[thelist] philosophising (designers and propeller-heads)

McCreath_David McCreath_David at xmail.asd.k12.ak.us
Thu Dec 7 20:33:51 CST 2000


In light of a few comments made today (my own included) regarding designers
vs propeller-heads, I found this an interesting little broadside:

<wrap>
http://www.jamie.com/archive/2000_11_26_index.html#1492000
</wrap>

I'm not sure where I stand on it...I don't think the situation is quite as
black and white as it's presented here, at least in the trenches of the web
world. There are still plenty of people wearing the hats of
coder/designer/dba/sysadmin at the same time on the payrolls of small
companies, but it does seem like the more mature companies are starting to
focus more on really smart design (because the backend technology itself has
matured enough that the discussions aren't so much "Which
technology/platform will put us ahead of our competition" as "Which
technology/platform do we know well enough to do what we need to do?").

Is my view jaundiced by the company I keep? I'm not saying that the days of
stupid UI design are over, not by a long shot; there will always be
half-assed designers and half-assed coders, but it really seems to me like
the is a subtle shift away from just making the sites work (programming) to
making the sites usable (design). Again, I don't think the line can be drawn
as starkly as that, but it's interesting to think about...

Dave
----
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work: http://www.asd.k12.ak.us/ 




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