme for $20 that will
take me at least to MVP stage without looking silly (for most products), but I
can't easily get to that stage without development skills, customer
development skills, market skills, etc etc.

I'd leave design for last and advise people to learn the other skills ("other"
means "skills they don't already have", so development for market-people,
marketing for developers, etc) first.

~~~
babby
In a similar vein, one does not really need to, persay, study design. Simply
visiting sites like ThemeForest and trying your best to copy the designs from
scratch or by using some of their assets is a completely legit way of learning
how to do it on your own.

It's like building a working memory of design that you can pull from when you
wish to be creative. Kind of like when you learn to code, you need to look at
code examples and you need to eventually write it yourself.

~~~
StavrosK
I think this goes for most things. Step 1) develop a sense of judging how
well-made things are, step 2) develop the skills that allow you to create your
own.

I'm pretty good at telling if a design is good or not, but I can't for the
life of me create my own. I just get lost in the space of possibilities, or
don't consider alternatives an experienced designer would.

------
lstamour
As I consider myself to be both a designer and a developer, I'd like to agree
that it's possible to achieve some amount of mastery in both. :)

In practice, however, I've noticed 3 things: 1. You're best at what you do, so
if you want to do both, find time for both. 2. Most managers I've worked with
take design for granted and will think of you as a programmer if you can code,
or a designer if you can't. 3. You can't do both at peak potential at the same
time -- there's a designer mindset and a developer mindset. Actually this
reminds me of DevOps as well, which I've gotten into recently. I'd also point
to positions like "Software Developer in Test" as another example of this
interdisciplinary work. Actually I'd probably try to poke fingers at anybody
saying that IT is specialized (as in the comments here) since if anything, IT
is also more generalized than ever before, given how many different ways there
are to solve problems and how varied technology is today, in use.

~~~
ritchiea
There is definitely a unique mindset to each role and it can be a tremendous
challenge to switch between the two productively at work.

------
cateye
This is exactly a prejudice that I often encounter and must overcome every
time.

From my childhood on, I was playing around with electrical circuits. It was
just a game for me to switch things on and off etc.

Then I got my shiny new PC with programs like PaintShop Pro on it. I wasn't
bored for a moment and played with it for hours without interruption. Although
I had no classical art techniques mastered, I could digitally create all what
I wanted.

Later I also studied business administration to keep everything in balance.

When I started working, I didn't fit anywhere with my skills. I had to choose
and nobody saw the added value of combining disciplines.

Common wisdom was that it was impossible that there could exist generalising
specialists. If I told someone that I had the knowledge in all three aspects,
then people casted doubt and began trying to convince me that it isn't
possible.

Currently the combination of my skills are very useful.

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RcouF1uZ4gsC
I disagree with this premise. This is like someone saying that a person could
be a world class brain surgeon and a word class psychiatrist at the same time.
True there are a lot of things in common - You have to go to medical school,
you have to know about the brain, etc. However, how you relate to patients,
the culture, the tools you use are totally different.

I think it is the same with developer and designer. A talented person would be
able to do both. However, you are not going to be able to do both on a world
class basis. At least for developers, it seems the top developers are 10x
better than an average developer. There may be something similar for
designers, I don't know. Hiring a world class developer and a world class
designer is going to make better sense than hiring 2 people who do a bit of
both.

It seems everything is becoming more specialized. In IT, we are now at the
point where you can't be a "generalist" developer-designer but need to
specialize in one or the other to be productive.

~~~
micrypt
In a world where Marie Curie managed to win Nobel prizes in both Chemistry and
Physics, I'd say managing to be both a designer and a programmer isn't such a
big deal.

If this is something of interest to you, aim a little higher.

~~~
RcouF1uZ4gsC
Winning Nobel Prizes in Chemistry and Physics is like being a world class
developer in say both Haskel and C. Being a world class designer and developer
is like winning the Nobel Prizes in both Physics and Literature at the same
time.

~~~
swombat
Yeah, that's why it takes a few months for a reasonably smart person to gain
the skills to be able to call themselves a developer or a designer, whereas it
takes that same person 5-10 years to gain the skills to call themselves a
physicist or a chemist. Then after that they need to get a Nobel Prize in it
too.

Clearly, the difficult in becoming a designer and a developer at the same time
is similar to that of obtaining Nobel Prizes in Physics and Chemistry.

------
shalmanese
I'm immensely skeptical. I think it's only true insofar as you redefine "great
developer" as being someone who can pump out the same kind of CRUD app really
really quickly and redefine "great designer" as being someone who can add a
degree of visual polish and refinement to that same kind of CRUD app.

