[jasim]

On the reverse, let designers refuse to work with developers who have never observed users using their product (user research in formal terms), or don't understand color theory, or haven't designed a landing page that converts well, don't know how to use Sketch or Figma.

I've been trying to learn how to do design well - struggling to get the onboarding UX for a complex workflow right. It is something very difficult for me to solve well, but a good designer can start iterating in a few days' time. Design is indeed a valuable and deep craft, and my lack of respect for it in the past stemmed from not knowing it and not having worked with masters in the field.

Yes it would be wonderful if designers also understood HTML & CSS - it is quite adjacent to their area of expertise. But is it a deep enough skill if the market doesn't award salaries to people who specialize only in HTML & CSS as much as it does for application developers?

The current designer-developer collaboration workflow is broken, and the dominant narrative blames designers for not learning HTML & CSS. I was also party to it till recently, but it is partly the fault of programmers who don't expend the effort to understand how design is done and what "good" looks like in that craft. It is also the fault of the current crop of tools - vector drawing tools that don't have abstractions nor supports responsive design, and HTML & CSS which is far removed from its visual rendering.

It is a give and take, and it is so much more fun to work when people are eager to learn from each other.

[zapzupnz]

> but it is partly the fault of programmers who don't expect the effort to understand how design is done and what "good" looks like in that craft

Very much something I agree with. Even on HN, when a non-designer has made something with a GUI, you'll often hear the excuses along the lines of "well, don't blame me if it's ugly, I'm not a designer".

Then you shouldn't have deigned to make something with a UI until you've run it past someone first. You land up with these utilities and apps that are intended to be used by regular, non-technical people that are just complicated and unwieldy Office '97 collections of tiny, unusable buttons that don't make any bloody sense to anyone.

[scarejunba]

It means "I know this bit is bad but I don't know how to make it better". It's an expression of vulnerability and I'm glad people are releasing their half-finished stuff with this admission rather than not releasing.

I actually think your behaviour here is kind of crappy to take an occasion where someone is admitting to weakness and twisting it on them. Especially when it's completely voluntary to even use these products.

Shame on you.

[zapzupnz]

> Shame on you

This part of your post I find to be in contradiction with the HN guidelines. It's not a helpful, it's merely snide and dismissive.

Anyway, I don't think my behaviour is crappy. It is undoubtedly better to run your design past someone, test things, take feedback, fix issues, and improve the interface to correspond with the things that people find difficult. If people want help with interface design, the world is not short of willing volunteers with the relevant expertise.

Especially considering I made it clear I was talking about utilities used by, and I quote myself, "regular, non-technical people" — they don't care whether you're making an "expression of vulnerability", they want their software to work. Additionally, the world of IT helpdesk does not applaud having to troubleshoot problems that should've been solved years ago because so-and-so decided to do everything by themselves rather than do some basic user testing or simply have someone else look at their design.

If something is in a testing state, call it a beta. I respect a product that knows it isn't ready for the big time and so is explicitly marked for improvement, either by collaboration with a designer at a later stage or community involvement — this is what happens a lot in open source.

However, don't put it into production, particularly if its design also leads to more problems overall for the users by virtue of its premature release.

I take the user-centric view of product design. We are making these things for other people. They are not going to give us trophies for participation.

[Aeolun]

You can either have something ugly now. Or something well designed and beautiful never.

Which one do you want?

[zapzupnz]

These are far from the only choices.

I know the triangle of forces would have something to say about my statement, but I find too many developers purposefully build a wall around themselves and product design, perhaps using the aforementioned triangle as justification for why they should keep that wall erected.

Yet, even a passing attempt to understand the basics of design, whether of user interfaces or even of something as mundane as a chair, opens one's mind up to possibilities hitherto unseen due to failing to understand that there can be a strong link between aesthetics and function.