Designers vs. Engineers
tumble.unwieldy.net
tumble.unwieldy.net
A lot of engineers I know have the attitude (it's almost a cliche to say it) that "design is unnecessary; things don't have to be pretty." They say that because they have never experienced great design or have never had a chance to work with great designers. Great designers do not make things pretty; making things pretty for its own sake is frowned upon in the design community. This is not the 19th century when design amounted to putting in as much ornament as you could fit. The best 20th century design was closer to "information design" than to decoration.
Some of the greatest designers of the 20th century were also engineers and architects. Charles Eames was an expert in structural engineering and materials science, which gave him a distinctive edge (Charles and Ray introduced many new materials such as plywood, fiberglass into their furniture designs). Muller Brockmann (inventor of the "grid") was extremely precise (as well as concise) with his poster layouts -- as precise as any engineer is with the blueprints.
A related tendency some engineers have is that they dismiss the expertise of people who went to a design school or an art school. They assume (incorrectly) that whatever they themselves "like" will also be liked by other people. In this regard, I blame engineers more than I blame designers. Designers (at least all the good ones) understand that engineering is a complex domain and that they have to listen to the words of people who have studied it and/or are doing it professionally. Engineers, on the other hand, have this tendency to look down on art and design as "soft" subjects, to view them as unnecessary, and they tend to be dismissive of people who studied it. This attitude is self-defeating, however, since it only contributes to the proliferation of bad designs, which in turn gives the advantage to good designs because they start to be seen as "rare" and distinctive.
I agree, whole hearted-ly. But I also think that, with effort, those opinions can be changed.
I have a similar background as the Author - brief stint in a Fine Arts school, went to college for Graphic/Web Design, transitioned into web and desktop development. I work in a "Enterprise Java" shop with tons of guys with Computer Engineering Degrees that think like this.
When I was hired it was like "here comes this girl talking about making things look pretty, blah blah". But I found after I just designed some apps (simple to use, nice-looking) and users started complimenting it, they started to change their minds. After awhile explaining to them what makes for good designs (simplicity, subtlety, small details, alignment, etc.) and why, a lot of those things started to work their way into our products.
In my opinion, most people that don't appreciate good design just haven't been exposed to the knowledge to appreciate it or just need to see concrete benefits.
Edit: It also helps win them over faster if you can write good code behind the designs too.
This stems from kindergarten, really. This is where we start telling children that everyone's aesthetic opinions are correct. When anybody complains, the standard answer is "hey, that's his opinion, and it's just as valid as yours." A designer is taught the basics of universal aesthetics, and this quote: “Don’t try to be original, just try to be good.”
However, there exist things such as the golden measure, which are inherently more attractive, measurably and proven, to humans. This is why gothic architecture seems so alien, and why their paintings are messed up... their definition of proper proportion was incorrect. They felt the human body was an ugly vessel for the soul, and that churches should reach to God. It took us a while to realize that neo-classical Greek architecture and sculpting was inherently correct, that things need to be based on Φ to be human.
Look at a Macbook Pro. It's beautiful. I know a few Windows developers who HATE the mac operating system, but run a MBP because the hardware is so nice, so good looking. This is in contrast to the personal preference of some fantasy lover who decks a computer out with skulls and blue lights. There is a human style that is universal, but often clouded by personal and cultural preferences. Our things are based on our proportions: the traditional musical scale is based on pitch segments of what the human voice is capable of. Because of this common design thread, there are solutions that are more inherently correct and pleasing than others. You don't ever hear an engineer complain about mathematical beauty.
The reason most people don't say anything about design? They don't have words for it, and without those words they can't understand a concept. I've taught friends about typography and they suddenly start to develop a design aesthetic, much like your photography skills. This is fairly similar to a culture with no concept of higher numbers: one, two, many.
Start here: http://moma.org/explore/collection/index
I think tech start-ups could benefit by taking cues from architecture, where the relationship between designers and engineers is reversed, design having priority over engineering. Serious architects can go so far as to believe that design has priority over even physics -- and sometimes with good reason. Many designs have been declared by engineers to be "impossible" only to be successfully built. Usually after the architect yells enough. Of course, despite being notoriously difficult, such architects are bound to have immense value for engineers with enough creativity to execute their ambitious plans. And I'm sure that the engineers love the challenge of working with them. At any rate, it would be interesting to see the results of talented coders being challenged by the best designers in this manner.
"To an engineer, design seems like an unnecessary and tangental part of the creation process. “It just needs to work,” we say, “it doesn’t need to be pretty!”"
I don't personally know any programmers who would say this (with full recognition that everyone's personal experience can be unrepresentative). What I have heard developers say (well, not quite so bluntly), is "I don't need designers to help me create software, I just need them to pretty it up at the end." This, of course, trivializes the designer's role in the development process.
Some designers take an approach that marginalizes programmers just as badly - "I don't need programmers to help me create software, I just need them to code up my vision."
I actually have seen both approaches result in usable software. Intricate wireframes to the nth detail finally handed over to an antisocial programmer who just codes it up has worked. Programmers who write an ap, and then hand it off to a "designer" who pretties it up with nice fonts and borders has worked. But it's better when they work together throughout the process, and it's best when all members of the team have skills in both areas.
To me, this is actually one of those situations where the more you can get into a single head, the better. The programmers are probably in a slightly stronger situation, since they can ship and they all have some ability to create UI, whereas I know a lot of designers who simply can't code. So the designers with no programming skkills can't write software without the help of a programmer, whereas a programmer with poor design skills would probably just write crappy software.
But ultimately, I think the problem here is notion that designer and programmer are exclusive terms. People will lean one way or the other, but you just can't score a zero in one of these two categories.
Also, using Google circa 1999 as an example of great design through engineering is way behind the times. Look up what Douglas Bowman had to say about his tenure as Design Director at Google, and you will find quantification outrules design qualification at Google – if they can't measure it, it's worse by definition.
Today, Google is a UI mess, as they haven't changed with the times, and keep adding content to their once clean design. (Even KISS sites need to be refreshed).
Finally, he missed the opportunity to dispel another Engineers' myth about design, by lauding the addition of the Google logotype as exemplary design – as if slapping a new logo onto an engineer's layout somehow transforms a Plain Jane site into high design. We're not in 1999 anymore, and the bar is higher.
Overall, the assertions are correct, however, I feel that the author could have taken the time to come up with better/deeper examples to help prove his points.
Its not just the Google homepage; Android's UI is outright hideous, and while 99% of what matters in a search engine is results, a smartphone is too multifaceted in function to neglect a clean, working, uniform UI to organize the chaos of features into something that people can figure out.
I suspect this is why Android hasn't moved beyond the fellow nerds in my circle of friends.
Where do you recommend an engineer should go to learn the basics of good design/typography etc?
Like engineering, design is something you learn through experience. You can be taught the basic patterns and rules of thumb easily enough. You will however, end up running into situations where things don't fit nicely into those patterns pretty quickly.