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Discussion on: Can you excel at front-end with average UI design skill?

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milkstarz profile image
malik

Here's an analogy:

You have interior designers who come and figure out a good layout for a room, considering all the different things the client wants in their home.

You also have the movers, painters, carpenters, etc who make the vision a reality.

We are the movers, painters, and carpenters. Design/Product provides a vision of where the end product should be, while developers bring that vision to life.

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snowbell92 profile image
Samia Ruponti

Er... That's the traditional FE roles. I am familiar with that. But if interior designers are also moving your furniture, what is the mover doing?

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milkstarz profile image
malik • Edited

It all depends on the scope of the project.

Designing and moving are two different skill sets. The thing is, it's not common for people to have an exceptional ability at both. They're extremely talented at one or the other.

If the designer only had one product to create, which was to design your living room, then surely the designer could also help move stuff with the movers, but most likely not at the speed and proficiency of the other movers. The same thing could be said if the tables were turned.

But now, let's imagine that you as a designer have to design for 5 different projects instead of just one.

If you're moving furniture, who is going to keep looking after the designs to see if anything could be improved/added? It's gonna be hard if you're focused on moving stuff.

End goal of what im saying is that:

On small projects it could be beneficial to have a designer help create systems for ease of development.

However at a big company unless that's their sole job, they will have other priorities because designing is much more than simply creating component libraries.
Like Luke said,

I love spending time on Dribbble! But when I'm hiring front-end developers I don't really care that much if they know about font-size ratios. We have wonderful, highly skilled designers that work with us to codify those aspects of our design into reusable components. What I do care about are all of the things that I mentioned.
Being a great front-end developer isn't about being very good at writing code and also, separately, being very good at making nice looking visuals. It's about understanding where those two outcomes intersect and why they are related.

This is why i'm not a fan of the terms front-end and back-end. Designers/Developers/Project Managers all work together to create products! :)

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snowbell92 profile image
Samia Ruponti

We have wonderful, highly skilled designers that work with us to codify those aspects of our design into reusable components.

designers are codifying it? I want to understand this! because traditionally, designers produce the vision in graphic format and devs translate vision in code, don't they?

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milkstarz profile image
malik

I would say for the most part that for that there are developers that collaborate with designers to "codify" the designs that a design team made.

However there are developers that have previous experience as a designer and would be great at taking these abstract designs, and then making them into a reality.

It is definitely is a job but it is a rare skillset to be able to do both at a very skilled level. Matter of fact, my company is hiring for that exact position right now, take a look at the job description for yourself!

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snowbell92 profile image
Samia Ruponti

Thank you for posting that job. Job posts like these confuse the hell outta me. I am pretty good with code (if not then I can figure it out) but I absolutely suck at designing. But all jobs seem to want people who can design first and code later, or code in JavaScript exclusively. I guess you are looking for those rare people?

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milkstarz profile image
malik

I wouldn't say all jobs want people who can design first and then code later, because not every company wants developers who design.

Sometimes they just want people that can take a wireframe or mockup, and implement it in a client - whether that's web or mobile.

For that specific position, we're looking for someone to guide the improvement of our design system, allowing developers to be more productive instead of worrying about styling.