WPF for non designers

Question

Is delving into Microsoft's WPF worth it for a programmer who does not have design inclinations and no designer on the team?

Answer 1

I think so. The knowledge you take away from building simple screens/controls will help when creating custom controls for use across your app if/when a designer is hired. The real beauty is, if you're following MVVM with your WPF app, your UI can later on be more easily tweaked/replaced since the VM layer is already there handling the data behaviors.

Answer 2

I think a distinction should be made between design and user-experience. You can design a good GUI experience for the user with no creative flair or design inclination, just common sense and the ability to get feedback from users.

Ensuring a consistent interface, good flow and sensible cues are not design decisions in the arty sense of the word. It is like an architect making sure that the front door of a property is obvious ... and letting a designer pick the ornate decoration of the door. Art-design (color, pattern) is a creative design because many combinations work whereas GUI design is user-centric and so it has to work with their expectations which (unless designing a new application) tend to follow fixed convention, expectation and visual cues.

Any type of GUI experience is good for a programmer ... just as the API is the interface to the library the GUI is the interface to the user (the bit of the chain that counts).

Even though I don't design windows GUIs I make it a priority to sample good design in the area to stay ontop of user-expectations of software's capability in dry areas such as text-input. If users have grown to expect predictive input in most fields ... it helps to know when programming non-GUI elements.

Bit long-winded, but good reasons I think :)

Answer 3

I don't think WPF is all about designing with development. It's true that it does provide a great separation but it's not the only thing it does. It was great support of Data Binding which itself can save you tons of lines we repeat over and over again. Plus in order to make a good looking GUI, you don't really need great skills. I work with designer here and I don't think that I"m getting something big out that I coudln't do myself. But there are some really good designers as well. Also if you browser around some wpf apps, you'll get a good sense of how to design good wpf apps.