Monday through Friday and on some weekends you sit down in the morning with a cup of coffee, and convert the caffeine into code. Am I right? Ok some of you developers don’t drink coffee or whatever, but you get my point; you spend a good deal of time arranging symbols, letters, and numbers into instructions that can be interpreted by machines. I want to bring something to your attention. It is… (drum roll please) design! At this point some of you may be rolling your eyes, and probably at least 10% of you stopped reading this altogether. My question to you is; what do you think about design?
a)It’s idiotic, vapid, and ephemeral.
b)Not my problem
c)Just use bootstrap
d)I’ll design my fist into your face.
I have some bad news for you. If you answered with any of the above responses then you’re wrong. I have some more bad news for you, if you are a developer then you are a designer. I know, I know it’s a lot to comprehend, you spent your entire life hating designers, with their stupid black half turtle neck shirts, horn rimmed glasses with nonprescription lenses, ugly hipster haircuts, and worn vintage shoes that they spent half a years salary on. How could you be one of them? You’re beard isn’t even ironic it’s just a beard. Can this be true?
Yes it’s true, because design isn’t just a cliche, it isn’t css, or wireframes, design is everything. Design is how software works, its logic, its feel, how a user interacts with it. If you didn’t care about design before you need to care now. One of my pet peeve’s is when I hear developers say design is just a feature, and if we get to it we’ll deal with it, but if not no big deal. Wrong, wrong, and need I say it? wrong!! Technically they are correct when saying design is a feature but, they are very wrong in assuming it is ok to be neglected. Design is in my opinion (which is the correct one if you were wondering) the single most important aspect of any product. Let’s take a trip to metaphor land where I’ll paint a lucid portrait for you to understand this concept better. let’s assume you’re building an airplane, it’s your job to build the engines. You need to make some design decisions. How much thrust do you need? How is that thrust going to be generated? Based on the bhp produced by a single engine how many engines do you need? Is the plane being built for commercial, private, or military use? you get the idea. every decision you make matters, and it all comes down to design. You would’t put props on a 747 right? One thing that people need to erase from their brains right now is that design is just aesthetics. Or it’s just kids stuff only seen on the surface. Design is every decision you make when building a product.
The main thing you need to understand is that design, and development, aren’t opposing forces, and they aren’t two different things, they are one in the same. I know a lot of people would be outraged by this, and say “I’m a developer not some artsy fartsy type” Yes I will acknowledge some of you couldn’t tell me that puke green, and poop brown look bad together, but this is only a mere fraction of design.
How do you tell if something is designed well? One of the main signs is if you fail to notice the design. If it has been implemented well, and everything flows the design is the last thing on your mind. You’re busy interacting with a piece of software and the only thing you notice is the software doing what you want. It’s like the airplane in the earlier metaphor I’m sure you’ve probably flown on many airplanes, but can you tell me anything about them? How much thrust they generated what their fuel capacity was, or their max altitude? probably not because this was the aspect of the planes that was designed well by expert engineers. What is more likely is that you noticed the poor design of a commercial plane. Uncomfortable seating, no leg room, no overhead space etc. This isn’t to say that all good design is unnoticeable because it’s not. It just so happens that with software that tends to be the case.
If you’re still wondering why you should care about design let me give you a bit more insight. The design of a product determines the overall quality, usability ,and ultimately it’s worth. Please direct your attention to the following exhibits.
Exhibit A.
Exhibit B.
In Exhibit A we have a hideous abomination that is basically unusable, and in Exhibit B we have a timeless Herman Miller Eames chair. Which piece of software would rather develop? Exhibit A. or a gorgeous, refined, useful Exhibit B. To beat a dead horse I’ll wrap up with some final thoughts.
1.Design matters
2.Design makes software useful (Credit goes to Mr. Rams for that one)
3.If you’re a developer you’re a designer
4.Better design leads to better products
5.Design and development go together better than Hulk Hogan, and a red speedo brother!!
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