Re:John Maeda: If You Want to Survive in Design, You Better ...
by clavalle on Wednesday March 15, 2017 @12:38PM
(#13877384)
>If you have a huge communication firewall between engineering and design
There is a natural communication firewall when a designer knows nothing about code in the form of language and vocabulary.
Re:John Maeda: If You Want to Survive in Design, You Better ...
by seanmcdirmid on Wednesday March 15, 2017 @12:55PM
(#13877577)
I've worked with lots of designers before (I used to be the only programmer prototyper in a design studio serving a bunch of product teams). I never had trouble communicating with designers. In fact, they were much clearer in communicating designs than any SE-background project manager could ever describe in a spec.
The product teams, however, would often come back and say "this is too hard", and my job was to code something up in a few hours and say "no its not".
Re:John Maeda: If You Want to Survive in Design, You Better ...
by clavalle on Wednesday March 15, 2017 @03:20PM
(#13878937)
Whether it is a coder that knows how to speak design or a designer that knows how to speak code, that translator role is absolutely crucial. Without you there to bridge the gap, product creation might have ground to a stop.
Re:John Maeda: If You Want to Survive in Design, You Better ...
by seanmcdirmid on Wednesday March 15, 2017 @03:47PM
(#13879167)
I definitely wasn't versed in design before I joined; what made me useful is that I was working "with them" rather than working at an arm's length in another team. Usually, it's the PM's job to coordinate, but design-skilled PMS are rare.
Designers embedded in engineering teams can also work out, but lose the peering benefits of working with other designers in a studio setting.
This sounds sad to me. I would prefer a designer who would collaborate with engineering (who best know the constraints) rather than one who would guess what engineering can do (and therefore temper their designs). I guess it depends on the product you are working on, however. If you have a huge communication firewall between engineering and design (e.g. engineering is being done in India), I guess it is the only practical option that the designers be able to know what engineering can do.