

Fire your designer - michokest
http://blog.teambox.com/fire-your-designer
Why do programmers learn new technologies all the time, while designers are stuck in the 90s with their mockups?
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wmeredith
This is a good article, but the inflammatory title basically guarantees that
those who would benefit the most from reading it, designers, are going to be
on the defensive going in. And that's if they would even read it at all having
come across it online.

I spend a lot of time at my job fixing design by designers who don't code, and
I'd love for them to read it, but I'm not going to waste my time. (I'm a
usability guy/front-end developer who does know how to code and design.)

~~~
nym
Also as a front end developer (who does UX / design), I think I can get about
80% in most situations, but the additional 20% is what makes sites like airbnb
stand out so much.

In those cases, I'm happy to hire someone and code it myself, after all, I'd
much rather they be knock-your-socks-off-good at web design than someone who
is only decent at design, and okay at integrating.

~~~
kls
Right, as a front end shop, we have found that having the two disciplines
segmented works very well. We find the best artist we can find and task them
with developing a PSD to deliver to the UX team.

We get people that are really, really good artist and that is what we want
from them a good artistic comp. Trying to force them to cross the bound to
writing HTML and CSS that will be used in a complex web application adds
additional constraints to finding talented people.

In that case we would need an exceptional artist that can write HTML and CSS
that is componentized so we can bust it up into widgets, if not we accept sub-
par HTML for what we need. It limits the pool of talent.

Now conversely if we only require a comp we broaden our pool of truly talented
people. Further when we go to look for good browser app UX developers, we
don't put the constraint on them of being an exceptional artist. Just finding
someone who is versed in Human Factors, HCI and interaction that can produce
clean reusable code is hard enough, throw in top 10%er artistic skills and you
have really constrained the market.

Instead of fighting those market realities we work with them. We hire artist
to do art and developers to develop. It works out well because each are
exceptional at their core competencies. It also works well because we can hire
freelance artist on a per project basis therefore maximizing out investment in
art instead of trying to force an artist to do HTML to keep them busy on the
pay roll.

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gallerytungsten
This is an entertaining article, as far as programming rants go. But some
points were overlooked. Pablo asks, "Seriously, why can’t this person learn
HTML? It’s their job to produce results, after all."

Ok, fair enough to ask. Here's the answer. As a creative director, art
director and designer, I deal extensively with the business case for the
project, the marketing, the concept and copy writing, editing, photography,
illustration, layout, information design, domain name selection, branding, and
several other areas. (There are in fact many people who specialize in just one
of the areas I mentioned above; and I’ll note that no one asks these
specialists why they don’t know CSS.) Every one of those areas is about
“producing results.” Would it be fair or reasonable to ask a programmer to
learn all of the above? I don't think so.

Beyond the points of fairness and reasonableness is the point that while
design is about "how it works," (which is a very deep area I won't delve into
at the moment) the issue of "how it looks" is also a major part of it. If the
visual appearance doesn’t satisfy the requirements, no amount of CSS expertise
will save the day.

Furthermore, those who have expertise in making things look good (in addition
to the other areas I mentioned above) often have no interest or ability in
coding. In fact, they are working in a (primarily) visual discipline because
they have a distaste for coding, if they’ve tried it; or simply a total lack
of interest.

I might point out that print design (in contrast to web design) is completely
isolated from involvement with code. When I hit the “print” button, my
software will generate the PostScript code for me. In this respect, the tools
for print design are far ahead of those for web design.

Have you ever opened up a PostScript file? I can assure you, it’s several
orders of magnitude more complex than an html/css file. No one would ever ask
a designer to edit the PostScript code; such a ludicrous request would be
dismissed out of hand. (Although I had to do some PostScript editing many
times when I worked in prepress.)

Getting back to the Pablo’s question, I have to turn it around and ask: why
isn’t there a “visual design” tool with the ease of, say, QuarkXPress, that
can output programmer-friendly code? Serious question. While Quark can in fact
output html, it’s very bad html. Likewise, one constantly hears complaints
about the code generated by Dreamweaver and other tools that offer a modicum
of visual editing. There’s clearly a market opportunity for software that can
bring the sophistication and ease of use that print designers enjoy to the
wide world of web design. (Anyone interested in exploring that market
opportunity should contact me.)

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micheljansen
Judging from the title I would say that is about the worst advice one could
give. I think most if not all problems of this nature stem from the artificial
disconnect between design & implementation and the general idea of a designer
as a "person who draws nice pictures". If you treat design like this, you get
what you pay for (and from what I taste in the article, the term "css monkey"
would be more apt). This article from 2009 illustrates nicely what I mean:
[http://www.osnews.com/story/22135/The_Problem_with_Design_an...](http://www.osnews.com/story/22135/The_Problem_with_Design_and_Implementation)

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DavidPP
To me it's seem he put more than one "job" under the designer bucket.

