Working with designers feels very inefficient
Posted by Winter-Grand2830@reddit | ExperiencedDevs | View on Reddit | 117 comments
Every single company I worked for had some weird design culture.
One had this “agency model”, so there was this nice and siloed design department doing their own stuff and handing off designs to us. Sometimes we started working on a new feature, while they started updating it on their side and we knew about it only after WEEKS.
In another company we had one product designer for the whole team of 7 engineers. We engineers worked on 7 different things at the same time, and this poor guy was pulled in every direction. Not only internally but also externally. Of course it was difficult to work with him.
And talking with people these two models are very common.
Tbh I think it’s a bit bs. How agile can you be when you work like this? I’d rather have a very small team working on one thing at a time, so collaboration is strong at all times, or just having devs doing the design part as well (of course they need to learn the skills).
wrex1816@reddit
Serious question: Are there any software engineers on this sub that dont hate everyone around them at work and think that none of them perform a job function of any value?
The way most of you talk, it's like you think big tech companies should pay you at least a half mil per year, to sit in a dark room, never be asked to attend a standup, or any meeting for that matter, never have to work with a PM, a designer, and analyst, anyone from "The business" and you never want to hear directly from customers what their needs are because you hold the mantra "the customer doesn't know what they want until I give it to them". Basically you want to never talk to anyone ever, and see nothing wrong whatsoever with the proposal that this is how a business can actually run.
beachandbyte@reddit
I think just a disconnect from the “you get unambiguous specs and deliver code to meet the specs”, vs the reality you get ambiguous goals and specs for a business domain you don’t fully understand and a deadline that is likely unrealistic for a moving target that is the scope.
MrJohz@reddit
But that's just what engineering is. You can't get unambiguous specs — if it was that easy to generate them, most developers would be out of a job and we'd be able to automate far more of the coding experience than LLMs can. This post is a great demonstration of how much time can go into creating a truly unambiguous specification, and how much it requires coordination between everybody involved in the product, including developers.
There are good and bad business practices that make it more or less likely that developers are able to get involved in creating the specifications, or figuring out deadlines. If you're in a place where everything gets handed down to you from on high, then fair enough, complain away. But I've worked with a number of developers who could have been involved in the specification process, and could have spent more time understanding the business domain, but didn't, and then complained that all the specs they were getting were completely ambiguous.
beachandbyte@reddit
I agree and don’t even think unambiguous specs are really possible except from another developer. I think much of the complaints about stuff like this boil down to the deadline, I have no problem going back and forth with any stake holder dozens of times as long as each time keeps pushing back my deadline.
In general I think asking for estimates (at the complexity and level I’m usually hired for amounts to).
“How long will it take you to repair this sailboat at sea?”
“Hmm well I don’t know I’ve never been on sailboat before”.
“We’ll just estimate..”
chmod777@reddit
sure, but they arent the ones making posts or getting upvoted.
SchartHaakon@reddit
Was praying to find a comment like this on the post. Like jfc people in here have so little respect for other fields its crazy. I really hope this doesn't reflect how most senior developers feel.
MCFRESH01@reddit
I don’t understand this mindset at all. PMs and Designers solve a ton of problems that I either don’t have the time to or don’t want to. Maybe I’ve just been lucky enough to work on teams where they are clearly meaningfully contributing
easytarget2000@reddit
I agree with you. Especially frontend engineers that hate most UI/UX colleagues are odd to me. I am getting "you don't understand your job" vibes. Frontend engineering is _all about_ combining the output of the backend and design teams.
I also think it's some kind of outdated nerd elitism that I thought we'd left behind in the 1990s.
My impression is that they are thinking: "Designers are stupid because they like pretty things and change their minds sometimes."
Bro, aesthetics are a good thing, and most of all, you're supposed to deliver a pretty product. Also do you know what agility is?
