The “designers should code” bullshit and a not so new idea
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The “designers should code” bullshit and a not so new idea
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Re: The “designers should code” bullshit and a not so new idea
#2'According to James Traub (writing for The New Republic), Gardner's theory of Multiple Intelligences has not been accepted by most cognitive scientists nor by most academics in the education field. Indeed, George Miller, one of the psychologists credited with discovering the mechanisms by which short-term memory works, wrote that Gardner's theory boiled down to “hunch and opinion.”'
http://latestlearningcurve.blogspot.com/2010/01/learning-sty...
Re: The “designers should code” bullshit and a not so new idea
#3Yay - designer/developer "teams". Sounds fair enough, but it's gotta work both ways.
You as a designer need to be flexible. If I as a developer say "that can't be done within the given time/budget/constraints", you'll need to rework or rethink some of your precious design.
I as a developer need to sometimes do some more research to make sure something can, in fact, be done, instead of relying on 10 year old preconceptions about what's possible and what's not. I may need to tell a client/pm that we're going to do XYZ visually and IE5 be damned because I've looked at the stats and 0.21% of the visitors in the past 18 months used IE5.
I've rarely seen true teamwork collaboration between designer/developers in the web world, and it's worse in the 'virtual team / freelance' world, because pretty much every project is a new set of people working together for the first time.
What's more common is a designer puts together some graphic design which is fairly impossible to recreate in browsers, then complains tirelessly that it doesn't look exactly 100% the same on every single browser, including their WAP phone, iPhone and IE6 on XPsp1, and proceeds to tell you about their cousin who made all this work perfectly 6 months ago because he wrote some javascript to make everything awesome. Then the designer coming back 4 hours before a demo/launch and telling you that the color in the footer on each page needs to be different, but they're going away on vacation in 10 minutes and "it's pretty simple, just look at the 19 mockups I emailed to you in February" (conveniently named 'XPJ59 client X here's slide #1.JPEG', etc).
Also more common is a developer who takes no notice of the designer mockups that were approved by 8 people over 2 months, and just does their own thing with CSS3, custom modified jQuery, and only tests on their custom Konqueror or Chrome beta release, then pushes to Heroku where only they have an account and rights to push.
Yes, designers and developers need to learn to work well together to appreciate the issues each faces. Web designers do, in my view, need to have a better understanding of web technologies, understanding the limitations and possibilities of the tech. I don't see how you can do that without actually, you know, learning how to code some. Developers should have a better idea of how to use graphic tools, and sit in on some meetings where designers are subjected to idiotic whims and endless debates on shades of blue to have a better understanding of why the designer is bitching about what should really be a 2 minute change for the dev (cause the designer will get it in the neck from 8 people if they don't).
Re: The “designers should code” bullshit and a not so new idea
#4'According to James Traub (writing for The New Republic), Gardner's theory of Multiple Intelligences has not been accepted by most cognitive scientists nor by most academics in the education field. Indeed, George Miller, one of the psychologists credited with discovering the mechanisms by which short-term memory works, wrote that Gardner's theory boiled down to “hunch and opinion.”' http://latestlearningcurve.blogspo…
I am editing a forthcoming book in the field, written by a teacher who earnestly believes in MI. Evaluating this teacher's data, his approach is clearly working for his students, but I think because of better engagement, more individual attention, and more interdisciplinary projects. Ultimately, I think we're cutting most of the MI stuff from the book as unsupported, although he will cite Gardner as inspiration.
The data I've looked at is more consistent with variation in subject performance primarily correlating with interest and personality, rather than MI.
Re: The “designers should code” bullshit and a not so new idea
#5'According to James Traub (writing for The New Republic), Gardner's theory of Multiple Intelligences has not been accepted by most cognitive scientists nor by most academics in the education field. Indeed, George Miller, one of the psychologists credited with discovering the mechanisms by which short-term memory works, wrote that Gardner's theory boiled down to “hunch and opinion.”' http://latestlearningcurve.blogspo…
Sure, not everyone agrees with his theory. However, that's not the point of the article. :)
Re: The “designers should code” bullshit and a not so new idea
#6"The team of the digital era is a designer / developer team"
At my last job, I kept trying to get them to hire a designer. When I left, there were like 15+ developers and no designers. A couple of them thought they had designer skills, but they didn't really. They ended up outsourcing their design, and of course, a lot of back-and-forth was needed.
I absolutely think that designers and developers need to work closely together.
I also think it's -possible- to have someone who is great at both. But you're going to pay them a lot more. Probably more than having 2 specialists. They are going to be amazing at what they do. You certainly won't get twice the work from them that you get from 2 specialists.
Re: The “designers should code” bullshit and a not so new idea
#7LoseThos is for programming as entertainnment. It was common for one person to make games on the C64. Obviously, that person was a programmer, not an atrist. The poor resolution and colors made an even playing field -- it all looked primative.
Don't worry -- all those extra pixels you're missing in LoseThos would just have made making art more tedious.
Re: The “designers should code” bullshit and a not so new idea
#8I disagree. Just to be clear, we're talking web design here in HTML/CSS, not actual programming in JavaScript or Ruby. HTML/CSS creates designs, just like pencils create sketches and paint brushes create painting. Sure, it's hard, but watercolor and oil painting is also hard and has to be learned. Web design is no different.
IMO, in a team, creating the HTML and CSS is a responsibility of the designer. The developers are too busy doing real coding. At least, that's how it works in the design agencies I know personally. It's always a designer that creates the markup, whether a lowly design intern or a production artist. Maybe enterprise and tech startups are different, but that's how it works in the design agencies.
Re: The “designers should code” bullshit and a not so new idea
#9Yay - designer/developer "teams". Sounds fair enough, but it's gotta work both ways. You as a designer need to be flexible. If I as a developer say "that can't be done within the given time/budget/constraints", you'll need to rework or rethink some of your precious design. I as a developer need to sometimes do some more research to make sure something can, in fact, be done, instead of relying on 10 year old preconcep…
You're right. Every discussion about "designers should code" always shows problem in teamwork and communication, not in coding skills. :)
And even if as I was saying learning to code is a way to create these skills, like designing things is for developers, another way is just listening to the developers/designers in your team. It works very well and it's way more efficient for a lot of different people. :)
Teamwork, and trust.
Re: The “designers should code” bullshit and a not so new idea
#10I think something is being overlooked here. As a designer, when "learn to code" is suggested, it's not aimed at programming languages (C, Ruby, Python, etc.), but rather simple/easy to understand things like HTML/CSS. Any self respecting designer should be able to take a .psd and get it working in a browser. And although it's not necessary for a designer to understand development languages, there's nothing wrong with it (regardless of scientific theories).