Designer News
Where the design community meets.
↵
Ask DN: Where are all the UI engineers?
almost 7 years ago from Mattan Ingram, http://mattaningram.com
Mattan Ingram, almost 7 years ago
I am in full agreement. I'm doing my best to convince them that you can't just spread CSS responsibility across JS devs and expect the same level of polish or coherence as having the people who actually designed the feature build the interactions and the style framework.
Mike Busby, almost 7 years ago
Yes exactly, the simple truth is the position is different, its a design type job. It's visual. Sure learning "code" (lets be real, CSS / HTML isn't code) is hard to do, and is very difficult to master and use at scale, but I think thats just a necessity digital product designers have to learn.
I try to tell designers that CSS isn't that scary, it's just like object or layer attributes in Illustrator or Sketch. There is a lot to learn, but the basics are straightforward and mostly in plain English.
That being said, we need someone who knows more than the basics.
This is the big problem, even with other engineers (js, back end, etc)
While it's easy to learn and use at a basic level, it's surprisingly hard to use at scale or build very complex components
This is the struggle my company faces and as do many others.
It's an area thats starting to gain more attention, people are starting to specialize as there is a need for it, it's always been treated as just something JS devs need to do to, but a good majority of them don't put the effort in here as they are usually engineers, UI development is an art, the same way design is. You need the eye to do that kind of work, and this is why I am a strong proponent of designers being UI developers. They should be the same role, after all you are designing software, not a picture in photoshop or sketch.