How to hire designers
insideintercom.io
How to hire designers
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Re: How to hire designers
#2Great post and a great follow up. I think dribbble's co-founders intended the site to be a show and tell of actual work (pure speculation) but has become more of a showcase of flashy unrealistic photoshop designs.
I think the divide in the design industry is going to be short lived as companies start to realize that they don't really need a a graphic designer, a product designer, a UI designer and a UX strategist. They need one (or several) competent designer that can understand all of these roles.
I wrote a short blog post discussing the issue: http://generalist.io/designers-design
Re: How to hire designers
#3To put it simple and generalize a little bit, every function in a team ideally has good understanding of what is supposed to be delivered as a whole and is equipped with that specialized skills set for that function. I have to say it's not easy to have a team even close to this. But this is a correct direction. And each function has different weights in different product building processes.
Re: How to hire designers
#4This post says some obvious (but good and valid) stuff but doesn't propose a solution. Images almost by definition showcase visual design not other types of design. Images are a incredibly convenient medium to produce and transmit. Nice visual design can be digested and appreciated nearly instantly. Hence image-oriented design showcases are at the center of the zeitguest of app design.
Come up with a low-friction, high-speed way to share other facets of design, like interaction and information hierarchies, and then the macro-discussion will reach further into those areas. Currently the best medium for this is launching a prototype in an app store or web and publishing it around. You can see how this compares to "uploading a png" to understand the downstream effects.
Re: How to hire designers
#5The post is a bit misleading about PS monkeys. There are actually jobs out their that specialize in image production (e.g. Doing lots of red lining); or even producing grid layouts. Production really isn't design, but often junior visual designers are tasked with doing it (or even senior ones...because someone has to do it). Large organizations will hire people specifically for these roles who aren't really designers.
Interaction and visual design roles are separated not because the division is natural, but because visual and interaction design require specific skills that are rare to find both in individuals, especially on the visual side (interaction designers have diverse backgrounds, while visual designers require specific training).
Re: How to hire designers
#6I've learned over the years as a creative director that there are just some clients who get it and some that don't.
The clients who do get it will invite the design team to their production meetings; they'll include us on key decisions (for example, "should we have feature x?"), and they'll expect us to contribute to the overall product, NOT just in design, but also in functionality.
The clients that don't get it? You get a stack of content and a list of demands, along with phrases (that we now use freely around the office) like "jazz it up" and "make it more FUN!" Those are the clients that think great designers are found on Dribbble and that my team always needs to be "pushed" to produce "fun, exciting, INNOVATIVE" design. In reality, we just take our effective, well-executed design and practically roll the dice to see which Dribbble style du jour we can slap on it.
So, in a kind of weird way, Dribbble makes my job a lot easier in terms of showing me how to make my work shittier so that it's accepted by dumbass clients. For that, I am thankful.
Re: How to hire designers
#7So where was the advice about hiring designers? As far as I can tell the post should be titled "Why not to hire designers based on dribbble". While it may be true, it really doesn't help those of us not in the field who are looking to bring in talent.
Re: How to hire designers
#8I've learned over the years as a creative director that there are just some clients who get it and some that don't. The clients who do get it will invite the design team to their production meetings; they'll include us on key decisions (for example, "should we have feature x?"), and they'll expect us to contribute to the overall product, NOT just in design, but also in functionality. The clients that don't get it? Yo…
Great designers are found on Dribbble. It seems you're making a leap from "Dribbble has bad designers" to "All designers on Dribbble are bad".
Just because some designers on Dribbble choose to focus on visuals doesn't mean that they haven't mastered the other components of design as well.
Dribbble and similar sites like Behance are great to evaluate visual design. For other components, you have other media (writing, videos, case studies, etc.) Why can't we just leave it at that instead of acting like this is somehow Dribbble's own fault?
Re: How to hire designers
#9[deleted]
Re: How to hire designers
#10I've learned over the years as a creative director that there are just some clients who get it and some that don't. The clients who do get it will invite the design team to their production meetings; they'll include us on key decisions (for example, "should we have feature x?"), and they'll expect us to contribute to the overall product, NOT just in design, but also in functionality. The clients that don't get it? Yo…
Great designers are found on Dribbble. It seems you're making a leap from "Dribbble has bad designers" to "All designers on Dribbble are bad". Just because some designers on Dribbble choose to focus on visuals doesn't mean that they haven't mastered the other components of design as well. Dribbble and similar sites like Behance are great to evaluate visual design. For other components, you have other media (writing,…
As usual people find visuals distracting. People just can't understand that while graphic arts can be a part of product design, it does not constitute the entire process.