I understand the frustration that can arise, but we all have to ask ourselves: Do we hate the entire field or is there an actual skill this coworker is lacking?
flatfisher@reddit
I do, but by owning my own business so that I can actually setup the organization I want instead of complaining. Regarding designers making them work together with developers during wire framing and hiring only the ones that are very good at CSS too solved most of the issues. Even if it was not my own company I think small organizations are inherently better if you love efficiency.
commonsearchterm@reddit
I had a job like this for about 5 years. backend infra. no stand ups, minimal meetings, customers (coworkers) generally didn't know what they wanted and didn't care as long as it ran.
Dry_Row_7523@reddit
The pms ive worked with (3 in about 5 years) are all awesome. Basically the 1 pm for 7 engineers model op mentioned
Design on the other hand has an agency model and on top of that we have maybe 1 designer per 10-15 engineers and thats awful. I dont have any issue with the individual designers themselves just the working model (so really its an issue with upper management)
KronktheKronk@reddit
Yeah, because most often all those other support roles are terrible at their jobs. product delivers requests directly from the customer with no thought or discovery, never challenging what they're being asked for. Design designs without ever really knowing the customer or what they're trying to accomplish, often mossing the point. I'm not even sure what analysts do, because we have to do the analyzing as we go.
Yet for every developer there seems to be six people who are supposed to give them the context to do their jobs, and somehow each of them have convinced themselves they're in charge. It's awful.
At the end of the day nothing exists if the developers don't make it exist, and yet the whole system thinks of them as the least valuable part of the system.
Infuriating.
lolimouto_enjoyer@reddit
One can dream at least.
Winter-Grand2830@reddit (OP)
Thank you for your kind words, but where exactly I said we should not talk with anyone? Tbh, I’d love to talk to customers and do discovery myself, prototyping and sketching UIs (because I know how)
el0011101000101001@reddit
Then become a designer, that is what they spend their time doing.
Winter-Grand2830@reddit (OP)
For me in web development separating design from development is nonsense, most of all now with AI. I had experienced doing both and it’s fun and works great
el0011101000101001@reddit
AI can create an interface but it doesn’t replace user research. There’s a reason why large, mature organizations have design teams.
wrex1816@reddit
OP is the typical dev who thinks he knows everything and has nothing to learn, has all the answers but if you had to work alongside him would probably drive you insane with how basic his experience level is.
Winter-Grand2830@reddit (OP)
If you can predict all that from a few messages, you should consider a career in meteorology
wrex1816@reddit
In all fairness you made the post and then have proceeded to reply to several people in this post. You chose how to present yourself. I didn't do that.
Tee_zee@reddit
People who spend their time on forums get engagement from whinging. They’re devs, they’re on reddit, theyre being negative, and there’s a huge over representation of autism already in the dev community, combined with Reddit, and you get this.
Most of the people whinging here remind me of the people in my teams (I’m an engineering lead) that I’d cut first at layoffs. They think they’re amazing, but they just want to do their hobby and don’t care about delivering what they’re paid for.
New feature they think is useless? Product owner is an idiot. 2 weeks to rewrite some hardly used function from one language to the fancy new one? Brilliant use of resources.
wrex1816@reddit
LOL, I can't disagree with a word of this.
kutjelul@reddit
I just think we’re all trying to optimize the way our teams work, and typically we have to deal with organizations that don’t really take our opinions into account
mnemonikerific@reddit
No it should be some extreme like that. There are multiple levers at play (a) time to market (b) progress updates (c) technical efficiency & future proofing (d) scope creep
If all parties involved can discuss and accept trade offs to get these levers to a satisfactory compromise point - everyone can walk away and deliver. Eg if the business wants a PoC then the PM has to inform them that the PoC is throwaway and may likely not be maintainable based on say SOLID principles.
Programmers are most upset when they are made to code something based on one set of foundational criteria and then the goalposts are shifted and then they are asked to justify why it’s a high effort. If someone told the team they need just a MVP for 2 roles on a right deadline and then all new requests demand flexible role based customisations on short timeframes, that would definitely cause programmer and stakeholder friction.
iPissVelvet@reddit
Your comment is accurate, but keep in mind — people post here when they have problems, not when things are going well.
