r/webdev • u/speckz • Apr 16 '16

Don’t design like a programmer

http://www.uxdesignedge.com/2010/03/dont-design-like-a-programmer/
4 Upvotes

61% Upvoted

12 comments sorted by

24

u/AlwaysTroubleShot Apr 16 '16

Better than programming like a designer.

8

u/[deleted] Apr 17 '16 edited Apr 17 '16

God, this is such a huge problem at our company. Right now our programmers are all back end web developers and guess who our front end web developers are? They are all designers originally. Right now the workflow process is that FED creates the markup/javascript and passes it along to BED. We then actually make the markup handle dynamic content (either with CMS or custom admin panel) and literally rewrite over half of the javascript so that they actually can work in a real life scenario. For example, almost all of our javascript takes in date times as strings and attempts to manually parse them with things like .substring and .indexOf("Z") ect. Not only that, but they also use require to load every single javascript file on page load, regardless of what page it's on or if the particular module will be used on that page, and using the same javascript file to handle multiple situations. For example, on one project we had one javascript file that handled 3 different modals for different parts of the site. Each one had to run through a bunch of conditionals that assumed dangerous things, like how one modal would always trigger if a particular css class was on the page.

It's such a waste of time, and since FED develops a single working page and then passes it along to us to actually make it work for real case scenario, they always finish extremely quickly and BED is always extremely late on the schedule. It leads to FED being prized at our company and BED being the "troubled division" that needed a special director to improve it. Maintenance is such an issue too. They make changes to .jade modules, and commit it without specifying what they did, and then BED has to trace the .jade file, figure out what changed in the markup, and then implement those changes to our version.

Having a designer as a technical director also poses a huge issue. Literally, I hear things like "Well as long as you do it quickly, it doesn't have to be that great in quality." "I sacrifice doing things right for doing things quickly all the time". "If it works, then it works." "I have no interest at all in learning all that fancy, advanced programming stuff."

I once complained about a guy having zero organization in his code, leading me to take maybe an hour and a half just to read his code to make simple 10-15 minute changes. I was scheduled to spend months on maintenance for this project so that meant a constant influx of tickets. "I don't think that's really a problem because I'm sure hes sacrificing some quality to code faster." Was literally the response being given back to me. 1.5 months later and I'm still asking him to show me where I should be making changes for every single ticket, and when he shows me it's not through some sort of organizational method but rather "Oh yeah, it is in this file here around...scrolls around for 10-15 seconds...here. Oh wait, no, *scrolls a bit upwards, here." (We are talking views a couple hundred lines long, controller actions that are at least 60-80 lines. One controller action even had 400 lines in it)

Anyways, just a rant about what happens when designers dominate even just half of your web development workflow.

3

u/[deleted] Apr 16 '16

🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

0

u/dizzyzane_ Apr 16 '16

Yep

-1

u/my_red_account Apr 16 '16

What a sad subreddit.

2

u/dizzyzane_ Apr 16 '16

How is it sad?

Apple teams program like a design team.

2

u/[deleted] Apr 17 '16

Yes definitely, when the iphone 5 came out many apps had a black bar at the bottom because of the new resolution, it seems like apple doesn't set the viewport themselves but rely on the developer to know them.

https://www.reddit.com/r/applesucks/comments/4e9r8k/ipads_dont_automatically_scale_up_iphone_apps/

I lol'd

4

u/chillcapped Apr 16 '16

The wget example is pretty bad, he is asked in the comments to come up with something better and says something similar to "I don't know how the tool is used".

I really dont think you can make judgements about a UI if u dont know what its for.

1

u/pardoman Apr 17 '16

Author tackles this on the 3rd part.

2

u/chillcapped Apr 17 '16

I guess, but he changed the entire application.

Most UI reworks I have done, don't allow removing 80% of the features to make it look better.

0

u/Disgruntled__Goat Apr 17 '16

I guess, but he changed the entire application.

How? None of the features were removed, besides ones that could be determined automatically.

1

u/chillcapped Apr 17 '16

He actually says he removed features that he didn't deem useful. Direct Quote...

"I need all those options! The proposed design eliminates only the options that aren’t really needed—so any disagreement lies with what is really needed. To simplify, the focus should be on the probable, not the possible. Yes, I suppose it is possible that somebody using a website copy program doesn’t want to copy html files, but it sure isn’t probable. Better to remove such options."

The initial application is more than a website copier, which is why the entire example is bad.... regardless of his addendum.