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What design tools get wrong

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Re: What design tools get wrong

#31

Post by jandrese »

jasim wrote: post #20
doitLP wrote: post #5

Sounds like the author wants his tools to be as fully featured as the code that will embody the resultant design. In that case I would recommend learning more code instead of relying on a proxy that will never be as flexible. The best designers I’ve worked with not only understand their own domain but the possibilities and limitations of how it will be executed, because they are also developers.

When someone says HTML & CSS is terrible I ask them to design something better that lets you represent user interfaces that can adapt across multiple screen sizes, and allow complex layouts that Flexbox and CSS Grid makes possible. It is easy to criticize something if you don't have to worry how you would do it better. That said, HTML & CSS is just how the world currently is. It doesn't mean that it is the best possi…

Sure, can you whip up an easy 3 column layout for me using the parts of CSS that are fully standardized?

CSS does a lot of things really well, but makes some common tasks way more difficult than they need to be.

Re: What design tools get wrong

#32

Post by ThomPete »

quirkot wrote: post #30
doitLP wrote: post #5

Sounds like the author wants his tools to be as fully featured as the code that will embody the resultant design. In that case I would recommend learning more code instead of relying on a proxy that will never be as flexible. The best designers I’ve worked with not only understand their own domain but the possibilities and limitations of how it will be executed, because they are also developers.

Yes but... The best coders I've ever worked with understood the hardware The hardware engineers I've ever worked with understood the physics The physicists I've ever worked for understood the math... At some point you just gotta say "I need better tools"

Some of the best designers understand code. Its not turtles all the way back as you seem to imply.

In general a broad perspective is beneficial to a designer because they deal with the holistic reality and need to apply it to a somewhat fuzzy solution.

To compete with others thats more than enough and tools have very little to do with it.

Re: What design tools get wrong

#33

Post by quirkot »

ThomPete wrote: post #32
quirkot wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but... The best coders I've ever worked with understood the hardware The hardware engineers I've ever worked with understood the physics The physicists I've ever worked for understood the math... At some point you just gotta say "I need better tools"

Some of the best designers understand code. Its not turtles all the way back as you seem to imply. In general a broad perspective is beneficial to a designer because they deal with the holistic reality and need to apply it to a somewhat fuzzy solution. To compete with others thats more than enough and tools have very little to do with it.

Out in the real world, I agree with you. I this specific instance I was responding mainly to this comment:

>Sounds like the author wants his tools to be as fully featured as the code that will embody the resultant design. In that case I would recommend learning more code instead of relying on a proxy that will never be as flexible

Which is precisely an argument by turtles.

Re: What design tools get wrong

#34

Post by matthewhager »

We created exactly what you are looking for at https://shift.studio. You design “systems” which are web components built in React (though as a designer, this is abstracted away from you). The components have variants, state, data, and we have a fully featured media query system to help you handle responsive design. Finally, we’re fully integrated with NPM so you can pull code in if you want and add functionality to your design system.

We will soon add the feature to expose your design system as an NPM package so that developers can install the system into their project and the component creation can be the domain of the designer with the application structure/creation being the domain of the developer.

This is a problem that can be solved but it can’t be half-baked solutions. It has to allow designers to fully create all states of a component and even work on components with live data flowing through.

We are in closed beta but you can view videos of how Shift works here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLl4_DbGKML_Jb2Wq5pEGW...

Re: What design tools get wrong

#35

Post by paulddraper »

jasim wrote: post #20
doitLP wrote: post #5

Sounds like the author wants his tools to be as fully featured as the code that will embody the resultant design. In that case I would recommend learning more code instead of relying on a proxy that will never be as flexible. The best designers I’ve worked with not only understand their own domain but the possibilities and limitations of how it will be executed, because they are also developers.

When someone says HTML & CSS is terrible I ask them to design something better that lets you represent user interfaces that can adapt across multiple screen sizes, and allow complex layouts that Flexbox and CSS Grid makes possible. It is easy to criticize something if you don't have to worry how you would do it better. That said, HTML & CSS is just how the world currently is. It doesn't mean that it is the best possi…

> allow complex layouts that Flexbox and CSS Grid makes possible

What version of CSS do people complain about? By chance are you talking about bleeding edge unaccepted CSS proposals?

In any case, the list of CSS improvements is long. Off the top of my head:

* Remove min-height, max-height, vertical-align, text-align, etc. in favor of unified Flex model.

* Rename color to font-color.