For example, I love my manager, my PM, and my designer. We’re a strong team and we’ve shipped a lot. Never bothered to comment that here though, until now.
Zulban@reddit
Oh my goodness. You need to find new colleagues and new online communities.
Idea-Aggressive@reddit
A lot of “soft engineers” don’t even know how bad they are, if they had to run their own business they’d be broke. You’re absolutely correct!
Acceptable-Milk-314@reddit
Lol no
MindCrusader@reddit
The post seems like it is the opposite - the developer wants to have a better communication with the designer. I love working with people as an Android dev, I love mentoring etc. But some companies, sometimes even those "big successful" ones are terrible. The old, dusty corporate that doesn't care about the development process, developers and even users. I worked for 1 or 2 years on outsourcing for one of these, devs were great, PMs great, designer okayish. But everything else was painful, I almost burnt out there. Almost every feature I have developed there, I knew the users will not like it and soon after, fair enough, the features got disabled with feature flags
Now I am working with a super good team, we have some problems with legacy backend, but I still prefer that than the corporate greed and not understanding what users really want
Historical_Cook_1664@reddit
We don't mind most of our coworkers. We resent being burdened with extra stress just because management is unable organize/allocate/communicate properly.
vivec7@reddit
I certainly don't hate everyone around me. I've had a few devs I thought were a bit odd, I love our designers, and aside from a couple of overbearing project managers the clients have all been great.
Even stand-up doesn't bother me all that much. It's one of the few social activities built into the day, and with a job that can at times be quite isolating it's not entirely unwelcome.
Perhaps it's also that for me this was a career change. I remember how it used to feel, working ten hour days in a grocery store with the most miserable dregs of society, dealing with customers who wouldn't even get a job working there despite the incredibly low bar.
Compared to that, I work with nothing but brilliant people who love their jobs.
We've got it pretty fucking good in this industry.
Abject_Parsley_4525@reddit
Well, it's quite likely that someone would post because they have an issue with something. I think it's probably a mistake on your part to merge the complaint of every single person on this sub into one entity and just slap that sticker on everyone. Everyone has their difficulties with different parts of the process.
Junuxx@reddit
you guys have designers?
liveyourcode@reddit
I had good experience with designers that felt more like devs or like part of the dev team.
i had bad experience with designers that felt more like program/product maangers or like part of the product management team.
Can anybody relate?
elhammundo@reddit
Designers should create design systems to define the overall approach to UI. Ideally, a method to enable prototyping, eg. storybook, means the engineers and designers can collaborate on the UI and UX prior to full implementation.
With a clear design, engineering don't need to be blocked awaiting a final design and designers aren't creating adhoc, bespoke UI for each team
wrex1816@reddit
Most devs are terrible at designing good looking, well functioning UIs that adhere to all beat practice and legal requirements when it comes to accessibility. Some are good at it... But most are not.
PM_ME_DPRK_CANDIDS@reddit
most developers can do a 2-3 of the 5. If we have 20 developers on one team we don't need any designers right? .... right? ...... microsoft?
Few_Raisin_8981@reddit
Same can be said about designers. I've worked with some that come up with terrible decisions that would waste large amounts of development effort on low priority UI
elhammundo@reddit
Which is why design systems and component libraries are so important, it means engineers don't need to be full experts.
UX designers are, so being able to work cross-functionally with engineers and relevant stakeholders increases the chances of successful outcomes
wrex1816@reddit
Gross misunderstanding of these libraries.
For someone who relies on accessibility being taken seriously to read a page, it's like you're saying "Users only need to know like 10 basic English words, context also does not exist". Thats wild that yud come in with that take while claiming to be experienced.
Ok-Singer-3124@reddit
yud
elhammundo@reddit
Are you replying to the correct message? If so, I've no idea how you have misconstrued what I wrote so much
Markronom@reddit
Creating a solid design system is tough though and it will keep multiple designers busy for some time
prescod@reddit
Design systems are important but they do not replace component and screen design in any system of complexity. Just like “software design patterns” do not replace software architecture decisions on each project.
elhammundo@reddit
Correct as they're the building blocks to the component and screen design.
