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

Why you should move that button 3px to the left

gv.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 164 posts

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

#141

Post by ssully »

RivieraKid wrote: post #52
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…

Yes, that article felt somewhat arrogant. Designers should shut up about the obsession with details etc. already, it's getting annoying. We get it, ok? I sometimes design too and must say, programming is harder -- it's more intellectually demanding, less rewarding and on average more frustrating. That's why I value programmers' work more.

I have worked with numerous programmers who try to avoid front end design because they just can't wrap their head around it. They can write great code that is easy to read and works great, but when they have to make an elegant or pretty design, they struggle.

Both designs and programmers work should be valued when it's good.

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

#142

Post by ssully »

underwater wrote: post #90

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…

That first sentence got a bigger response from me then I was expecting. I can't even tell you how many times I've been told a project I worked on looked great, but I struggle to believe the person because of the numerous improvements I know can be made.

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

#143

Post by nikatwork »

jessedhillon wrote: post #102
Chris_Newton wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I have yet to see a proposed application design or cosmetic change whose justification does not ultimately rely on "this guy's taste is better than that guy's" -- yes designers do sometimes bring out some justifications which are expressed with objective sensibilities but to me they always seem to be rationalizations, in the same way that evolutionary psych seems to be. That is, first see a behavior or a look that se…

You're not working with properly trained designers then. Layouts have certain empirical properties which can be judged objectively:

  * Conforms to a grid
  * Internally consistent padding and margins
  * Information sized and arranged hierarchically according to importance
  * Proportions conform to the rule of thirds or golden ratio
  * Internally consistent UX patterns 
    (eg cancel buttons might be always red, confirm buttons might be always green)
  * Text column widths are not too wide
  * Color choice is harmonious (conforms to color wheel rules)
These are the main ones but there are many others. Unfortunately, these kind of classic design principles don't seem to be taught very often these days, instead design courses focus on the mechanics ie how to use Photoshop.

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

#144

Post by jbeja »

UI design obsession hit as hard as software design obsession, both are equally valid and should be respected. In others words if a designer tell you to move a button 3px to the left, then you should take in consideration his gust and ask them politely why they should. The same could apply if a more experience college tell you that this method don't belong to that class or that function is doing too much. Just respect each other and be on peace for the sake of the project.

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

#145

Post by voltagex_ »

kaishiro wrote: post #130
exizt88 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I'm uncomfortable with the sheer number of insane managers within our industry.

Having just been asked to move something by 1 em, I agree.

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

#146

Post by seanmcdirmid »

dredmorbius wrote: post #140
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Designers often don't even have time to touch code, even if they could. When your organization has more trouble hiring designers than devs, you need your designers doing design 120% of the time.

If you're utilizing your designers 120% time, you've got a business problem and aren't paying enough.

Definitely, ideally you should manage your business so that all your specialists are busy doing their specialties. Designer salaries should rise if they are harder to find than devs are.

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

#147

Post by gaplus »

dubcanada wrote: post #81
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…

"The problem with your comment is you assume everyone can dabble in everything."

How is it unreasonable to assume that a designer should dabble in web development? That's hardly 'everything' and it's highly relevant to their work and goals. Frankly it's remarkable to me that web designers can still get jobs without taking the time to acquire an in-depth knowledge of the engineering stack they're designing for, even if they don't work with it on a day-to-day basis.

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

#148

Post by ww520 »

TheZenPsycho wrote: post #123
ww520 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wonder how you’d feel if you as a developer were told that every line of code you wanted to change — even those with obvious bugs — could not be touched unless you had previously demonstrated why you expect a measurable benefit to the satisfaction of the business development staff, and that your commit access was going to be revoked and every change would have to be made by bizdev after someone who didn’t know an…

So a developer is permitted to make arbitrary changes to the design at his whim with no justification, because he/she is doing the actual work. Because design is not actual work? But the designer, with years of experience, research, university studies and so on, cannot request to reverse that arbitrary change? I mean, it's division of roles. does the developer want to be a designer too? Does the developer want to jus…

The point is when you ask someone else to do the work for you, you need to give more justification than you are doing it yourself because in software development pretty much everyone has their plate full or overflowed, and your adding of more work on them would need to be prioritized against pushing something else off. Of course you need to justify your change that is important enough to push off some of other work.

If you are doing the change in HTML/CSS/Javascript or whatever yourself, go right ahead. Just make sure you don't break something else.

Likewise if there's change the developer is asking the designer to make, the developer better makes a good case for it. What if I tell you to remove the color red and blue in your design. Just do it. Don't ask why. You would be annoyed, too. And when you question, I told you, oh well, based on my years of training and experience, color red and blue run slowly in this algorithm.

I think what annoys most people here is that the designer thinks his changes are the most important ones and have to be made. There are millions other things the engineers need to worry about to make the product work. If the database is corrupting, moving 3 pixels to the left is not important. What the engineers asking is the justification for the change so that it can be weighed against other priorities. Isn't that so hard to do?

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

#149

Post by carbocation »

TheZenPsycho wrote: post #127
10feet wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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? You are right, they often have good reason, and can make the case by explaining that. Of course, they often to not have a…

Isn't it unreasonable to expect that every design decision be based on logic? Human beings have two brain hemispheres. TWO WHOLE BRAIN HEMISPHERES. a right lobe and a left lobe. The right lobe is JUST AS BIG and complicated as the left lobe, in which our logic and reasoning abilities are based. But in our culture, especially in development culture, for some reason any decision based on a process in the right hemisphe…

All of these statements might be true, but they neither imply nor advance one another. They are all non sequiturs. Also, there is less to the left/right brain thing than most people seem to think.

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

#150

Post by seanmcdirmid »

Theodores wrote: post #107
exizt88 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem of engineers designing UIs is the topic of one of my favorite books: http://www.amazon.com/The-Inmates-Are-Running-Asylum/dp/0672... The problem is that engineers are not very good at UI design. Both from UX and aesthetic standpoints designers are capable of making a better product. A good designer will give a consistently better result than a good engineer in terms of usability, UX, aesthetics and modula…

Cats aren't very good at catching sticks an dogs aren't very good at catching mice. Therefore you can't have the dogs trying to do what a cat can do.... Except design is different. As a developer, once you have worked with some PSD efforts a few times and then worked with real dynamic content then worked with a real client to get the thing to actually convert sales, then worked with the client stats you have got a go…

> As a developer, once you have worked with some PSD efforts a few times and then worked with real dynamic content then worked with a real client to get the thing to actually convert sales, then worked with the client stats you have got a good grasp of when something is right on the design front.

Most designers do not use photoshop these days; its all Illustrator vector format for anything but touch up. There are still some pixel junkies left, but these are mostly programmers pretending to be poor designers.

> Designers are completely out of the loop after go live, they have done their 'lorem ipsum' stuff.

Only in a failing company that doesn't have real designers or doesn't know how to manage designers.

> Proficiency at UX comes from delivering the deliverables, testing, testing and testing. Listening to the client and the customers. It does not come from a few static designs.

So you are saying designers are bad at UX because they don't conform to your narrow minded idea of what designers are?

Post reply on HN