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Comment by seivan | Hacker News Reader

This article pisses me off something immensely. How about you learn to fucking code your own design?

'Yet we’re at the mercy of our teams. We can design beautiful, intricate, delightful details — but we can’t build, test, and deploy them all.'

No shit, so how about you stop being one of those lazy-ass photoshop goons who play fucking color-the-button on dribble all day long and actually learn to code your own fucking interface, either in Cocoa, JS, CSS or whatever.

This ain't the 80's no more. Software Engineers that work on front-facing stuff can and have learned design. Not just graphical design but even interaction design and designing slick user experiences.

Though I can't speak for all platforms, most Web & iOS developers I've met can do all that photoshop pixel-perfection bullshit _AND_ code the interface.

Which makes me hard to think why even have these photoshop-cowboys.

'We can design beautiful, intricate, delightful details'

The .psd file or your design ideas isn't worth anything. Fuck you if you call yourself a designer and can't work on the final medium.

EDIT: Pardon the tone.

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Tone aside, I can't help but agree. My previous job (web shop) hired supposedly "rockstar" designers on several occasions, and the results were frustrating, time-consuming and in the end, largely worthless.

What did not help was that those people had "print design" backgrounds, my bosses loved the rendered (hard) designs, and not having any design or development knowledge themselves, these sorts of ludicrous standards were somehow becoming the norm.

So we ended up spending as much time trying to render some goddamn rounded corner with a gradient for all browsers than we did implementing actual functionality, generally causing us to cut corners all around (no pun intended)...

In my opinion, a good designer should know the limitations of the tools according to context and resources. As far as I know, you never hear of car designers asking the engineers to somehow find enough space for the engine, or an architect telling you that the plumber will have to somehow figure out where to put the pipes in his 36.3cm thick walls.

This is 2014 and I don't think there's a place for single-skill design queens any longer. As a developer I have to learn a new language pretty much every 6 months, and generally speaking new technologies far more often. So surely, the argument that "true" designers should not have to learn CSS (or related) is moot and let's be honest, arrogant.

To me, it's very much like the idea that politics or philosophy by themselves are vacuous. The world isn't waiting for your design like it's a god-send, you're making the design because you were asked to, by real people with real needs, all of whom, designer included, have to put food on the table.

You put it better than I do. I wish I could replace my comment with yours.

I would generally agree, any good designer I have worked with have been able to code for the most part html, css. Even if it is just dreamweaver or what ever. And being able to do those and have a general idea of how things work on the web allows him/her to produce significantly better designs then someone who has been doing print his entire life.

Where architecture is concerned this is normally true, but the exceptions are interesting/illustrative. When Frank Gehry was designing the Guggenheim Bilbao, he took stiff cloth and folded it into the final shape. Actually, y'know, making the building was someone else's problem.

This is the equivalent of implementing the design in Flash :)

To me, a designer sits astride form and function, melding them both. If you're not doing form, then you're an artist, not a designer.

edit: if you're not doing function. whoops.

Why do you assume all designers are even working on HTML/CSS apps? When you get down to mobile, do you expect them to be able to code in C++/ObjectiveC/Java?

A good designer will understand the limitations of the platform they are designing for. My wife designs for S40 feature phones with plenty of limitations. There is plenty of back and forth between development and design to ensure that the design works with the limitations of the software and hardware (though devs often push back too soon).

The solution, of course, is to pair with the designers, and say they can't leave until the edits are done for all supported interfaces.

Every time. Every page.

Their designs will become more practical quickly, or the library needed to support their vision will organically grow. But they need to be in the room with real consequences for their PSDs.

>>> My previous job (web shop) hired supposedly "rockstar" designers on several occasions.

In my experience, you can have designers who know the web and you can have graphic designers who don't have a clue about the web, yet decide they want to be "web" designers.

The latter seem to pop up more frequently these days and I would agree it is frustrating, time consuming and incredibly worthless. Worst yet, are graphic design firms trying to get into the web and use your company as their guinea pig. Again, completely worthless.

As such, I've taken quite a bit of time to learn design myself so I have at least some authority to call bullshit on stuff they try to pull and head them off at the pass. It this point, it's been my only defense and has been somewhat successful in not allowing these types to poison the well so to speak.

The age of the non developing designer is drawing to a close; Responsive design alone may be their undoing and good riddance I say, they've been designing to their mediums weaknesses for too long. So in awe are they of their own perceived brilliance that the strengths are a total mystery to them.