The tools have made it such that it's now much, much easier to get enough
competence at both to ship profitable product but what it hasn't done is made
any easier the essential complexity of both design and engineering.

~~~
metafunctor
Polymaths, a.k.a. renaissance men, do exist.

To me, it actually seems absurd to claim that people can only be great in one
thing.

Just because I'm a great developer doesn't mean it's the only thing I can be
great in. I'm learning to be a great marketer as well, and so far it hasn't
taken away from my programming skills.

~~~
JLehtinen
Guitar players who can also play drums are at a big advantage, just like
composers who can write lyrics or sing. Graphic designers are often
illustrators too, but copywriting, photo retouching and photography skills can
also be very useful for a designer — and not every designer necessarily has
them.

~~~
Jack000
I've done hiring for designers at my company, and one of the things I've found
is that good illustrators tended to be horrible at design.

Not sure why, just an interesting anecdote. I suspect different types of
thinking are required for each, illustration is quite a bit closer to "art".

~~~
adrianhoward
That's not something I've noticed in general - and I've done a _lot_ of design
hiring over the years. Think you might just have hit a bad batch ;-)

------
timc3
As someone that wears both hats on a daily basis (Creative Director at a
startup, spending 65% of my time coding, the other 35% with design and
animation) I think that what it takes to get there is a huge amount of time
and a general appreciation of aesthetics.

I have been programming in one way or another for 32 years - all the time
basically building creative programs, UIs, programs that help me make music or
do graphics and now I don't need to program those - I can concentrate on what
my business needs.

People often mix up design and usability. Usability is something that is
tangible and measurable, code is tangible but also highly creative output and
good looking design is neither something that can be measured (expect in
sales) or can be actually taught - its a factor of a good eye plus extreme
amounts of practise.

I spend my spare time at the moment looking at design, architecture, or
reading about chip design, and languages so that I can understand better how
my code runs and how my environment around me is beautiful.

It takes an almost obsessive willingness to learn to be good at more than one
thing at once but it is possible.

~~~
usethis
I can completely relate to this.

On the one hand you need a broad scope, an interest in everything that affects
and inspires your work. But on the other you need the ability to focus and use
all that information to create better work.

Compare it to the scope of an architect. An architect needs to be
knowledgeable about all facets of building creation: from the limitations and
innovations on the engineering side (a new type of concrete, etc), to art
history and trends in design. Therefore, an architect's education is often
much broader in scope than that of a programmer or designer.

------
usethis
I consider myself there in the center of design and development. Zooming in, I
see a low-level programmer on the one end and a painter on the other.

Being in the center to me means to have good comprehension of the back-end,
being comfortable with frameworks like Rails, having great front-end skills
and on the design side having a good feel for user behaviour (UX facets).

Abstracting this, it depends where your rational comfort zone is (logic ->
irrational). I have a good feel for user behaviour and can use my analytic
skills on UX challenges, but also foresee and implement these on UX – dev
challenges.

The biggest benefit of these center positions, is the ability to converse with
both departments and to voice new insights and concepts which are often
outside the scope of these departments.

Unfortunately the job market has little understanding of this profile.
Department stake holders (CD or senior devs) are protective of their area and
recruiters have a hard time profiling you. This might be anecdotal though,
being from Europe, which is not so innovative as some areas in the US.

------
seanmcdirmid
I consider myself as a professional programming language designer* . I try to
explain what this means to my wife, a visual/interaction designer, and it's a
struggle. We do talk a lot about color, typography, and grids, however, which
actually is important in PX as it is in UX.

* who hasn't made it to the big time yet. I masquerade in the meantime as a researcher.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
As a fellow programming-language designer masquerading (in my case, as a
graduate student), what language projects are you up to right now?

~~~
seanmcdirmid
My bib^H^H^Hportfolio is at <http://research.microsoft.com/en-
us/people/smcdirm/>

These days I'm working on putting together a language that supports live
programming, trait inference, and has a rich typography experience that can
transcend the smalltalk-ish IDE rutt we are stuck in.

------
tmarthal
There is one difference that everyone always seems to overlook: design is very
opinion oriented, development is not.

Now, it really boils down to the type of feedback that you get as a designer
is much different than the type of feedback that you get as a developer.
Usually "it does not look right" vice "it does not work". One is aesthetic and
the other is logical.

As a developer, I find that I usually only really trust decisions made by data
(via A/B testing, or what have you). Otherwise, there is a quote paraphrased
as "If we are going to use someone's opinion, it may as well be mine." (< not
sure who said that originally).