A quality design system enables the screens to be designed for UX as the look has been created already.
This (one of many) provides the rapid prototyping aspect of incorporating user feedback in the development lifecycle
MrJohz@reddit
In my experience, the design system has almost never been the blocker, and is usually something that's quite easy to change right up until the last minute — the lines designers use to demarcate their UI components usually match quite well to the lines developers use, and so it's just a case of swapping around some details. ("Just" is doing a lot of work here — actually implementing a new design can still take a long time because it's very detail-oriented work, but it isn't complex work that will require a lot of back-and-forth.)
The stuff where I've found designers invaluable is the one-off stuff. Particularly for complex applications, there are going to be a lot of very unique screens that will never fit into any design system (or rather, would be pointless to put into a design system because they're not going to be repeated). There, there are lots of decisions like "Should this page be broken up into tabs?" or "If I configure this item, should that open as a popup, a sidebar, or a new page?" where there will be no single correct answer, and the decision needs to be made separately in multiple places. That's where a design team is absolutely necessary. They're the people who can do the user testing, create the wireframes, and have a reservoir of different designs and ways of doing things to draw on.
cez801@reddit
Correct. But just like software architectures, sometimes it really important and other times less so.
If your design team is doing everything bad, that is useless. So make sure they are doing something consistently well.
On of the teams I ran, we set up a clear policy around priotisation. This area - always had a designer dedicated to it. Highly visible used by 100% of users. That area - part time designer. Final area ( usually setup screens for admin type people ) - got whatever design time was available, and you could build screens here as an engineer following the patterns.
We use the same thing in software architectures, often have design patterns, that get a review through the PR process.
This was definitely not perfect, preference was a couple more designers and embedded in teams. But honestly after 3 years of running that approach the software was good, and got great user feedback. ( although complaint about the admin screens - but that was a trade off that was worth it )
anonyuser415@reddit
Design systems also totally suck to maintain and the teams doing it rarely look good to leadership
They tend to experience cycles of languishing awfulness and frenzied rewrites
StyleAccomplished153@reddit
The problem is most designers do always seem to break their own systems and design a bespoke version for each use case. Why does this button now have icons? Why is this header a brand new colour that's not in our framework? Yes that gradient background looks nice but for an internal only screen do we actually need it?
kitsunde@reddit
I’ve been in charge of product, design and engineering.
In my experience it’s because the design process doesn’t usually have a feedback cycle by other designers like engineering does.
If you formalise design review, you can cut these things off so they don’t show up at the last minute and create a bunch of unexpected extra work.
elhammundo@reddit
Professional discipline is a common problem across all roles. Product/project ownership becomes imperative to ensure all team members are holding each other accountable to agreed standards from code, design, validation, deployment, etc
Abject-Kitchen3198@reddit
As a dev, having the general design guidelines and few reference implementations should be enough for me to create specific screens in collaboration with business stakeholders. That, and having access to the designer for consultation or some new more complex designs when needed would be as agile as it gets for me.
el0011101000101001@reddit
But it isn't enough. Business stakeholders are not the users and that is how you get a sloppy product.
Abject-Kitchen3198@reddit
Of course. I assumed users as well but didn't communicate it well. Similar to how most requirements are specified.
el0011101000101001@reddit
Engineering shouldn’t just be looking to push feature after feature without a user need or validation of the feature though.
elhammundo@reddit
That goes without saying. You don't need designers (specifically) to validate user needs and feedback. The goal is for organisation to elicit actionable feedback that can feed back into the relevant team to incorporate into their development
Iluvembig@reddit
This is what happens when your ux/ui designers come from marketing backgrounds after taking a few bootcamps.
Pressure your workplace to hire ACTUAL ux/ui designers. Those who went to design school for graphic/industrial/ux-ui design.
Idea-Aggressive@reddit
What about suggesting something better instead of complaining on your teams backs? Like a mature player who knows better does?
