Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Will Figma become an awkward middle ground?

dive.club

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 134 posts

Re: Will Figma become an awkward middle ground?

#121

Post by asoneth »

omnimus wrote: post #114
asoneth wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Came here to write the same. I used to teach at a UX grad program where students were required to learn both design and development. But doing both on the same project was almost always a mistake -- the designer has to deeply understand and advocate for the end-user's mental model while the developer has to deeply understand the technical model and constraints. Attempting to do both often end up conflating them or co…

I think it takes really senior designer/developer that can do both solo. Those people exists but still it's better to be responsible only for just one because it's tiring and demanding. The best people added the other skill over time after they have been already excellent in main one (in my experience mostly designers learned to code rarely it goes other way). But teaching it from start side by side as equal seems li…

Of the hundreds of my students and coworkers who had both design and development skills, only a few could fill both roles on the same project without compromising on either.

But when hiring I rarely bother reaching out to them. It's not just that being responsible for both is tiring or demanding, but a project team that dedicates one person to each role delivers faster than a team with one person wearing both hats. And given that people who can do both well at the same time on the same project are exceedingly rare, they typically earn high six figures (or comparable equity) so there's not much in the way of cost savings either.

Having said that, maybe it'd be worth it for a founder or an early employee where there is a strong pressure to maintain a low headcount?

Re: Will Figma become an awkward middle ground?

#122

Post by legitster »

kdazzle wrote: post #86
omnimus wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They said email templates. That means no flex/grid/typefaces etc etc. emails are painful caveman html

My favorite factoid is that Windows desktop Outlook uses the MS Word engine to render emails. If regular emails are caveman html (which they are), then I don't know what that makes Outlook html.

Within the confines of Microsoft Office, it kinda makes sense.

You can copy+paste anything from any Office product and it will render in your email. It also makes doing mail merges much simpler.

So as a corporate email tool it's a smart idea. Making it harder for advertisers to design fancy emails is just an added perk.

Re: Will Figma become an awkward middle ground?

#124

Post by kdazzle »

acosmism wrote: post #104
kdazzle wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would actually probably be pretty helpful if the designers knew their way around the production code, since they'd have a lot more context about what is going to be easy/hard to do. They won't be in some design vacuum. Silo-ing off code because someone isn't a "software engineer" also feels kind of funny to me.

it would be useful if anyone in the company - CEO, salesman, designers, "X department" knew their way around the production code so your statement feels funny to me. look at sports - it would be awesome if everyone on the team is a great linebacker but ...

I think teammates would have enough context of each others’ positions that they could play the part if necessary, even if theyre not as good. They might even appreciate the skills gaps. So I think sports holds.

Re: Will Figma become an awkward middle ground?

#125

Post by jjcm »

mikedelfino wrote: post #119
jjcm wrote: post #51

Major bias disclaimer: 1. I work for Figma 2. I work on AI at Figma, as well as on the design systems part of the product 3. Prior to Figma, I spent 7 years as a prototyper teaching designers how to go from idea->code without a design step in between I love designing in code, and I HIGHLY recommend you do so for smaller projects, but I disagree with some of the assumptions the author is making. The author states, "Th…

When you say that reusing patterns and components is very hard to do in code, do you mean this applies even when building a reference page in code, with your design system and all of your components?

The problem stems mainly from this statement:

> with your design system and all of your components

While this is straightforward to do, it doesn't encapsulate all of your patterns. No design system should. Design systems should capture the top 90% most-reused patterns, but there will always be patterns that live outside of that. Being able to visually see those, copy them, and tweak them in a context multiple team members can give feedback on is immensely valuable.

Re: Will Figma become an awkward middle ground?

#126

Post by d3vmax »

hanniabu wrote: post #78
d3vmax wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When is the last time you restarted your mac? I had this guy complain to me, everything is laggy and chrome is slow (memory leaks?). A simple restart fixed everything. Clear your chrome cache/etc. Disable all extensions you dont use and try again. If it does not, try another browser.

Not using the website also helps

Was just trying to troubleshoot for the sake of curiosity. But yeah, your method works.

:D

Re: Will Figma become an awkward middle ground?

#127

Post by SpaceNugget »

kdazzle wrote: post #86
omnimus wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They said email templates. That means no flex/grid/typefaces etc etc. emails are painful caveman html

My favorite factoid is that Windows desktop Outlook uses the MS Word engine to render emails. If regular emails are caveman html (which they are), then I don't know what that makes Outlook html.

Fun fact: A factoid is something that seems like it could be a fact but is in fact false. I know it's commonly misused as a synonym of "fact" and I don't really care, it's evolving as a word and that's fine. But I really enjoy the sentence "Fun fact: A factoid is something that seems like it could be a fact but is in fact false." so I can't help but share :D

Re: Will Figma become an awkward middle ground?

#128

Post by kdazzle »

SpaceNugget wrote: post #127
kdazzle wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favorite factoid is that Windows desktop Outlook uses the MS Word engine to render emails. If regular emails are caveman html (which they are), then I don't know what that makes Outlook html.

Fun fact: A factoid is something that seems like it could be a fact but is in fact false. I know it's commonly misused as a synonym of "fact" and I don't really care, it's evolving as a word and that's fine. But I really enjoy the sentence "Fun fact: A factoid is something that seems like it could be a fact but is in fact false." so I can't help but share :D

You mean the definition of factoid (noun) isnt: little facty?!

Re: Will Figma become an awkward middle ground?

#129

Post by ankmb »

kwoff wrote: post #82
legitster wrote: post #24

As someone who develops email templates, you will never understand my pain. Figma creates a complete fantasy world for designers who do not understand that a pixel and color perfect design is going to be smashed to bits by the client. Also, I feel the rise of React is partially to blame. CSS frameworks were clunky and constraining - but they forced you into a lot of design constraints developed on years of best pract…

Oh man, we have a certain email template at work, and the marketing team wanted to redesign that email; for some reason (broken communication, things out of the blue by company who bought ours, blabla), the designer thinks it's appropriate to just give us a Figma link that has no connection with the existing template or even any HTML. As a backend dev, I have no idea what to do with it. For an email, I'd expect somet…

Hi, you can try this plugin to get email HTML from the Figma.

https://www.figma.com/community/plugin/1305869752760258922/k...

It is algorithmic and it will try to match your Figma exactly using email specific HTML code as opposed to generative AI. Also it does not have any preconditions like Auto Layout. Just put your email in a Frame. Hopefully, it will at the least get you started. Would love to get your feedback.

Disclaimer: I work here.

Re: Will Figma become an awkward middle ground?

#130

Post by omnimus »

asoneth wrote: post #121
omnimus wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it takes really senior designer/developer that can do both solo. Those people exists but still it's better to be responsible only for just one because it's tiring and demanding. The best people added the other skill over time after they have been already excellent in main one (in my experience mostly designers learned to code rarely it goes other way). But teaching it from start side by side as equal seems li…

Of the hundreds of my students and coworkers who had both design and development skills, only a few could fill both roles on the same project without compromising on either. But when hiring I rarely bother reaching out to them. It's not just that being responsible for both is tiring or demanding, but a project team that dedicates one person to each role delivers faster than a team with one person wearing both hats. A…

On the other hand someone who can do both code and design has huge advantage of knowing where to cut corners, how to use platform features effectively and thus higher chance to make robust solution. But you need to have envinroment that allows this.
Post reply on HN