[HN Gopher] Design's Unsexy Middle Bits (2020)
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Design's Unsexy Middle Bits (2020)
Author : mooreds
Score : 25 points
Date : 2022-10-09 02:07 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (eleganthack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (eleganthack.com)
| throw771 wrote:
| This 'design thinking' approach is such a rubbish. Having quite a
| bit of background into how design is done at Apple or some top
| studios, this kind of process couldn't be further away from how
| good design is actually made and yet, sadly, the web is filled
| with self-proclaimed gurus of this kind.
| gofreddygo wrote:
| enlighten us.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| well one reality I partook in at a FAANG (engineering) for
| years essentially allowed the quality of design to be an
| emergent phenomenon through extremely vast internal testing
| and data collection, with evolution of alternatives competing
| for favor among testees. A tirelessly iterative process.
|
| Thus, "good design" was derived from experiences, an emergent
| phenomenon, not something prescribed.
|
| It's possible that distinction is what people are alluding
| to.
| davbryn wrote:
| Somebody has been paid to put together a huge document explaining
| how they document instinctive design decisions. I really don't
| get how this is an industry. 'People will click buttons'. 'people
| react to this HUE value'.
|
| It will forever blow my mind that people are paid to say where a
| button lives
| jrm4 wrote:
| This kind of windy article further confirms my belief that
| "design" is relatively hollow at its core; essentially a jargon-
| filled way to try to generalize a task that must be very
| specific, wherein not much of this jargon is very useful.
|
| Some user(s) have some kind of task that they want to achieve.
| They could get together and communicate well with some kind of
| developer who can help them achieve or complete that task; all of
| which is likely doable without this middle layer of whatever this
| is.
| meheleventyone wrote:
| > Some user(s) have some kind of task that they want to
| achieve. They could get together and communicate well with some
| kind of developer who can help them achieve or complete that
| task; all of which is likely doable without this middle layer
| of whatever this is.
|
| Whilst this is definitely true the question is what would the
| end result be like. All you're doing is having the developer
| engage in design which isn't a bad thing if they have the
| temperament and skillset to do it. Which not all developer's
| actually do. As someone leading a very practically oriented
| design team that develop all their designs it's painfully
| obvious that very experienced developers are not inherently
| good product designers even if they are very good at designing
| the code they write. In a large part I think the process of
| design is mostly universal but the nitty gritty parts of it are
| actually what matter.
|
| There's definitely a lot of fluff written by consultants with
| things to sell you though. But that's not really different to
| other disciplines. In particular "design thinking" is the
| "agile coach" for designers.
| seanwilson wrote:
| > essentially a jargon-filled way to try to generalize a task
| that must be very specific, wherein not much of this jargon is
| very useful
|
| I think if you tried to do a similar breakdown of what it's
| like to design computer code in general it probably wouldn't
| help much either because there's rarely a rigid process -
| you're usually going by intuition to weigh up what's most
| productive to try next where the intuition was gained from
| experience vs jargon filled articles. I'm not sure why UI/UX
| design content is so thick with this kind of text in comparison
| though.
| jrm4 wrote:
| I mean, I think I get why -- it's that "design" is where all
| the cool kids are, essentially. Selling people the idea of
| "design" itself is profitable and/or fruitful. I teach
| undergraduate IT, and this whole thing definitely gets butts
| in seats; obviously I find it a mixed bag at best.
| karaterobot wrote:
| > Some user(s) have some kind of task that they want to
| achieve. They could get together and communicate well with some
| kind of developer who can help them achieve or complete that
| task; all of which is likely doable without this middle layer
| of whatever this is.
|
| What you just described is the middle layer. You're describing
| a layer in the development of a product wherein the goals of
| the user and the business are translated into features that can
| be specified at a level of clarity which allows them to be
| implemented as part of a holistic, functional system.
|
| If a developer does this, he is doing design.
|
| If you agree that this is an important process, and is non-
| trivial to perform, you may find yourself saying "well, maybe
| some developers would be better at this than others," and now
| you've created a role called "Design Developer" or something
| like that.
|
| And then if you find that this Design Developer spends more of
| their time specifying features for other developers to
| implement, and less time coding, you can go ahead and optimize
| your hiring process for people who are good at talking to users
| and translating that understanding into specifications, rather
| than writing code. You've now recreated the role of designer.
|
| If instead, you say "well, this actually _is_ a trivial
| process: any developer could do that work and still be a high-
| functioning programmer at the same time, " then I would ask for
| some examples of this, and probably be able to give you ten or
| twenty times as many counterexamples.
| gofreddygo wrote:
| A maxim I heard and stand by "Design is a marketers tool. Not a
| designers"
|
| Very real when you think about it. Good design comes from good
| understanding of the problem and the environment. Requires
| being a part of the environment, making accurate observations
| and some flight of imagination.
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