Winter-Grand2830@reddit (OP)
I did, right at the end of the post
Idea-Aggressive@reddit
What I meant is to talk to your organisation, you’re part of the organisation and you seem to know better.
Winter-Grand2830@reddit (OP)
Last time I did that it didn’t end well. People are full of themselves nowadays
ivancea@reddit
Well, you found your next project as an experienced dev. Solve it; make it work. Not everything in engineering is about vomiting code!
Winter-Grand2830@reddit (OP)
Will do
SoggyMattress2@reddit
Developers can't design past entry level. That's not because they aren't smart enough, or because design is harder than development, they don't spend time learning how to do it and practicing. In the same way a basketball player likely won't be very good at baseball.
I'm a ux designer and my field exists because developers are bad designers. Back in the 90s you had bloated software full of features nobody wanted with hard to use UIs and user flows.
So devs need designers so they can focus on what they're good at, software engineering. In the same way I need developers to make my designs into a usable product because my development skills are very basic. I can write good css and js but past that I can't create anything.
As for what is the ideal scenario, it depends. How I work is my product owner will request a feature, give me a brief and then I research the feature environment, the users, competitors etc. I'll put together my research notes, draft a low Fi user flow diagram and outline the functionality I need.
Typically this is when I demo/have a chat with my dev team. They can push back on technical stuff and challenge my design ideas and get an early understanding of the feature.
Then I'll move onto wireframing, then user testing then return for my dev handoff process with detailed notes, wireframes strictly following my design library and clickable prototypes if needed.
Then I remain on call if the devs need anything.
Winter-Grand2830@reddit (OP)
I’ll be praying every day for this to change. Specialisation is the death of this industry. The future will have professionals being able to deliver e2e, most of all with AI getting better and better
SoggyMattress2@reddit
Specialization is necessary in any industry.
Not with llms they won't. Maybe another form of ai tech gets invented.
Winter-Grand2830@reddit (OP)
Yes, but not always. Like for me a designer/full stack dev is practically a product facing role that works at creating value for the business. Both activities are super intertwined. I see this as a specialisation itself. Call it Product Engineers? Ux engineers? not sure.
kaiserbergin@reddit
Sounds rad
decebaldecebal@reddit
I still don't understand why designers can not easily also create already working HTML & CSS code (using TailwindCSS or other framework obviously)
Feels like wasted time to make the design, then have the dev basically do the same work but in a different tool and then the manager complains that stuff is not pixel aligned when we all know that is not how it works...
Winter-Grand2830@reddit (OP)
exactly.
Several-Analyst669@reddit
The whole “design is inefficient” thing usually has nothing to do with designers and everything to do with how the company sets them up.
The truth is, design only feels efficient when it’s embedded. A designer in the same squad as the engineers, working on one problem at a time, is night and day compared to the siloed model.
If you’ve got seven ongoing projects, it doesn’t matter how good your designer is, you’re still going to feel bottlenecked.
anObscurity@reddit
I never understood why design and development was so delineated. At my company we hire designers who are technical, cut out the 2 step process and just design and build at the same time.
Winter-Grand2830@reddit (OP)
The way to go
letsbehavingu@reddit
In my startup my CPO uses builder.io to directly deliver react code in a pr for the design and we just fix it up. Very efficient.
Winter-Grand2830@reddit (OP)
Very boring
letsbehavingu@reddit
Maybe you’re the problem
Winter-Grand2830@reddit (OP)
People that challenge the status quo are usually “the problem”. Everyone else just executes in silence.
csanon212@reddit
Designers are effectively dead now. Now I see that role going towards PMs, UX "engineers", or full stack developers. It does make the time-to-market less, but it makes the whole flow of development more chaotic.
Winter-Grand2830@reddit (OP)
I like this trend tbh, it’s just that people need to change their mindset and upskill
BrofessorOfLogic@reddit
You can be 100% agile, because agile is whatever your manager says it is, and if you don't like it you need to be more of a team player.
After 20 years in this industry, that's genuinely all I've got.
I could rant about what work process/model we should be using. But so far I have not seen one single company that actually does what developers ask for.
