Why you should move that button 3px to the left • Hacker News Board

Re: Why you should move that button 3px to the left

#81

Post by dubcanada » Sun, Feb 16, 2014, 9:40 PM UTC

seivan wrote: post #34

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…

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".

Re: Why you should move that button 3px to the left

#82

Post by seivan » Sun, Feb 16, 2014, 9:43 PM UTC

grownseed wrote: post #76

seivan wrote: post #34

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…

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 standard…

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

Re: Why you should move that button 3px to the left

#83

Post by dubcanada » Sun, Feb 16, 2014, 9:47 PM UTC

grownseed wrote: post #76

seivan wrote: post #34

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…

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 standard…

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.

Re: Why you should move that button 3px to the left

#84

Post by kybernetikos » Sun, Feb 16, 2014, 9:47 PM UTC

Chris_Newton wrote: post #78

kybernetikos wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To the developer, every decision is a trade off, a tension between the demands of the now (features and time) and the demands of the future (elegance, maintainability). Designers are not in a good position to appreciate the trade offs. It's very easy for a designer to think 'this infelicity decreases delight, and fixing it involves just moving this thing to there'. This is probably an excellent spot of a real design…

Never use the word 'just' when talking to developers, frequently apparently simple things have huge ramifications Sometimes that is true, and that is so whether you’re talking about changing a design or changing the underlying implementation, and whether you are talking about web design/development or software development more generally. Having said that, if a designer can’t request and a developer can’t implement tr…

The point is that if you use the word 'just' you're saying that you already know that the change is trivial. Perhaps it is, perhaps it isn't. Show respect to the person who will implement it by letting them say whether its trivial or not.

It's absolutely true that moving a button 3px should be trivial, but it's also true that things are often not as they should be.

Re: Why you should move that button 3px to the left

#85

Post by Chris_Newton » Sun, Feb 16, 2014, 9:50 PM UTC

sxp wrote: post #77

Chris_Newton wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And since neither of them are able to actually justify their reasons beyond some vapid and subjective claim of making the product "more delightful" Do you appreciate the irony that you just wrote a whole post about making decisions objectively, in which you have essentially dismissed designers as ignorants who just make arbitrary decisions according to their personal whimsy, based on a series of unsubstantiated claim…

Why would you think a designer would have no justification for a change beyond “it looks nice”? What would you assume designers don’t understand issues like pixel alignment or designing for multiple devices? Why would you think designers would be raising these issues based on Photoshop mock-ups? Experience. I've had arbitrary requests made based on Photoshop mocks. I've pushed back against them after showing that the…

It sounds like your real problem has nothing to do with a “design version” or an “engineering version” of anything. You’ve just worked with some people who were in a design role but didn’t know how to do it. That’s unfortunate, but I don’t think it invalidates the original premise of the article that paying attention to seemingly minor design details matters more than a lot of non-designers tend to acknowledge.

Re: Why you should move that button 3px to the left

#86

Post by exizt88 » Sun, Feb 16, 2014, 9:54 PM UTC

reefoctopus wrote: post #74

ricardobeat wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 re…

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.

Re: Why you should move that button 3px to the left

#87

Post by supercoder » Sun, Feb 16, 2014, 9:55 PM UTC

Chris_Newton wrote: post #29

gruseom wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. To nearly everyone, the user interface is the program. This sounds like a truism but really is the opposite. It has important practical consequences.

To nearly everyone, the user interface is the program. I would add to that the reason I’m wary of shipping an unpolished product as early as possible with the idea of refining it later: you only get one chance to make a first impression.

I think there's an important distinction between an unfinished product and an unpolished product.

To use an overused example, the iPhone was unfinished in terms of features but what was there was incredibly polished.

Re: Why you should move that button 3px to the left

#88

Post by Chris_Newton » Sun, Feb 16, 2014, 9:55 PM UTC

kybernetikos wrote: post #84

Chris_Newton wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never use the word 'just' when talking to developers, frequently apparently simple things have huge ramifications Sometimes that is true, and that is so whether you’re talking about changing a design or changing the underlying implementation, and whether you are talking about web design/development or software development more generally. Having said that, if a designer can’t request and a developer can’t implement tr…

The point is that if you use the word 'just' you're saying that you already know that the change is trivial. Perhaps it is, perhaps it isn't. Show respect to the person who will implement it by letting them say whether its trivial or not. It's absolutely true that moving a button 3px should be trivial, but it's also true that things are often not as they should be.

I agree with your fundamental point that making the assumptions about what colleagues will have to do can be dangerous, though I would still challenge your earlier suggestion that apparently simple things “frequently” have huge ramifications. It’s sensible and polite to acknowledge the possibility, but if trivial-seeming changes are getting push back more than occasionally, IME that probably indicates a more serious underlying problem with how the project is being built.

Re: Why you should move that button 3px to the left

#89

Post by andrewflnr » Sun, Feb 16, 2014, 9:56 PM UTC

radley wrote: post #43

sxp wrote: post #33

So why should you move that button? The article doesn't actually answer the question. If a UX designer just says "move the button by 3px because it looks nicer", then there is a good chance that someone higher up the hierarchy will say move the button by 4px because that looks better. And since neither of them are able to actually justify their reasons beyond some vapid and subjective claim of making the product "mor…

Arrrrrrrrgh. Engineers. If I were to say "I had a design bug" and leave it at that, they'd do it. Even better, if I were to say "I resolved some design flow lag" they'd even smile. Engineers can't stand lag (and that's exactly what the fix is about). As for PS mocks - stuff is entirely different on the screen. And the 3px difference could have been a dev mistake and the designer is correcting them. Anyways, designers…

I can't tell how serious you are, but no, please don't call it "design flow lag". Speaking for myself, and I suspect most engineers, stringing a bunch of weird words together to say "I messed up" or "you messed up" is just going to piss me off.

Re: Why you should move that button 3px to the left

#90

Post by underwater » Sun, Feb 16, 2014, 10:05 PM UTC

Engineers don't look at a finished product and see something that's a few pixels away from perfection. They know all the kludges and hacks that are hiding behind the scenes. As a designer it's your job to help them get past that.

Being able to communicate is one of the most important skills a designer can have. If engineers don't understand the importance of good design that is your failing, not theirs. Talking about delight and pixel-perfection to the wrong audience just makes you sound like a Jony Ives wanna-be.

Merely asking everyone stops to sprint towards a perfect design shows a lack of empathy towards your team mates. At launch time everyone has features they needed to cut or temporary hacks they never got to fix. Telling team mates the most important thing is to "perfect" a vision they haven't bought in to is not a convincing argument. And viewing their hard work as a "sloppy version of my design" is not likely to win favors either.

The most effective designers I've worked with have been able to create and also sell their design. They can express both the motivation behind their design as well as the importance of implementing it well. They haven't just dictated design from up on high.