* Default to box-sizing (or remove content-sizing)

* Make stylable by CSS.

* Make inline styles work with pseudo-selectors, or remove inline styles altogether

* Reduce the number of units

Re: What design tools get wrong

#36

Post by HeWhoLurksLate »

parksy wrote: post #25
golergka wrote: post #2

It seems that author advocates for design tools to become more and more like developer tools - a notion that I, as a developer, can totally get behind. However, in my 12 years of experience in game development, many people who are world-class designers and artists don't have the same mental model as developers. There are a lot of "technical art" issues that in the end, you'd rather handle on a developer's side. I jus…

Kind of agree (as a developer who appreciates art) - right now we're constraining ourselves to grid-based layouts. Having been in web professionally for 15 years and recreationally for 25 years, I've seen UI conventions change a lot as technology, form factors and global design trends change. So modern tools like sketch work for grids, mobile responsive, yada yada which is much better than using photoshop as the desi…

> it's almost a given that someone is going to come along and Bauhaus the shit out of UI.

I nearly fell out of my chair of laughter when I read that.

Out of curiosity, do you mean this in a positive or a negative way?

Re: What design tools get wrong

#37

Post by threatofrain »

jasim wrote: post #20
doitLP wrote: post #5

Sounds like the author wants his tools to be as fully featured as the code that will embody the resultant design. In that case I would recommend learning more code instead of relying on a proxy that will never be as flexible. The best designers I’ve worked with not only understand their own domain but the possibilities and limitations of how it will be executed, because they are also developers.

When someone says HTML & CSS is terrible I ask them to design something better that lets you represent user interfaces that can adapt across multiple screen sizes, and allow complex layouts that Flexbox and CSS Grid makes possible. It is easy to criticize something if you don't have to worry how you would do it better. That said, HTML & CSS is just how the world currently is. It doesn't mean that it is the best possi…

Have you checked out Flutter and their vision of cross-platform GUI development?

Re: What design tools get wrong

#38

Post by jimktrains2 »

paulddraper wrote: post #35
jasim wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When someone says HTML & CSS is terrible I ask them to design something better that lets you represent user interfaces that can adapt across multiple screen sizes, and allow complex layouts that Flexbox and CSS Grid makes possible. It is easy to criticize something if you don't have to worry how you would do it better. That said, HTML & CSS is just how the world currently is. It doesn't mean that it is the best possi…

> allow complex layouts that Flexbox and CSS Grid makes possible What version of CSS do people complain about? By chance are you talking about bleeding edge unaccepted CSS proposals? In any case, the list of CSS improvements is long. Off the top of my head: * Remove min-height, max-height, vertical-align, text-align, etc. in favor of unified Flex model. * Rename color to font-color. * Default to box-sizing (or remove…

I'd go further and bring in some of the nesting, inheritance/extend and variables that preprocessors like SCSS support as part of the standard.

Re: What design tools get wrong

#39

Post by HeWhoLurksLate »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #23

Somewhat off topic, but this gets at an issue with “components” of all types that I’ve been wanting to get off my chest: > Design libraries are also limited in the type of things they share: just components or symbols. This works great if all your design work is just clicking together new screens with the same components, but anything new will see designers clicking into components and copying over things like colors…

This is why I've been holding off on trying to develop cross-platform software that talks to microcontrollers and then executes code- because I want the UI / GUI experience to be fluid, and for things like selecting something you want to change to highlight that element on the board itself- there's no well-defined method for doing this, nor even a once-trod path, and definitely not anything for those who don't know where to look.

Does anyone have suggestions for cross-platform UI's? (Not Electron)

Re: What design tools get wrong

#40

Post by jandrese »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #21
davidivadavid wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole purpose of tools is to make craft accessible to more people. It's perfectly logical not to expect a designer to excel without knowing what they're designing for, but to expect tools to aim for that goal. How much knowledge has to be "in the head" vs. "embedded in the tool" can be debated, but the direction where things generally go seems pretty obvious.

Is it though? If so, it's deeply troubling. The purpose of a screwdriver isn't to make working with screws more accessible, it's to make it possible and convenient. The purpose of power drill isn't to be more accessible than a screwdriver - it's to enable working faster and easier with screws, and to enable working with screws and materials for which using a screwdriver isn't feasible. This brushes my primary annoyan…

The alternative is to make an omelet you must first invent the universe. At some point you have to trust the tools to do their job even if you don't fully understand them and get on to getting shit done.
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