I guess the only thing I haven't tried yet is running my own firm. Would be cool to try that at some point.
Winter-Grand2830@reddit (OP)
Heads down and shut up. Great way to make things better.
baldyd@reddit
25 years here. I always liked working at companies who put engineers first. Not out of ego or some sense of superiority, just because we were always the folks crunching away to make the product work and get it shipped. I found that it really just depends on the company, and after a few years of corporate hell I'm really enjoying working for a very creative company which also puts engineering first, even if they're having growing pains and figuring out how to scale things up.
flowering_sun_star@reddit
The way the company I'm at does it seems to work fairly well.
A product manager will have a new feature they want developed.
They start a conversation with UX about what it needs to do. This will probably result in some early UI designs.
Armed with that early design as something to point to, they give it to a developer to ask 'what's it going to take to make this happen?'
They might also start showing it to some friendly customers for early feedback.
The developer starts planning around those requirements, and also asks questions about how certain aspects are meant to work. Sometimes they need to push back and say 'this won't work', 'this is going to be really expensive', or 'are you sure you want this?'
The PM iterates with UX based on developer and customer feedback to narrow in on something.
By the time the system design has been nailed down and the team is ready to start work, the UX design is probably pretty close to complete.
Developers execute against the UX design. Not everything will be pixel perfect, but pretty close. We present it to the PM and other interested people.
Wording is finalised, UI is tweaked, bugs are fixed.
I suppose to the more juniors members of the team it might look like the first model you describe. By the time they hear about a project and start working on it, a lot of the design has already been nailed down. But to get to that point has been a collaborative effort between a bunch of people.
(Sometimes the ordering is a bit different. Sometimes the PM will come and ask 'how much effort would it be to do', I'll spend a week coming up with a plan and an estimate, and they'll decide whether to proceed based on that estimate. In that case UX probably won't have been involved yet.)
MrJohz@reddit
The best place I worked for design was like this, but instead of having the PM as the UX/Dev go-between, the designer and the dev would typically work directly together, especially once the code started being written. That made the actual programming a bit slower (because there's more waiting on the other person) but it usually brought more issues to the surface that the designer/developer/PM hadn't thought about, and produced a more streamlined result at the end.
CartographerGold3168@reddit
we have so much people who are fired as frontend when they are bootcamp graduates with designer background
just hire them, instead of "designers" that knows nothing
Logical_Angle2935@reddit
It depends on the size of the team and scope of the project, but any bottleneck needs to be addressed as a process, resource, or structural problem with the organization. It is not unreasonable for the devs to do design work.
On my team we have a general practice that dev fills in the cracks where PM or designers fall short and add it to the effort estimates. Maybe not ideal, but it gets stuff done.
bel9708@reddit
If working with designers feels inefficient it’s because you have bad engineers who care more about being siloed then including them.
local-person-nc@reddit
Thats cuase most designers suck. They're OCD on the dumbest shit and even "senior" designers have no clue how css works. How can you really understand design without at least knowing some of the language in how the design is implemented??? Most designers barely know their tooling like figma. Just absolute positioned a bunch of shit on pages. No interactivity much less fully responsive. The worst part is nothing will be standardized. Divisible by 4 margins on one page but divisible by 5 on another. Can't make up their minds for shit. Will change mocks that are "finalized" then won't tell you so you had no clue about that tiny change they now require.
Makes for a fuck mess of css in the code base.
3xBork@reddit
That quote better illustrates your own lack of understanding of what design is and how it works than anything else.
