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Junior Designers vs. Senior Designers

vanschneider.com

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Re: Junior Designers vs. Senior Designers

#31

Post by denton-scratch »

mcv wrote: post #13
vladstudio wrote: post #9

The article left a bitter taste. It's probably intentionally all black and white, but it does sound almost passive-aggressive to me. I can safely consider myself senior designer (doing UX design for more than 20 years). I always ask about deadlines. I believe not doing so is highly unprofessional. I have other tasks in parallel, clients have other tasks in parallel. Deadlines = priorities. Discussing priorities is cr…

Yeah, many of these are bullshit or only valid in very specific circumstances. On deadlines: sometimes there is none. Of course it still needs to be done, but it needs to be done correctly, so you set your own timeline based on sustainability. Things can be high priority and still not have an actual deadline. But sometimes it really needs to be done in a week or a month because it's tied to a big promotional campaign…

> maybe tech debt is not a concern there

Design can definitely generate technical debt. If the designer specifies that some widget has to look and behave just so, then some developer has to code a widget that meets that requirement.

IME a lot of design work is purely aesthetic, and a matter of taste. That is, it's not functional; you could have used a native browser widget instead, but designer says no. And in the last shop I worked in, the designer had the whip hand, partly because the boss couldn't code, and partly because designers cost more than grunt front-end developers.

So you end up with a pile of unnecessary front-end code that becomes a breeding ground for bugs and regressions. Not quite the definition of tech debt; but unnecessary code quickly turns into tech debt.

Re: Junior Designers vs. Senior Designers

#32

Post by duxup »

vladstudio wrote: post #9

The article left a bitter taste. It's probably intentionally all black and white, but it does sound almost passive-aggressive to me. I can safely consider myself senior designer (doing UX design for more than 20 years). I always ask about deadlines. I believe not doing so is highly unprofessional. I have other tasks in parallel, clients have other tasks in parallel. Deadlines = priorities. Discussing priorities is cr…

Agreed. It seems like 10x developer meme type stuff.

Re: Junior Designers vs. Senior Designers

#33

Post by samsolomon »

I'm sure these are things designers will learn. I'm not sure that they really separate a junior from a senior designer though.

At least in product design when you hire a senior designer, you're hiring a set of beliefs about how software is designed and built. They should have pretty well-founded opinions on a variety of things. I wouldn't expect a junior designer to have formed those yet.

Re: Junior Designers vs. Senior Designers

#34

Post by davidivadavid »

meerita wrote: post #21

+20 designer here: > "One asks when the deadline is. // The other knows the answer is "ASAP,” so they propose their own timeline." There's nothing wrong asking what the deadline is. Most projects can be strategic, meaning that the force of will is focused on a bigger picture/opportunity than planning the design beforehand. Also, an experience designer WILL ask because he can propose a realistic outcome based on the d…

The second point is that most people don't know what they want until you show it to them. Designing what you're told only works with people who have done the exploration themselves, which tends to be a tiny minority (because it essentially requires the design skills that they're expecting from the designer themselves).

Re: Junior Designers vs. Senior Designers

#35

Post by nbzso »

For me, this article comes around more as a designer-influencer production than a form of deep insight.

He writes polarizing content and converts the reaction to "his own service for designers portfolios". Regularly.

>One asks when the deadline is. The other knows the answer is "ASAP,” so they propose their own timeline.

I always ask when the deadline is. Design is part of the production process. The production process even when I control it (as a PM and PD) is bound to the projected timeline.

>One designs exactly what they’re told. The other knows what they’re told is just one idea, and explores beyond it.

Again, there is a place and time when you design to spec and exploration is not limitless. Exploration has boundaries.

>One turns in their first or second draft. The other does as many drafts and explorations as possible within the time allotted, then shares their favorite options.

Actually in high level design thinking, designers "favorite" option has no merit.

Forming a logical design solution over a set of UX research data and actual testing is the winning method.

Re: Junior Designers vs. Senior Designers

#36

Post by malfist »

nbzso wrote: post #35

For me, this article comes around more as a designer-influencer production than a form of deep insight. He writes polarizing content and converts the reaction to "his own service for designers portfolios". Regularly. >One asks when the deadline is. The other knows the answer is "ASAP,” so they propose their own timeline. I always ask when the deadline is. Design is part of the production process. The production proce…

There was a book I read one time, early in my journey, called "Hardcore Java" It's promise was to take you from beginner java engineer to an advanced one. It was written by someone who "knew" the craft and was ready to pass on their anointed knowledge.

The author of the book had just recently made the progression to what they considered advanced, so the book was chock full of beginner-cum-expert advice like this article.

And it was all wrong. The errata for the book is more pages than the book itself. It had the basics of java incredibly wrong, most of the code samples in the book were not compilable, it was a mess.

This article strikes me the same way. Someone who has a little more knowledge than a beginner, but hasn't yet learned how little they know. So they want to show off their new knowledge with gatekeeping "lessons"

The difference between junior and senior isn't just about going from "easy way" -> "best way" It's about understanding when you can get away with the easy way, when the best way is too hard for a situation, or the situation isn't called for. It doesn't fit nicely into X does Y and A does B. Design/Engineering isn't black and white.

Re: Junior Designers vs. Senior Designers

#37

Post by dirkc »

About the only point I agree with is the "Lorem Ipsum" point.

To put it in another way, try to design with realistic data. Eg designing a grid layout with lorem ipsum filler content can easily lead to not addressing issues when presented with real data. What do you do when a title wraps to the next line? How do you handle different length descriptions. Is some of the data optional?

Re: Junior Designers vs. Senior Designers

#38

Post by CrimsonRain »

bearmode wrote: post #26

Before switching to web dev, I was a pretty seasoned graphic designer. > One asks when the deadline is. > The other knows the answer is "ASAP,” so they propose their own timeline. How on earth are you prioritising your work? Or are you in some mythical design job where you only have one thing on the go at once? > One designs exactly what they’re told. > The other knows what they’re told is just one idea, and explores…

While I don't agree with every little thing in the article, you took the key points and put your own explanations of them; yet you have ignored the elaborations the author provided where they touch your points too.

Re: Junior Designers vs. Senior Designers

#39

Post by jamil7 »

dirkc wrote: post #37

About the only point I agree with is the "Lorem Ipsum" point. To put it in another way, try to design with realistic data. Eg designing a grid layout with lorem ipsum filler content can easily lead to not addressing issues when presented with real data. What do you do when a title wraps to the next line? How do you handle different length descriptions. Is some of the data optional?

> To put it in another way, try to design with realistic data.

Also known as "the design won't work in German". Seriously though this drives me nuts when I get a design with perfectly lined up, even amounts of text.

Re: Junior Designers vs. Senior Designers

#40

Post by kayodelycaon »

I'd just be happy if I came across more "senior" "web" designers that actually understand UX. All of the ones I've come across wouldn't know how a checkout workflow works in practice and will happily remove necessary fields, information, or steps because it doesn't look pretty.

Like... we do need a way where the user can see a summary of their purchases (and adjust quantities) before paying for them. Also, limiting quantity to 9 because 10 is too wide is just... I have no words.

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