To me, an integrator (HTML / front-end JS) an art director, a usubility expert
are different roles. Can you find somebody that do all this ? Of course, but
if you just hire a "designer" without being more specific about your needs,
you will end up in a situation like this.

~~~
pan69
This is where a lot of the problems come from. To many "designers" think that
they're also usability experts and information architects. The main problem
comes from the fact that those disciplines can be subjective in their nature.
A lot of decision making in those roles is about personal "opinion" as in;
"Well, I think the search box should sit in the top-left corner of the page".
What's easier than stating your opinion? And we all love doing that. A lot of
employers simply do not understand this.

~~~
ThomPete
Actually to few designers do ux and vice versa.

~~~
pan69
Did you meant to say; Few designers "understand" ux and vica vera?

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Neputys
A piece of advice for you programming guys so you won't need to waist your
time on stuff like this (maybe it's for some "designers" too):

Car designer has to work within constrains (materials, engineering, production
capabilities, market so on ). He has to understand these things at least a
little bit, work them out with colleagues from respective fields.

So does web designer, product designer, packaging designer, book designer and
so on. This is why they are called designers and not artists (constrains,
utilitarian purpose). The term it self means that this person understands
aesthetics _plus_ has other knowledge of working in a specific field.

So if you hire some guy who can draw a nice face or make a poster to do your
interface, sorry but this is your problem. You would be surprised how many
designers out there start with wire frames, user interviews and glancing
through ux and usability books before they even think about doing anything in
PS.

@michokest: I have to use teambox on one project now, possibly it's a good
thing that you fired yours.

~~~
kls
I think it depends on your process, we do all of our wires we do all of the
usability and PWD accessibility up front, once completed we take those wires
to an "artist" who makes it pretty add related imagery, color scheme, etc
based on those wires. We then receive a PSD comp from the artist that we then
slice into the HTML templates. This works well and is an integral part of our
process. We are firm believers in letting artist do the art and UX developers
do the workflow and arrangements. This process works well for us and allow us
to use the best skill sets from each contributor. This way we don't have to
rely on "secondary skills" as we call them.

~~~
Neputys
Is the way things look&feel not a part of usability and especially UX? And how
can a designer make it right if he is not familiar with actual problems or
requirements?

If he does not care, it's his problem but if you don't then you should not
blame him for anything.

btw, Isn't UX secondary for a developer too?

~~~
kls
_Is the way things look &feel not a part of usability and especially UX?_

It depends, color pallet selection would be an example, we have a specific
pallet that we use that works for color blind individuals, that pallet was
created by our UX professionals, it is provided to the artist as a requirement
of the project. What colors that are selected out of that pallet is a function
of the artist job.

A/B testing, what color schemes work well is the function of the usability
analyst. As that is not a detail that can be front ran.

These are three distinct roles and sure you can hire one guy and he may be
decent in 2 but 10 to 1 he is not going to be top of the industry in all 3. 1
if you are lucky, so you have to make the decision do you want one guy doing 2
sun par secondary responsibilities or 3 guys doing their primary role better
than any one guy could do all three. That is not to say that you don't have
generalist, we have a good deal of them but when it comes to art, if you want
the best generalist is generally not a skill set that you want to look for.

~~~
Neputys
it's so depressing to read this...

~~~
kls
Why so, our process works very well, we are very happy with how we have
streamlined it and our developers are really happy to work this way. We offer
them the ability to develop skills in the other areas, if they show interest,
we just don't impose unrealistic requirements on them. We would rather have a
few top of the industry guys in their field that 3 guys that can do it all,
but average. With our market and our clientele they demand it and we do our
best to accommodate it while providing a great work environment for our
developers.

~~~
Neputys
Well that was political...:)

Look it's obvious that you have some kind of grudge against designers. For
your own good at least see the enemy you respect...

~~~
kls
Thank you for speaking for me, and telling me what my grudges are. I
appreciate it. As a design and development company we sure treat these people
that I have a grudge against really well. In fact I believe that my hiring the
best of the best is what made us who we are and made me successful. I respect
each discipline a great deal and pay 20% above industry and equity for people
that stay with our org for more than 4 years. All of them UX, Designer,
developer and artist.

Just because I know that as a general rule of thumb, one person can not be the
best of the best in all three does not mean I have a grudge against them. I
have some generalist who are excellent in all three, but they are rare and
that is a market reality.

It just means I know that there are a lot of hacks that pass themselves off as
masters of all three. When the reality is they usually have mediocre skills in
HCI if any at all. I have never seen an industry where people pass themselves
off as a professional of a field of scientific study, when they have never
cracked a book on HCI and have no idea what human factors is. In any other
study this would be considered fraud. Just because I know that 80% of
designers have no exposure to HCI methods, does not mean that I dislike or
have a grudge against them. It just means that they need to either be trained
in HCI or not allowed to own that task in my orginization. They are distinctly
different disciplines and require completely different education and toolsets.
If that depresses you then so be it, but don't accuse me of bias because you
don't like or don't know the facts. It is incredulous and a logical fallacy.

~~~
Neputys
"who are excellent in all three" what do you mean by three?

