Re:Design Tips for Developers
by lambdasquirrel on Thursday January 23, 2020 @04:12PM
(#22132120)
The most obvious thing is listening to your designers, if you are in industry and are lucky to have them.
But with that said, it’s surprisingly hard to recruit designers to work on OSS projects, and I think you need to start out with a half-decent design before people who can actually help you will want to join on. So thank you for the input.
Re:Design Tips for Developers
by kiwicopple on Thursday January 23, 2020 @07:48PM
(#22134203)
I probably should have specified in the post that I’m a developer and not an actual designer, so a lot of the stuff you mention here is foreign to me. I touch briefly on spacing etc in the branding/consistency section.
All good points you make, and after reading the comments here I will definitely pick up Don’t Make Me Think
It can also be immensely rewarding to read through the likes of Google’s Material site and Apple’s HIG. These resources not only show you what each system contains, but often some of the rationale and dos/don’ts that you won’t get by, say, looking at Gmail and copying what you see there.
- This post only touches on visual design. Important, but just a subset of what "design" is.
- Dribbble is very "artsy" and not typically as focused on practical product design. I personally dont think its beneficial to spend time there, unless like the author states, you're interested in emerging visual trends.
- The author doesnt mention the foundations of design, which is disappointing. Spacing, alignment, visual hierarchy. affordances, etc. If you're building an app without a designer its far more important to understand those concepts than how to design a logo.
My advice, depending on how much time you're willing to invest:
- Read "Dont Make me Think" by Steve Krug (2.5~ hour read)
- Read the first half-ish of "The design of everyday things" (4 hours?)
- You may balk at the length of those reads, but I promise you, spending one day to learn design fundamentals is an extremely valuable use of your time.
Common mistakes I see developers making:
- No attention to spacing consistency
- Not creating enough space between unrelated elements
- Not aligning enough things
- Weak visual hierarchy
- Misusing radios vs. checkboxes vs. dropdowns, etc