I cut my teeth as a print designer and the same old complaints were there then. The designer wants an 8 page gatefold as a single page can't possibly be expected to bear the weight of their genius. Nothing less than spot varnish and gold foil will do, costs and timeframe so be dammed. The main difference being, back then when something went to print that was the end of the deign process. The web has made designers greedy and lazy. I honestly can not remember the last time I was handed a finished psd. Designer like to state as fact that they can't be expected to finish a design without first seeing a half baked idea of something built for their amusement first. To this I say: if Einstein can postulate the theory of relativity by imagining himself atop a photon travelling away from a star at the speed of light, then it's not unreasonable for a designer to imagine what the site will "feel like" with parallax scrolling.

I love design, and rather than whinge and moan about how everyone else didn't care, I learnt code. Articles like the one linked to here reak of self entitlement and laziness.

> This is 2014 and I don't think there's a place for single-skill design queens any longer.

I know what you're saying. But it reminds me that I would have loved to make a website with Jan Tschichold, Paul Rand, or so many other graphic designers who never even knew the web. (I'm sure they would also be interested in learning the details of the medium, even if they didn't want to code for it.)

This is really wrong, and the arrogant tone doesn't help a bit.

The truth is that a designer who spends 100% of his time doing design will definitely be better at design than a designer who spends 50% time designing and 50% time developing. These are two very different skill sets (even though their fundamentals may be closer).

Anyway, a good designer's decision to move something 3px to the left should be respected (because he knows better - he's a good designer). And moving a button 3px to the left shouldn't be a problem for any self-respecting developer.

You don't think the engineers platform specific knowledge will have any impact what so ever? And where do you draw the line between engineering and designing?

An engineer can design their design as they go along and iterate on it.

Recently I've been doing my iOS design through SCSS and it helps having sizes, gradients and colors as variables, fonts as mixins and the ability to change them at runtime. Does that count as designing or engineering?

Your truth is not the truth, it's more like bullshit. I don't specifically know what the truth is - but I do know that I'd pick an engineer that can design over a designer 10/10 times. Regardless of your 'truth'.

The problem of engineers designing UIs is the topic of one of my favorite books: http://www.amazon.com/The-Inmates-Are-Running-Asylum/dp/0672...

The problem is that engineers are not very good at UI design. Both from UX and aesthetic standpoints designers are capable of making a better product. A good designer will give a consistently better result than a good engineer in terms of usability, UX, aesthetics and modularity.

Cats aren't very good at catching sticks an dogs aren't very good at catching mice. Therefore you can't have the dogs trying to do what a cat can do....

Except design is different. As a developer, once you have worked with some PSD efforts a few times and then worked with real dynamic content then worked with a real client to get the thing to actually convert sales, then worked with the client stats you have got a good grasp of when something is right on the design front. Plus you can open the css and do something about it. Or you can open up some stuff on the server side or put in some hack with javascript to get the usability to what it should be.

Designers are completely out of the loop after go live, they have done their 'lorem ipsum' stuff. Proficiency at UX comes from delivering the deliverables, testing, testing and testing. Listening to the client and the customers. It does not come from a few static designs.

I have never heard of a designer wanting access to the css to make that 3px change. They are welcome to it. They would make my day if they wanted to do that stuff. They do design for the web and the css is really over to them if they want to do it. The problem is that they would have to learn what a border is, what a margin is and what padding is. It is not difficult stuff.

The whole point of CSS is that the presentation is a separate thing to the content. Any developer would be happy to churn out the content blocks and sensible markup and hand it over to one of these PSD experts for them to get exactly to their 3px requirements. But in the real world it does not happen. Developers can dive in and fix something at silly o clock on a Sunday, but would anyone ever call a designer at such times even if it was a UX issue that was the problem?

Obviously there are some fantastic designers out there - allegedly - but, in general, designers don't do the hard stuff or even bother to work with live content. Far too many of them produce static nonsense in PSD format - a trade that should have been pronounced dead the nanosecond the iphone came out. They also perpetuate this myth that all developers are totally retarded when it comes to anything to do with aesthetics. Yet it is the developers that implement design, learning along the way. Rarely if ever is it the other way around, and, should a designer dare to do that they will get clumped in as a 'front end developer' and have some retarded PSDs foisted on them by some manager that thinks only designers can have any input whatsoever regarding UX/UI design.

