

In Silicon Valley, designers emerge as rock stars - tinio
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/13/us-designers-startup-idUSBRE83C0QG20120413

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adrianhoward
From my perspective it isn't so much that designers are now "rock stars"
(whatever that may be), but that more and more organisations are finally
figuring out that their skills involve a lot more than just making something
look pretty.

You'll be amazed at the number of people who still have that opinion. Hell -
look at one of the subheadings used in the article "SCOUTING FOR ARTISTS" -
designer != art!

The other big issue is just the raw numbers. There are dramatically fewer
designers out there than developers - especially those who have a cross-
section of the skills that the average startup is looking for. It's a good
time to be a design generalist.

In fact, now that I think about it, some of the problems is that organisations
still have that view of "the designer". Hiring that _single_ person who is
going to solve all of their problems. Companies that wouldn't hesitate to hire
a DBA, a back-end dev and a front-end dev don't understand that they should be
hiring a visual designer _and_ an interaction designer (or whatever).

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joelmaat
They haven't figured out a thing. This is just more hype, as was the frontend
engineer push of 2010/2011.. hopefully some designers/engineers can make out
well with all this attention, however. Preferably _talented_ ones.

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adrianhoward
_This is just more hype_

As somebody who makes a chunk of their money from "designer" stuff (not visual
design, but user research, interaction design & user testing) I don't think it
is entirely hype.

Just like you get a lot more people now who get the difference between a
technical co-founder and "just hiring some developer", I'm encountering more
people who understand the value that design can bring to an organisation. The
change is by no means widespread, but there do seem to be more people who "get
it" than their used to be.

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connor
I wonder how this shortage will be solved. There's some cool solutions coming
out in response to the dev shortage- for example, CodeYear. Perhaps similar
resources will emerge for training future designers?

But I'm not sure how effective similar online programs would be. From my
experience, teaching/learning design can be a lot more frustrating than
teaching/learning code. Perhaps it's because design gets a lot more subjective
at the advanced levels.

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codeonfire
Developers hate this stuff. Popularity will never make software work better,
but apparently makes design better. In the past I felt angry that people could
build a 'sham' career based on image. But then I realized that people in
design have to do this because you can't really be a successful anonymous
designer like you can be a successful anonymous developer.

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twiceaday
Seems to me like this is in part due to the ratio of designers to programmers
on most projects; it's much easier to stand out.

