Web Design is Product Design

http://andyrutledge.com/web-design-is-product-design.php

by joshuacc • 15 years ago

49 25 15 years ago

wccrawford• 15 years ago

It's called specialization. It's not necessarily a bad thing.

It's not specialization. It's laziness. Actually, you could even call lacking one of the most basic requisite skills of the trade incompetence.

tedkimble6• 15 years ago

But that's the problem. There's a disconnect between the term "web designer" and the skills of the trade.

Architects know about building materials. Blacksmiths know about iron and steel. Furniture designers know about furniture materials. Etc...

What should web designers know about? For a growing number of them, it's Photoshop (or similar). You're getting downvoted because you're assuming they should know about HTML and CSS. I would tend to agree.

Edit: (Agree with needing to know HTML and CSS, that is)

biaxident• 15 years ago

Totally agree, when I create a design I want to actually create it myself. Handing it off to someone else who hasn't designed it always manages to miss important elements of the design.

There's also a similar issue with web developers who only focus on the backend and can't create decent HTML and CSS.

I think if you're working on anything web related you really need to be able to write decent HTML and CSS.

antidaily2• 15 years ago

How many times does this need to be said?

earnubs• 15 years ago

Hang around long enough and you'll find that very little is new under the sun.

antidaily2• 15 years ago

Seriously, I feel like I read this on Signal vs. Noise in like 2006.

tedkimble6• 15 years ago

But why must designers be able to code markup and css; surely a PSD mockup will suffice, correct?

It's because to design for any medium you must understand its capabilities and its tendencies. Those too exist on the web, even if they are easily forgotten -- the web pages's tendency to scroll; its capability to be resized; its capabilities of being receiving new content and return visitors.

There is so much untapped potential lying dorment in the web medium, passing by all of those who resist to use HTML, CSS, and a browser during experimentation. It's depressing.

wdewind2• 15 years ago

There is essentially no other medium for which this demand is made. Appliance design, car design etc. etc. almost no other product oriented design field requires the designer to fully understand the medium. Obviously it is helpful, but case in point, the iPhone was designed by people who did not code.

As for the untapped potential in the web medium: it's a bit naive to think that understanding CSS transforms will truly, fundamentally, change a way the designer decides to present a piece of information.

Where would you draw the line? Why shouldn't designers know Unix and TCP/IP programming as well, since those are both part of the medium they design for.

tedkimble6• 15 years ago

>> There is essentially no other medium for which this demand is made.

I beg to differ. Clothing designers know their fabrics. Blacksmiths know their metals. Leather makers know their leathers. Architects know their building materials. And yes, car designers and iPhone designers know their mediums too. I could go on.

I guarantee Jony Ive can tell you all about the capabilities, tendencies, and limitations of the glass, plastic, steel that comprise the iPhone. You think car designers don't know precisely how steel can be formed and about the processes that form it?

But yet web designers don't need to know HTML and CSS. It's by far the easiest medium to know of all those I mentioned. I agree with another poster: It's lazy.

studiofellow4• 15 years ago

You're right—there is a certain line where in-depth technical knowledge becomes less useful for a designer. However learning the basics is immensely helpful. What is the difference in code between a link and a button? How do you style them? How are elements positioned? How do constraints differ between a liquid and fixed layout? This knowledge has a massive impact on a design. Plus, it is so so easy to learn. No excuse.

karjaluoto3• 15 years ago

One day Andy figured something out: if you say bold, polarizing things, you can get a lot of people talking.

Since then, Andy's done very well by this finding, and he has milked it rather vigorously. This grows tiring, though, because such polemic tends to be free of fidelity.

Andy tells us that he'll never hire people who are out-of-shape because they have character flaws. He publicly "redesigns" websites, making bold, unsubstantiated claims, free of any understanding of the functional design requirements. Then, he puts antagonistic bunk like this out there.

The problem with the post linked here, is that it presents opinion as dogmatic fact, when many strong arguments can be made for another approach. Meanwhile, this notion is, in my mind, quite dangerous to young designers who are already trying to learn too many things.

I don't hire designers who write code. I hire designers, developers, and strategists who work well together. They all work, literally, next to one another.

By this, I mean that we don't pocket designers in one corner and developers into another, like some agencies do. Instead, a designer sits next to a strategist, who sits next to a developer, and so on. By doing so, each of the professionals we've hired learns why their colleagues' concerns matter. Meanwhile, by allowing each to be concentrate on their respective craft, we do better work for our clients.

For the record, I think it's great if you're a designer who can write a little code. That being said, I think it's much more important if you can communicate well, write effective briefs, build good wireframes, think about big picture strategic concerns, and all kinds of other stuff.

Then of course, I've played right into Andy's game. Once again, his bull-in-a-china-shop act has resulted in my saying more than I probably should.

tedkimble6• 15 years ago

>> I hire designers, developers, and strategists who work well together.

I think the biggest problem in these conversations is misaligned terminology in our conversations. Based on the rest of your post (and only this post), I would rewrite your sentences as:

I hire artists, developers, and designers who work well together.

karjaluoto3• 15 years ago

No, you're incorrect.

We don't ever hire artists (in spite of the fact that I trained to be one). Very few groups hire actual artists, in spite of how many people would like to think of themselves in such a way.

We do, however, hire strategists. Our strategists shape the overall direction for our projects. Establishing these big picture plans allows our designers to then concentrate on effectively using visual language to act upon the chosen direction.

Further reading: http://www.ideasonideas.com/2011/04/put-down-your-crayons/ http://www.ideasonideas.com/2011/08/the-rules/

GBKS• 15 years ago

Then Graphic Design is product design as well.

Posters, business cards, logos, books all need to go through a printing (or other) process to get applied to paper (or another surface). And you get the best results when you know a bit about the printing process, how paper absorbs ink, the effect of varnishes, etc. That doesn't mean you need to do your own printing.

Graphic design is also experience design. That poster is going to hang on some wall, complement the context, and catch the attention of people passing by. Then when people are drawn in, it needs to communicate clearly.

So not sure why web design is different in this respect.

Pheter• 15 years ago

To produce a good design, one must have a solid understanding of what it is that they are designing for and the medium that they are working with.

There is often an overlap with coders and people who have a good grasp of what is involved in front end development, including all the limitations and properties of the web, for obvious reasons. However, this does not make coding a necessity.

marcin• 15 years ago

As much as I'd always rather have a designer that does HTML on the team (for the sake of quick and agile adaptation), vs someone doing just photoshop, I believe that a good analogy would be architecture. Architects have fairly good understanding of specifics of various materials, their performance as well as associated costs. Still all projects are always reviewed by a 'construction engineer' who converts the architectural vision to workable implementation (that is then on passed to production teams). Taking that example to the online world - designers should understand all of the mechanisms that they will use in the design, and communicate their vision to someone that will implement it. They do not need to actually code it, because following that logic - being a product manager for LinkFindr (and CEO, and business person etc..) I should never allow any designer to spoil my vision with her artistic view, and just storify, mockup, PSD and then code it myself. It takes trust and good communication to split up work in the team, but as Ford proved a couple years ago - when you're running at scale, there is no other way.

wafir• 15 years ago

I would be insulted but his CSS is all jacked up when I look at it on my screen.

Web Design is Product Design

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