How often do you think a developer tests something? A given page can be tested 100's of times. Along the way 'this checkbox might not be needed' or 'this dialogue box makes no sense' or 'this process is tedious' gets discovered. The guys with their PSDs just do not have that insight.

> As a developer, once you have worked with some PSD efforts a few times and then worked with real dynamic content then worked with a real client to get the thing to actually convert sales, then worked with the client stats you have got a good grasp of when something is right on the design front.

Most designers do not use photoshop these days; its all Illustrator vector format for anything but touch up. There are still some pixel junkies left, but these are mostly programmers pretending to be poor designers.

> Designers are completely out of the loop after go live, they have done their 'lorem ipsum' stuff.

Only in a failing company that doesn't have real designers or doesn't know how to manage designers.

> Proficiency at UX comes from delivering the deliverables, testing, testing and testing. Listening to the client and the customers. It does not come from a few static designs.

So you are saying designers are bad at UX because they don't conform to your narrow minded idea of what designers are?

From my point of view, you haven't worked with good designers at all. All the good designers I know work hard on their research (both theoretical and concrete, regarding their current projects) and user testing afterwards. In many companies designers are required to work with analysts to improve ROI of their products.

Although I completely agree that PSD is a terrible format for web design. I myself have been using Indesign and try to insist on designers using it when I develop.

100% designers only happen at the very bottom or with design teams. A hands-on design dev knows what's simple vs complicated and can design for it. They will easily outmatch a single designer.

I can't speak to the parent's tone, but having worked with excellent designers who can and cannot code, I have often found that those who have made the choice to learn to code, even just a little, produce a better outcome.

You see the same thing on the flip side of the coin with frontend engineers who make the effort to learn about typography, color, emotion, etc. Broader skillsets produce better software.

Related - moving a button 3px to the left shouldn't be a problem for any self-respecting designer, either.

> moving a button 3px to the left shouldn't be a problem for any self-respecting developer

That's exactly the kind of thinking that developers abhore. Imagine that the whole interface is built on top of a planned framework that follows strict rules and conventions. This button is following the exact spacing and dimensions implemented in the framework, nevertheless the designer's static mockup is different for some reason (i.e. designed in photoshop).

Now, moving this specific button 3px to the left could be as easy as a `margin-left: -3px` or some other simple line of code, but that is a hack/code smell that will be met with contempt from everyone who looks at it in the future, a maintenance burden, and is deviating from the established standards created in collaboration with the designers themselves...

Other possible scenarios are interpolation mismatches, rendering differences between browsers, padding/borders unaccounted for in the original design, dynamic content that by chance nearly aligns to other element, etc etc. Very rarely is the case that the developer simply wrote 6px instead of 3px by mistake.

This happens way, way too often, and the resistance offered by developers is completely understandable.

> Now, moving this specific button 3px to the left could be as easy as a `margin-left: -3px` or some other simple line of code, but that is a hack/code smell that will be met with contempt from everyone who looks at it in the future

Yep, that's a compromise. But if it makes the product better overall, it must be done. If the designer says so, I believe them -- and if I say that a designer's request would lead to a significant setback for our production schedule, they believe me. It's not the matter of designer/developer interaction, it's the matter of product value.

I too abhor such things, but when a designer asks for it, I do "position: relative; left: 3px;". This is exactly what relative positioning was made for, and it makes the developer's intent obvious.

position:relative creates a new stacking context that could interfere with other styles.

Anyway, one-off hacks like that every full moon are not an issue to most developers, but you'll usually see they come in a constant trickle; after experiencing that for a couple years a strong emotional response naturally develops :)

There's no point in arguing about this without context, since it's really all about the context. That is to say - depending on the framework/code base/whatever you're working in, just "do[ing] position: relative; left: 3px;" for a specific page element could actually be quite a chore. Not just now, but for the next guy as well.

Furthermore, moving the button 3 px to the left might take a ridiculous number of man hours, and it's demoralizing work. Most coders are making smart trade offs and balancing a number of things to maximize productivity. How much is that 3 pixels really worth? Why don't you try again, and think of a way to design the interface that doesn't require that 3px move?

> How much is that 3 pixels really worth?

It's the developer's responisbility to estimate how much work a particular task requires. If it's too much work for too little benefit, no sane manager/designer would insist on that 3px move.

I'm uncomfortable with the sheer number of insane managers within our industry.

Having just been asked to move something by 1 em, I agree.

Heh. Eyeballed it, didn't they? "What's that look like, about 1 em?"

