The article actually makes pretty good suggestions despite coming off as a little arrogant (our design tweaks will make a world of difference, if only the developers could understand!). I think the key is to realize that the visual design work comes last. Moving things by a few pixels here or there is not going to make or break your product, because the purpose of your product is to provide some sort of useful functionality and not just to look pretty (presumably). And a lot of times it's completely subjective anyway. Get the approximate layout and user interactions nailed down first, ignoring any superficial flaws. Then, at the very end, I don't think the developer will mind if you ask him or her to make one pass of tweaking a bunch of colors and alignments.
Why you should move that button 3px to the left
111–120 of 164 posts
Re: Why you should move that button 3px to the left
#112This 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…
The solution, of course, is to pair with the designers, and say they can't leave until the edits are done for all supported interfaces.
Every time. Every page.
Their designs will become more practical quickly, or the library needed to support their vision will organically grow. But they need to be in the room with real consequences for their PSDs.
Re: Why you should move that button 3px to the left
#113This is a fantastic article. To people below who say the designer should make the change him or helself -- as a front-end developer, I say a million times, NO NO NO. Does the designer know how to use git and commit properly? Do they know on what branch? Understand the deployment schedule? Perform browser testing? Are they part of code reviews? Do they understand whether that rule is used by just that component, or ju…
> Does the designer know how to use git and commit properly? Do they know on what branch? Understand the deployment schedule? Perform browser testing? Are they part of code reviews? Do they understand whether that rule is used by just that component, or just that page, or if it will affect code elsewhere? If he doesn't, find one who does. A web-designer who doesn't understand code is like a fashion designer who can't…
> A web-designer who doesn't understand code is like a fashion designer who can't sew.
Except there are successful fashion designers who rarely if at all sew, just like there are successful interactive designers who rarely if at all code.
Do I think knowing how to code typically makes a designer a better designer than others? Yes. Do I think it's always that way? Hell no.
Re: Why you should move that button 3px to the left
#114This is a fantastic article. To people below who say the designer should make the change him or helself -- as a front-end developer, I say a million times, NO NO NO. Does the designer know how to use git and commit properly? Do they know on what branch? Understand the deployment schedule? Perform browser testing? Are they part of code reviews? Do they understand whether that rule is used by just that component, or ju…
> Does the designer know how to use git and commit properly? Do they know on what branch? Understand the deployment schedule? Perform browser testing? Are they part of code reviews? Do they understand whether that rule is used by just that component, or just that page, or if it will affect code elsewhere? If he doesn't, find one who does. A web-designer who doesn't understand code is like a fashion designer who can't…
Modularity and separation of concerns.
You can have a pure designer who doesn't understand code, but can follow the spec for interfacing with the frontend devs (give them a PSD). Just as those frontend devs might not understand how to best design a database-driven backend, but they can follow the spec for interfacing with it (REST calls through xhr). And those backend devs don't have to know about frontend application frameworks, they can follow the spec for interfacing (REST endpoints).
Again, modularity and separation of concerns.
Re: Why you should move that button 3px to the left
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some companies have rules that actually do prevent people from just diving on and doing whatever they want with the code.
Demonstrating a change in a local repo, or even with a local CSS stylesheet, isn't "doing whatever you want", it's a prrof of concept. There ate plenty of broken corporate cultures out there.
s/ate/are/ damn you mobile
Re: Why you should move that button 3px to the left
#116So 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…
Actually, I think moving a button 3px anywhere could be easily justified by a combination of Fitts' law and research on how humans perceive the button as something actionable and distinct from its surroundings.
That said, I'm a software engineer with a semi-formal training in user experience and moved from front-end design initially through Zeldman/CSS of 2003 to backend and mobile (and more formal CS concepts in university).
Design matters as much as the code you write. Sadly, driving technical change in either is tougher than it looks. And we won't even get into the misinterpretations possible when people assume something can be done pixel-perfect or was misread as pixel perfect when that wasn't the intent. Working together productively is the soft skill worth developing for both sides of the art/science divide.
Re: Why you should move that button 3px to the left
#117Hmm. I can say with certainty that the great designers I've worked with have never had to make requests like this. They understand the idea that all sites should be built out of reusable components, and the visual relationships between those components should flow across the whole site. The CSS is robust and working site wide, the code is simple and beautiful and the design/UX is great, everyone is working efficiently - and everything flows from it. But any time you have to budge a button -3px, increase some front size 1px, tweak that padding there, fiddle with the line spacing on that subheading, or satisfy some other pixel pushing whimsy ... then the design has failed, the designer doesn't understand the medium.
Usually these sorts of requests come from mediocre designers who feel professionally threatened by a rapidly evolving scene and then feel the need to create a sort fake value for their role by insisting on such things. Very often such behaviour will come along with the sentiments expressed in OP's article, some sort of implied idea that they have the sole understanding of aesthetic value or what can be considered "delightful".
Re: Why you should move that button 3px to the left
#118Hmm. I can say with certainty that the great designers I've worked with have never had to make requests like this. They understand the idea that all sites should be built out of reusable components, and the visual relationships between those components should flow across the whole site. The CSS is robust and working site wide, the code is simple and beautiful and the design/UX is great, everyone is working efficientl…
I really doubt you have worked with designers at all, let along great ones. Any designer, junior or senior, that I've worked with, won't ignore the small stuff, and the better designers are more likely to be perfectionists.
> Usually these sorts of requests come from mediocre designers who feel professionally threatened by a rapidly evolving scene and then feel the need to create a sort fake value for their role by insisting on such things.
This is such an immature comment I don't even know how to respond. A designer that was so deferential to developer to not sweat pixel alignment would simply not even get hired in the design studio I've worked with.
Re: Why you should move that button 3px to the left
#119This 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…
>>> My previous job (web shop) hired supposedly "rockstar" designers on several occasions.
In my experience, you can have designers who know the web and you can have graphic designers who don't have a clue about the web, yet decide they want to be "web" designers.
The latter seem to pop up more frequently these days and I would agree it is frustrating, time consuming and incredibly worthless. Worst yet, are graphic design firms trying to get into the web and use your company as their guinea pig. Again, completely worthless.
As such, I've taken quite a bit of time to learn design myself so I have at least some authority to call bullshit on stuff they try to pull and head them off at the pass. It this point, it's been my only defense and has been somewhat successful in not allowing these types to poison the well so to speak.
Re: Why you should move that button 3px to the left
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you need to define 'design'. If you mean beautiful mockups than will win a contract with a client and that's all, perhaps your 100% photoshop person will be the best suited. If you mean building an interface acknowledging harmony of the UX, the user and clients needs, the medium, the strengths and weaknesses of the platform it will be built onto, the project budget and the maintenance afterwards, a 50% person…
If it's such a big deal, just say no. I think the article would, too, argue "why you shouldn't move that button 3px to the left if it makes you rebuild the whole screen".
Totally agree. And I think the person saying no also has to explain the scope of the change. If it's actually waranted to rebuilt the whole screen for 3px at least everyone will understand the pros and cons and respect the amount of work that will be done.