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Recent designers I've met around NYC have been novices, jquery dependents, and people who took a 12 week how to code ruby class and somehow got hired. To me a

by pixie_ 14y ago

Recent designers I've met around NYC have been novices, jquery dependents, and people who took a 12 week how to code ruby class and somehow got hired. To me a designer is someone who can make a site look good in photoshop and then hand it off to be implemented/coded. Designers who code, but who are not 'coders' scare the crap out of me and I avoid them like the plague. Web 'apps' today are that, apps, making API calls, binding data, and managing state - along with profiling for speed, memory, and where resources are loaded from. It's just like any other GUI of the last 20 years. Sure there are UI designers, but they typically aren't coding it together, but I guess the short supply of programmers has exacerbated the situation.

nbashaw 14y ago
It's easy to find examples of novices in any field - to me what's more interesting is looking at what the experts are doing. The folks I'm thinking of are both excellent visual designers and excellent backbone hackers. This is what's new and interesting to me.
rglover 14y ago
Why does a designer who can code scare you? It's a good thing. I'm a designer that works in code and it often makes my relationship with devs a lot smoother. I understand limitations, can reduce dev time significantly, and together, we share strengths producing a wonderful interface. The design then pass off flow sucks. It puts too much emphasis on ornament and not enough on functionality. As a designer, understanding how it's implemented and why improves your work significantly.
- pixie_ 14y ago
  It's not a 'good thing' to deal with piles of legacy spaghetti code with no method to it's madness. Sure if you've been coding UIs for years, I'm sure we'd work fine together. In my experience, coding designers, have not been experienced coders.
  - rglover 14y ago
    I'm not sure what your relationship or proximity to these designers is, but the best thing you can do to cure this is educate. It can be frustrating, sure, but making an effort to teach and explain what's wrong can make all the difference. Just because someone isn't top of the line doesn't mean they should be dismissed or frowned upon. Further, if it's something mission critical, just politely ask them if you can work on it to ensure its quality.
mnicole 14y ago
Designers that use WYSIWYG means of developing are scary. Those of us that code because it gives us far more control and speeds up development time are not.

by pixie_ 14y ago

nbashaw 14y ago

It's easy to find examples of novices in any field - to me what's more interesting is looking at what the experts are doing. The folks I'm thinking of are both excellent visual designers and excellent backbone hackers. This is what's new and interesting to me.

rglover 14y ago

Why does a designer who can code scare you? It's a good thing. I'm a designer that works in code and it often makes my relationship with devs a lot smoother. I understand limitations, can reduce dev time significantly, and together, we share strengths producing a wonderful interface. The design then pass off flow sucks. It puts too much emphasis on ornament and not enough on functionality. As a designer, understanding how it's implemented and why improves your work significantly.

pixie_ 14y ago
It's not a 'good thing' to deal with piles of legacy spaghetti code with no method to it's madness. Sure if you've been coding UIs for years, I'm sure we'd work fine together. In my experience, coding designers, have not been experienced coders.
- rglover 14y ago
  I'm not sure what your relationship or proximity to these designers is, but the best thing you can do to cure this is educate. It can be frustrating, sure, but making an effort to teach and explain what's wrong can make all the difference. Just because someone isn't top of the line doesn't mean they should be dismissed or frowned upon. Further, if it's something mission critical, just politely ask them if you can work on it to ensure its quality.

mnicole 14y ago

Designers that use WYSIWYG means of developing are scary. Those of us that code because it gives us far more control and speeds up development time are not.