'Anyway, a good designer's decision to move something 3px to the left should be respected (because he knows better - he's a good designer). And moving a button 3px to the left shouldn't be a problem for any self-respecting developer.'

Not arrogant at all. Jeez.

Sorry about that. Your post got me all worked up!

I think you need to define 'design'.

If you mean beautiful mockups than will win a contract with a client and that's all, perhaps your 100% photoshop person will be the best suited.

If you mean building an interface acknowledging harmony of the UX, the user and clients needs, the medium, the strengths and weaknesses of the platform it will be built onto, the project budget and the maintenance afterwards, a 50% person will be thousand times more valuable.

> moving a button 3px to the left

I think it's a stereotype of the request the lay man doesn't get but can cause a project to lose hours or days of dev if the request just goes through. If 3px from where your button is is another component, just imagine that component also being bind to specific size and placement rules (or like, it's actually not your component but some other library's one), and moving that button 3px might mean rebuilding the whole screen.

If it's such a big deal, just say no. I think the article would, too, argue "why you shouldn't move that button 3px to the left if it makes you rebuild the whole screen".

Totally agree. And I think the person saying no also has to explain the scope of the change. If it's actually waranted to rebuilt the whole screen for 3px at least everyone will understand the pros and cons and respect the amount of work that will be done.

Ignoring the really really harsh and overly rude tone.

I wonder what the difference would be if this was posted on a designer version of hackernews.

The problem with your comment is you assume everyone can dabble in everything. When you work at a big co you are hired generally to do one thing, and that's it. Designers don't touch code. Developers don't touch designs. So while Sue may be able to do CSS, JS, Cocoa but isn't allowed anymore then Bob isn't allow to open up photoshop and start "playing color the fucking button on dibbble all day long".

Designers often don't even have time to touch code, even if they could. When your organization has more trouble hiring designers than devs, you need your designers doing design 120% of the time.

If you're utilizing your designers 120% time, you've got a business problem and aren't paying enough.

Definitely, ideally you should manage your business so that all your specialists are busy doing their specialties. Designer salaries should rise if they are harder to find than devs are.

"The problem with your comment is you assume everyone can dabble in everything."

How is it unreasonable to assume that a designer should dabble in web development? That's hardly 'everything' and it's highly relevant to their work and goals. Frankly it's remarkable to me that web designers can still get jobs without taking the time to acquire an in-depth knowledge of the engineering stack they're designing for, even if they don't work with it on a day-to-day basis.

Yes, that article felt somewhat arrogant. Designers should shut up about the obsession with details etc. already, it's getting annoying. We get it, ok?

I sometimes design too and must say, programming is harder -- it's more intellectually demanding, less rewarding and on average more frustrating. That's why I value programmers' work more.

I'm a programmer and a shitty designer. While I can get 'minified'/simplified designs, I could never (at least not without a lot more practice) get to the point where I'm creating beautiful works of art out of my UI. Sometimes I see designs that are just so fantastic - this has happened so many times in history that those designs become fads to standards and then 'old' (see Flat UI). I think a designer's job is equally hard, and when there is no innovation or problem solving (you're not creating something unique - following the fad?) then it's along the same lines of using pre-existing software and making only small changes to it to make it useable for you (Wordpress plugins and themes).

TL;DR: Good designers who create new or unique works are different from designers who follow the trends and make similar/copy-cat designs. Just as a programmer who uses pre-existing software is different from someone who is building one from scratch.

I have worked with numerous programmers who try to avoid front end design because they just can't wrap their head around it. They can write great code that is easy to read and works great, but when they have to make an elegant or pretty design, they struggle.

Both designs and programmers work should be valued when it's good.

I've worked with Braden (the author) and he can indeed code - he built a mean prototype for some user testing we were doing. You can see in the second half of the article that he also makes the argument for pragmatism and working what is provided by the platform.

Obviously you have strong designers and weak designers. The strong designers are focused on the user experience and providing a consistent interface that has a high degree of fit and finish.

Users have a low tolerance for mistakes and seeing a couple things off by a pixel or two can make a product look immature and can take way from all the hard work that was spent building it.

Does everyone on your team write the whole stack from front to back? Advanced teams have specialists. Design is no exception.

I disagree with this. I'm a web engineer and I work with designers. I dont have the ability to design pixel perfect interfaces and I respect that skill in someone who can. I also dont have the time to spend countless hours interacting with a product manager who trying to figure out a finished design.

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