How thick is the line between designing and developing?

Question

Currently a first-year student in .Net and Java development... question regarding the process of creating an application for a company or client and the need to differentiate between design and developing. When developing an application, be it for the PC, web, phone, etc. is the developer expected to have a sense of design and be interactive in the design process? Or are they simply asked to develop the application, and not expected to churn out beautiful end results? I'm simply asking this because I find it hard to concentrate for hours designing a button or graphic/logo/etc.

Answer 1

Depends on how large the company and/or team is.

Generally, design is left to other people. Programmers do the code, someone designs the relevant images. Lots of frameworks these days are getting very happy with the idea of seperating design from markup and content. This is a good thing, but typically they aren't as seperable as everyone would like.

If your question is along the lines of "How much design should I be expected to do in the real world", the answer is "Very little".

Answer 2

That depends greatly on where you work. Smaller shops generally expect the developer to wear more hats. Bigger shops tend to have more specialized roles. My current shop is a small shop, and the developer is a coder, designer, often a project manager, system architect...

There will be opportunities for you in both types of shops if you're any good. Ask questions during your interviews if you don't want to do design. An interview is a two-way process, with both sides deciding whether they want to work with the other. The question you asked here is a fair candidate for a question you should ask potential employers.

Answer 3

The thickness of that line depends very much on the type and size of organization you're involved with.

In a startup, for example, you might wear all the hats on the rack and not only design your own buttons but also maintain the backup servers and take customer complaints with the left hand while coding with the right.

In a very large company you'll find that these roles are tightly and finely compartmentalized. One guy does the button borders, another the font and yet another looks over their shoulders to make sure one or the other doesn't overreach. I'm being facetious of course but that is how it is. Everything else falls in between.

Also a bit of multitasking advice: If you get bored doing any one thing for too long put it down and come back and finish it later. Not everything can be done this way but UI layouts absolutely can. Also try to break up your tasks so that you can jump around and alleviate boredom. You may also find the Pomodoro Technique interesting.

Answer 4

Ideally developers should develop and designers design, though in smaler companies you have to do more than one job description. I have been there, and I agree it is hard to switch from development to design.

Answer 5

I believe every developer could benefit from a little designer's intuition, and every designer could benefit from understanding a developer's paradigm. Depending on the organization, expectations will vary.

I think that, often enough, the thickness of the line is artificially imposed by the organization. What is really important is rich communication and cooperation with all team members. A developer shouldn't shun good UI principles and a designer shouldn't ignore the development cost of a design, and neither should be opposed to a little cross-training.

Answer 6

Generally formal design is the responsibility of someone other than programmers. As others have mentioned, the larger the team (or teams), the more specialized people's jobs are. With more than 2 or 3 folks you're off the hook; really the only place you will be required to do design is on a very small team as a sole contractor. (That being said, there has been some great software written without separate designer roles.)

Don't abandon your design thinking. We're all designers. Even without a "design" step, there is some implicit design. You need to make "design decisions", so it's valuable perspective and skill.

Finally, probably the most difficult things in software development is understanding requirements and expectations. What may be more important here is being able to communicate your skills and preferences-- and explaining how work can be broken up-- will come up over and over in your career.