~~~
kls
There are three recognized formal disciplines in web front end. I have listed
them in my posts, ad nauseum. They are HCI, Developer and Artist. They require
separate fields of study. The first is a psychological field of study, the
second is an computer science fields of study and the last is studied in the
arts. Some people cross all three, few do it well. Many from the latter two,
lack any knowledge of HCI but pass themselves off as experts in the field.

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doron
A point needs to be made that most design software is proprietary software and
does not lend itself to version control systems. It would make little
difference if you upload a PSD file to git, if there is no real way to parse
the changes.

Version control systems oriented toward "creative" are very visual and
expensive (like alienbrain) primarily due to the fact that the cost of adding
proprietary format parsing capability. And you will not be able to convince
the vast majority of designers to use Gimp or inkscape.

I would say that the web developer community needs to promote use of open
formats for design composition, perhaps if we can get rid of AI and PSD as
standard compositional formats we will make some progress, it is starting to
work with Flash.

~~~
showerst
There are a few free/cheap version control systems out there for PSDs.

Pixelnovel timeline is reasonably good, although currently their storage plans
are quite small. Adobe's own version cue server (which they annoyingly
discontinued) is pretty usable as well.

Hopefully the Adobe Drive stuff they've recently rolled out will end up
integrated into one of the big (D)VCS's, so we can finally start managing
digital assets as easily as code.

I don't think that you're ever going to get the dev community to force format
changes on Adobe, because the chances or someone really building a solid
competitor that you'd need to pass files back and forth from are so low.

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pan69
This is very much a real world problem. It seems that the author of this post
has written it out of frustration, hence the title. But in the end, I couldn't
agree more. If you are a visual designer and you solely design websites and
you can't do HTML/CSS, you have no business being in that role. Period.

Related post: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1692932>

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indiejade
From the standpoint of a developer who _specializes_ in design, the problem is
NOT (as the article states) "the designer doesn't know HTML" vs "the designer
only knows HTML". The problem is people (programmers or not) who don't
understand how design fits into the process, sequentially.

Cases in point are sites like 99designs and crowdSPRING that launch projects
for "uncoded" web designs. My solution: <http://www.hackeress.com>

Yeah, the site is not finished yet. But it relates to this discussion.

~~~
qbert
Please tell me that's meant to be a parody site of bad design and bad code.

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scsmith
I'm with you on this. I think there should be a closer integration of design
and development and not a 'handoff' from one to the other. We have been using
the pattern that Ryan Singer discusses in this talk
<http://thinkvitamin.com/design/ryan-singer-fowa-london-2010/> It was
reassuring to see that 37 signals used the same pattern as us.

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zeemonkee
So an average web developer is expected to know (for example) PHP|Ruby|Python,
one or more frameworks, SQL, one or more RDBMS, linux, bash + sed|awk|grep
etc, memcached, nginx, apache, SSL, HTML, CSS, JavaScript + Jquery or other
framework, git/hg/svn, a number of algorithms, design patterns and development
strategies. And that's not an exhaustive list.

A designer is expected to know Photoshop and... ?

~~~
kadavy
You're speaking as if knowing the tool is the only requirement of being a
designer. Good designers need to understand concept development, composition,
color, and design principles. Additionally, it really helps if they understand
product development and marketing, because those are also integral to creating
great designs.

That said, I'm shocked that it seems to be difficult to find designers who
also know HTML/CSS. Designers should definitely know how to use these tools as
well.

~~~
zeemonkee
Good developers should also understand product development and marketing,
basic UI principles, and good software design. Obviously you are more than the
sum of the tools you use.

That said, it's expected of developers that they continually learn new tools
or improve their knowledge of existing ones. It seems however the same does
not apply to designers.

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OSButler
Reminds me of a request I got from a webdesigner once, who needed a php
backend developer for her projects. Turns out that her work was to design the
site in photoshop and then it would have been my turn to put this into HTML &
CSS. I still don't know what the php developer requirement had to do with that
work and why she needed a developer to do the designer work...

~~~
wccrawford
I had a job lead that wanted an 'expert PHP programmer' and then wanted me to
do the same: Slice up PSDs and create well-formed HTML and CSS from it. It was
even at a well-respected company.

'Expert programmer' doesn't mean what it used to, apparently.

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sfphotoarts
Interesting article, but reading it with the text left aligned with no margin
is a very fundamental design flaw that ruined it for me. I'm not being
pedantic, but typography and type layout is a fundamental aspect of the user
experience.

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gimenete
Good article. But it's hard to find a good designer with all those skills.