But sure. Everyone else sucks.
local-person-nc@reddit
Found the designer. How can you know the limitations of CSS if you don't even know it? The worst designers make some abstract garbage that sure looks great but have terrible UX and spaghetti code to maintain 🤡
retroroar86@reddit
☝️
Recent_Science4709@reddit
I think it just comes down to the fact that people who aren’t on your team aren’t invested in your projects and there’s not usually any motivation to make your ask a priority.
baldyd@reddit
Thia is very common in the games industry, because it's a very creative field and it's very, very difficult to actually ship something if you don't silo the design team to some extent. Some companies do it well, with lots of cross discipline communication, others are more siloed and it tends to lead to problems further down the line. I prefer the former, obviously, and tend to work really well with creative people because I consider myself a creative developer, even though programming is the only professional skill I have that's strong. In our industry, agile is usually what causes the problems because we're trying to achieve multiple contrasting goals (changing requirements based on feedback VS shipping a huge, complex project with multiple intertwined systems on a large team), so it devolves quickly into "fake agile" and creates issues.
theycallmethelord@reddit
Feels like what you’ve seen is less about “designers are inefficient” and more about how the org chooses to set things up. Either design is this separate production line that tosses work over the wall, or it’s one poor designer trying to cover everything. Both of those models almost guarantee frustration.
Small cross‑functional squads actually solve a lot of this. One designer, a few engineers, maybe a PM, all focused on one problem space. Designer isn’t a bottleneck, engineers aren’t surprised by late changes, and you build trust because you’re in the same loop every day.
The tricky part is companies love efficiency at the wrong level. From a distance, having one designer for a giant group “saves” headcount. Same with centralizing them in a department. Looks neat in a slide deck, but it kills flow.
If design feels like it’s slowing you down, it’s usually a system design issue, not the skill of the designer.
Longjumping-Ad8775@reddit
Designers are a problem to work with in general. Limit their choices to graphics and pretty pictures. They’ll hate it, but you can’t let them take over because I can guarantee they want everything their way.
el0011101000101001@reddit
Design is much more than just pretty UI. Design encompasses user research, acquiring user and business feedback, synthesizing that research and feedback, usability testing, getting tech requirements for tech feasibility, maintaining consistency of patterns.
Longjumping-Ad8775@reddit
Those are the responsibilities of developers, at least I take them as my responsibility. Those fit under the title of “system architects” to me.
I’ve never met anyone called a “designer” who wasn’t responsible for graphics and ui. I’ve worked on large and small projects for 35+ years. This is all interesting to hear.
el0011101000101001@reddit
Designers do design the UI but it’s highly unusual for a developer to do user research & usability testing. I find it fascinating that there’s engineering teams taking on any user related activity.
Longjumping-Ad8775@reddit
I do a ton of user interaction. I honestly don’t know how you can develop any software without directly interfacing with the users and thinking about how they will use the software that you build. I would literally walk out the door and find a new job if I couldn’t talk to the users.
el0011101000101001@reddit
That’s what design teams are for though. Mature organizations separate engineering & design.
Winter-Grand2830@reddit (OP)
I’m afraid they’re right. Design is everything, tech is an implementation detail
Longjumping-Ad8775@reddit
In 35+ years of professional work, that has not been my experience.
Winter-Grand2830@reddit (OP)
You’ve worked with bad designers then
Longjumping-Ad8775@reddit
I’ve worked on various projects over many years. I’ve seen just about every type of “good” and “bad.”
Ultimately, I think the issue is different terms. What I read from you is what I would call “system designers.” I’ve never heard these folks called “designers.” The only people I’ve ever called “designers” are the folks that do graphics and pretty pictures.
retroroar86@reddit
Our designers and design system/styling is a real bottleneck for the company I work at.
Nobody had the forethought, or afterthought to create a real design system, so we are often looking directly at Figma sketches of screens instead of components.
What makes this truly horrendous is that we are a whitelabel app, making some customizations, but all of that is on the fly.
Instead of defining componens and screens as an API, ie what can be adjusted and have a full overview, there is no rhyme or reason to what happens.
We are basically working in the most idiotic way, where developers need to copy hex codes and other details manually and inspect sketches.
Oh, and no friggin’ snapshots so we never know if any changes results in unintended changes other places.
I find it to be absolutely insane, but this is truly Conway’s law in practice because the company is so bad at organising (human) resources.
Slodin@reddit
lol my current company is running both of your described models.
One designer is working with 2-3 actively ongoing teams. And when the designer change things, non of our engineers are notified.
