

UX is making me dumb - wallflower
http://dougmccune.com/blog/2009/09/21/ux-is-making-me-dumb/

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teilo
Of course, we could just turn this around entirely and ask the UX guy, "Why
can't we add feature X?" And his response could just as well be: "I don't
know. I just design UI. I don't code it."

UX doesn't make you dumber. We really need the UX guys, but what we __don't
__need is to compartmentalize them from the developers. This is a two-way
street. UX needs to understand code enough to be able to read it and follow
it. Coders need to be able to work within an existing UI design and not make
it suck if they need to extend it or change it.

I have seen this work REALLY well. But what will break it every time is the
"not my problem" attitude expressed in this post. It's not the fault of the UX
paradigm when people abuse the necessary separation between design and code.

~~~
gb
Exactly. I'm an "interaction designer", basically a combination of the two; I
design and code the UI. Often there is someone directing the overall UX, but
the nitty gritty specifics of the UI functionality are my department.

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cpr
He has a good point, but I think the problem is more that developers don't
want to take the time to really think through the user experience--they want
to jump in and code.

I'm doing "user experience" design this whole week, for a fairly simple
project, and it's darned tedious work. But it's worth it in the end.

And, of course, once we start coding, we'll have to modify things as we go,
and as we get user feedback...

~~~
dougmccune
Yup, my point wasn't at all that there's something wrong with UX design in
general or the people doing UX design. It was an observation about myself that
I noticed happening a few times. I found myself turning off the "UX part" of
my brain and copping out by throwing questions back to our UX guy that I
should have been able to do myself. Somehow the distinction of a UX-specific
job title and role made me get lazy when it came to designing good software.
This was really just a wake-up call to remind myself that good design is (and
always should have been) a key part of my job.

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ahoyhere
Let me retitle that for you.

"Other people doing work I could theoretically do, at least in part, is making
me lazy."

It's got nothing to do with UX and he even admits it. Linkbait.

