Design sense is definitely a must for everyone. Every programmer needs to spend atleast some time figuring out the cleanest interface (UI/API) for their code. Once a usable product is created, only then professional designer is need to make the product sell.
Ask HN: Technical, Business, or Designer
11–20 of 36 posts
Re: Ask HN: Technical, Business, or Designer
#12I don't know that I agree with your assessment that "designers are the core" of Apple's business, but even so, Apple's current state seems to be rather irrelevant to a discussion about a combination of founders for a startup. Wouldn't looking at Apple's structure when they were a startup be more useful? Aside from that, there are a lot of founders who have some level of design skills -- they just also happen to do ot…
I disagree.
A designer is an individual that solves problems by the use of a divergent-thought led process (A process very different to that of an engineer or MBA). They find problems, and solve them. Since solving a problem is the very pinnacle of building a business, I disagree with you that your claim that a designer is going to be useless.
It seems within the Tech-World the role of the designer is skewed, to the point even designers believe that their only role is to deal with the pixels on the screen. Take a look at leading design consultancies, such as IDEO, frog and Continuum and then try and tell me that a designer's role within a start-up is 'inefficient'.
Re: Ask HN: Technical, Business, or Designer
#13Designers, for apple, are part of technical team.
Re: Ask HN: Technical, Business, or Designer
#14Designers, for apple, are part of technical team.
Please excuse the terminology I used, I'm referring to programmers as the technical people.
Re: Ask HN: Technical, Business, or Designer
#15Partially the problem is in the word it self. As you can see from the discussion here and in many other places, as soon as someone asks similar question people start talking about what this word (designer) actually means.
Take architecture for example. In a way it's about designing buildings, but they have a separate term for it. You say it and everyone knows what you mean.
This is whats missing here I think. Some designers think only about "visual appeal" and can be even dangerous for a startup, because they don't know or often care about what it is they are actually building. Some are letter "T" people - they know one thing very very well and are more or less familiar with related fields. For them "design is how stuff works" (from your question Apple type designers). This kind of person can add a huge value to any business but we don't have a name for them (hopefully yet).
Re: Ask HN: Technical, Business, or Designer
#16In my humble opinion, it's much more important to have a stellar product designer (decide how the thing works, then how it looks) than it is to have a stellar programmer.
The slight problem is that programmers generally have an easier time making a shitty-but-workable UI than designers have putting together shitty-but-workable code.
Thankfully that has been changing lately. I've talked to plenty of Rails developers who come from a design background and are teaching themselves how to program. Hell, that's how I originally met Jason Fried. He had taught himself to program and wanted some assistance.
So if I was putting my money on any startups (and I'm not!), I would much rather pick the ones with strong design talent than with strong programming talent -- unless the key element to what they were doing was uniquely technical.
Re: Ask HN: Technical, Business, or Designer
#17In my humble opinion, it's much more important to have a stellar product designer (decide how the thing works, then how it looks) than it is to have a stellar programmer. The slight problem is that programmers generally have an easier time making a shitty-but-workable UI than designers have putting together shitty-but-workable code. Thankfully that has been changing lately. I've talked to plenty of Rails developers w…
It's so nice to hear that come from a programmer :P
Re: Ask HN: Technical, Business, or Designer
#18In my humble opinion, it's much more important to have a stellar product designer (decide how the thing works, then how it looks) than it is to have a stellar programmer. The slight problem is that programmers generally have an easier time making a shitty-but-workable UI than designers have putting together shitty-but-workable code. Thankfully that has been changing lately. I've talked to plenty of Rails developers w…
This is a great comment, but I'm still unclear about the intended meaning of "designer". Are we only talking about graphic/artistic design, or just product design? The two are not the same (IMO). For example, I'm a programmer at the core, completely left-brained/logical, who struggles with art/graphic design. However, I am a great product designer (at least, IMO!). So, the one thing I look for to complete projects I'm working on is a graphic designer.
Also, I'm glad you qualified your last statement with this: "unless the key element to what they were doing was uniquely technical." I once had a graphic designer tell me his role was more important than the programming side to web sites, which I totally disagree with. I have a one word retort to that: craigslist. It's true that oftentimes great graphic design is a necessary ingredient to the success of a site, but that's not always the case.
Re: Ask HN: Technical, Business, or Designer
#19In my humble opinion, it's much more important to have a stellar product designer (decide how the thing works, then how it looks) than it is to have a stellar programmer. The slight problem is that programmers generally have an easier time making a shitty-but-workable UI than designers have putting together shitty-but-workable code. Thankfully that has been changing lately. I've talked to plenty of Rails developers w…
This is a great comment, but I'm still unclear about the intended meaning of "designer". Are we only talking about graphic/artistic design, or just product design? The two are not the same (IMO). For example, I'm a programmer at the core, completely left-brained/logical, who struggles with art/graphic design. However, I am a great product designer (at least, IMO!). So, the one thing I look for to complete projects I'…
Everybody is essential, none is sufficient... (and craigslist has a design, it's just a different kind)
Re: Ask HN: Technical, Business, or Designer
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a great comment, but I'm still unclear about the intended meaning of "designer". Are we only talking about graphic/artistic design, or just product design? The two are not the same (IMO). For example, I'm a programmer at the core, completely left-brained/logical, who struggles with art/graphic design. However, I am a great product designer (at least, IMO!). So, the one thing I look for to complete projects I'…
Everybody is essential, none is sufficient... (and craigslist has a design, it's just a different kind)
(and craigslist has a design, it's just a different kind)
Yes, I agree craigslist has a design. It's a functional design, the kind I'm great at. What I'm not so good at is art/graphic design. I could have built craigslist from scratch completely by myself in a few weeks, if that long, but that's because I can lay things out and use shades of gray quite well.