I think that is the chasm between the two disciplines; really why someone
can't be a great brain-surgeon and psychiatrist. As a self-characterized
developer, I do not want to spend time arguing about the superiority of my
artistic opinions. If this is a characteristic of the 'fixed' mindset that the
article linked, well then.

~~~
bluthru
You seem like someone who would benefit from trying to learn design in
addition to coding, since you don't seem to understand what design is. It's a
classic case of "you don't know what you don't know."

As someone who both designs and codes, your premise is uninformed and
inaccurate.

~~~
tmarthal
Can you tell me how the premise is uninformed and/or inaccurate? I am
interested in learning and will definitely keep an open mind.

------
ritchiea
Finding the time to keep up with the best practices and literature of both
fields at once, despite their overlap, is still a monster.

~~~
ChrisLTD
The fundamentals of both (as opposed to fads) haven't changed much over time.
Even so, I'd grant that keeping up with the latest tools of the trade in
programming is more than enough to keep a person busy.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Try keeping up with the latest tools in design. Its not like designers don't
have a technical component also (e.g. Illustrator for visual work).

~~~
ChrisLTD
The Adobe suite of tools does change, but usually at the margins. Techniques I
learned using Photoshop 5 a decade ago still work just fine in CS6. It's a lot
like Microsoft Office in a way.

------
coldcode
In the first half of my career, early 80's to mid 90's, there was rarely such
thing as an independent UX/UI designer - it was just a specialty of some
programmers. I spent nearly a decade being both a lead programmer and chief
designer of the UI. All three major apps were well received and one still is
on the market today (sadly not updated much). Today it is considered a
distinct specialty though there are still a few folks who practice both.

------
matteodepalo
I believe the biggest issue we developers face is that we cannot wrap our
heads around what makes good design good. We look at a web page and think "wow
this is beautiful and clean", but when we have to create our own, our mind
blanks out. What we fail to see is that design is made out of patterns, just
like programming. The problem is we cannot name those patterns.

I strongly recommend the reading of The Non Designer's Design Book[1]. It does
a good job of explaining the basic principles of design (Contrast, Repetition,
Alignment, Proximity) and constitutes a good start for those like me who have
no prior formal education in design and want to learn how dissect a web page
in its parts.

[1][http://books.google.it/books/about/The_Non_Designer_s_Design...](http://books.google.it/books/about/The_Non_Designer_s_Design_Book.html?id=n1AuwXafMO8C&redir_esc=y)

------
tomphoolery
Design isn't really that hard to grok. Just because you aren't as good with
Photoshop/Illustrator as you are with code doesn't disqualify you from the
pantheon of design. Your code is designed (or at least it should be). If you
do any front-end web development you're pretty much a designer by default,
because you have to think about spacing and interface design concepts as
you're coding. Otherwise, the interface would just be a jumbled mess.

I urge all developers who haven't taken a look at Photoshop or Illustrator to
at least learn your way around it enough to cut out images, do basic touch-up
work, etc. You'll thank yourself for it, and you'll be a better coder in the
end.

~~~
NoPiece
I am very adept at Photoshop and Illustrator. I can cut images, and touch up,
no problem. But I am a miserable designer. Groking design is something way
beyond any skill in an app.

~~~
timc3
Do you want to be? The only way is to practise design, and you will hate your
output for 10 years... If you don't then you are doing something wrong.

------
hcarvalhoalves
Christopher Alexander [1], one of the best designers in my opinion (for his
insights), is an Architect and has a Masters Degree in Mathematics. I highly
recommend reading all his bibliography.

People use "designer" as a synonym of "graphical designer" or "photoshop
pilot" only, when the design discipline is present in anything human-made.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Alexander>

------
computerslol
A great developer needs to be able to foresee the impact his/her work will
have on the choreography, performance, and resources of computer systems.

A great designer needs to be able to foresee the impact his/her work will have
on the lives, perceptions, and interactions of real people.

There are enough easy third party tools to allow anyone with the willpower to
be passable at both.

Examples of masterworks of design and development created by one person are
rare.

------
gcv
As Heinlein said, specialization is for insects.

------
tbatterii
what are these "interface patterns" mentioned in the graphic?

------
_sabe_
Design is about function, not in first hand about esthetics. Now for some
reason good esthetics and good function often correlate, as good esthetics
helps our pattern matching brains to do its work by dividing content in grids,
making text readable, using colors to give things emotional meaning and so on.

Design has always been a subset of a craft. I think when this changed was when
every fucking celebrity would start calling them self clothing designers
without ever been using a sewing machine. So they change their own title from
some kind of manager to DESIGNER because it sounded cool...

And now all fucking hipsters think they can be designers without knowing shit
about the craft in the field they are working in...