This is very difficult and often lead to project delays. It has gotten a bit better after I voiced this issue during management meetings. They now have to timestamp their designs and lock it down, any changes increasing development time would be on them.
They also don’t account for any responsive layouts that makes it difficult for us to guesstimate between many clients. Throwing a bunch of elements in a row for mobile interface is nightmare to implement without knowing which information is more important. Also they don’t account for accessibility and keep on asking us to remove accessibility paddings to look the same as the design. As the front end lead, I made it clear that we would not remove accessibility to accommodate their designs and they backed off.
Technically the best approach is to have a coherent design philosophy before we start working on it. However, the amount of work vs the amount of resources the company poured in is impossible to allow for this to happen. So I blame management for this, being cheap. But reality is they don’t care as long as you can deliver the product to make them money. You can operate on a pile of hot steaming garbage and they would give you the thumbs up when they see their bank accounts grow.
Max11D@reddit
It feels wild to me that your designer is pushing back on accessibility. Where I currently work, our designer is on the cutting edge of that stuff. Not only with designs/specs but also researching new ways for people to interact with our equipment. It's people in other roles that get sloppy.
Max11D@reddit
Your experiences sound painful. I've generally had way better ones (except at one MegaCorp where the presence of UX designers was mostly theoretical and engineers were left unattended to commit UX sins).
At my current role, the designer works with the technical product specifiers on a first draft of the design (so we at least have a starting point for what we want the thing to do, break it down into tasks and assign estimates) but then the engineers get involved. And we often provide feedback around oversights or things that are non-trivial to implement as designed. Sometimes challenging designs are core to the product, and other times we compromise on an easier/faster solution that is 10x faster and 80% as good. And the feedback loop continues until the thing is done. "Done."
But also I've worked with some extremely talented designers so I'm sure that factors in 😛
mnemonikerific@reddit
Design language consistency is important, even between mobile and web. Having key business & sales stakeholders review the UX for a new feature is not possible with a basic wireframe - they need as much realism as possible.
But - designers are not programmers and thus they may add flourishes which cannot be coded with low effort - and this is where it’s important to get programmer buy in for a UX before presenting the design to the business stakeholders.
As a workflow I’ve had positive delivery experience when we’ve done 2-phase workflows: (a) user stories to determine UX focus areas (b) wire frames to finalise the layout (c) quick wireframe review with coders to catch the obvious parts that would delay time to release (d) Design (e) review with coder to ensure nothing proposed is going to be a heavy effort (f) review with stakeholders
At this point if stakeholders ask for any flourishes the PM has enough information to advise the effort trade off.
Is this “agile” or not could be debated, but it ensures all parties involved are informed at each step and avoids unpleasant surprises.
Coders working on coding in parallel with the design team is a red flag for my at least.
No-Management-6339@reddit
Both of these are abhorrent use of designers. Designers are there to solve the user's problem. They should be working hand in hand with engineers.
Many companies just use them to draw a picture that a project manager takes back to an executive for approval. Then they take that picture to engineers who pick it apart.
Our designers and engineers work together to solve the problem. Designers do user research more than anything else. Their designs are used to ask questions more than answer them. Then engineers and designers work together to answer the questions.
creative_avocado20@reddit
You guys have designers?
vbullinger@reddit
I call it Design Driven Development. Terrible way to work
Winter-Grand2830@reddit (OP)
I mean, in theory that’s fine. Design it’s pretty much everything. I just hate when it’s done in siloes (because yes, tech is a design constraint)
seinfeld4eva@reddit
There has to be a person on the technical side who vets design documents and makes sure that communication is good and concerns are resolved.
prescod@reddit
I don’t think he was complaining about that. He was complaining about poor communication that meant that design was not properly incorporated.
skeletal88@reddit
It is best if designers work together with developers and turn their figmas into html and css, otherwise they create unrealistic designs that are difficult to implement. And i couldnt do anything useful with only a figma, make it responsive etc.
flavius-as@reddit
Cross-functional team with all roles covered is how it should be done. The designers work on the code as well, they commit to git, they are not an island.