[tatx]

Look at it from the other side. If a designer were to suggest some of the more fundamental changes to how your product should work, would you genuinely listen to their opinions and suggestions, or are these critical decisions being taken by someone higher up in management?

Designers are often pushed into the rear end of the process in every sort of consumer product development (including software development). It is no wonder therefore that we end up with not only ugly but often unusable products. Big opportunities all around for a company that brings good design and better designers to the forefront of product development.

But it is just too damn hard for most people to let go of their ego where design is concerned. The whole design thing looks so intuitive and apparent right from the start that we can't believe we can't do it all ourselves, and, not only that, do it better that everybody else.

[dunkelheit]

Proposing fundamental product changes takes solid grasp of what is called "product architecture" in the article, i.e. precise understanding of the concepts involved and the intricacies of their interaction. That means becoming a domain expert, knowing how to work with analytics and maybe even having a basic understanding of backend architecture. Most of the designers I have worked with (admittedly a very small sample) were content with muddled understanding from the point of view of casual user and so mostly drew pretty pictures.

[tmlee]

I would agree. It gets difficult sometimes to implement a design from a beautiful looking mockup. Mainly because the design does not take into account most of the software use-cases. Then we go back to the drawing board again.

Which is sort of why I think designer who can implement design (in HTML/CSS/JS or iOS/Android) is ideal, as they are much more likely to have that sort of "product architecture" thought process; and being as closed as possible to the code which means it becomes easier to adapt the design.

Personally like Ryan Singer's approach to designing as he jumps back and fourth between HTML and Photoshop (https://vimeo.com/16814487), the design gets much closer to reality.

[corinrules]

Specialisation vs generalisation though...

[paulojreis]

> Proposing fundamental product changes takes solid grasp of what is called "product architecture" in the article, i.e. precise understanding of the concepts involved and the intricacies of their interaction.

That's exactly the point. Assuming your product will be used by humans, a designer (a real designer; not a dribbbler pixel-pusher) is way better equipped - in terms of methods for understanding users and context - than a engineer or a manager.

[fleevy]

In my experience, designers are clueless obstructionists. They take months to mull over trivialities, then finally come up with an obvious solution that anybody could have seen from the start. Maybe I just got some bad designers though.

[evolve2k]

Being a professional coder who is now studying design one thing I've discovered is that most people underestimate the scope of good design and seem to want to narrow the designer just down the prett visuals, discounting anything unseen (eg process).

Another difficulty is that much good design is obvious in hindsight, think iPad but the act of whittling away what is unimportant is a key part of the job.

Or yeah maybe you've just dealt with poor designers.