Real Developers Don’t Need No Designers

In my post, Are You a Deluded Developer, the issue is raised as to whether a developer could be both a desktop developer and a Web developer. The real focus of the post ended up being about designers. As a result of this blog entry, a few discussions on the topic occurred on the forums. More interesting was a follow-up comment made by FunkyDexter on VBForums:

“Desktop Developers don't have designers! Ask one of us who designed the application and we'll scratch our heads and mutter....”

It is interesting to think about the difference between desktop and web applications and the level of design each gets. There is actually some truth to the fact that Desktop applications don’t (as in do not) need designers to the level that Web applications do. In fact, most desktop applications don't have designers involved.

When you think about it, most standardized desktop applications use standard windows colors, borders, and controls. That is the glory (or should I say "gory") of using an operating system like Windows – everything has its place and Windows helps with the style. There are generally Ok and Cancel buttons, and they are generally located on the bottom of the page. If you follow the standards for design that have been developed by Microsoft and others for building Windows applications, you quickly realize that there is not that much room for design. Rather, you get to create relatively drab, unexciting applications.

Of course, the drab design comes at the benefit of usability. While the application might look drab overall, it will be similar and thus familiar to people. Such similarity makes an application much easier to use.

Web applications are not confined to the same standards as desktop applications. While they are generally confined to browsers, the rules applied to desktop applications are not being applied to the web. In fact, with the growth of RIAs that use technologies such as AJAX, Flash, and Silverlight, there is a bit of a move away from the standards set for Windows applications. While the rules could be applied in the same way, they generally aren’t.

The end result of all this? Developers have gotten away with building desktop applications without having to need a designer. With Web applications, suddenly having a designer is much more important. Just following desktop design standards won’t give you a Web application that most would consider very good looking. In fact, many times it is likely to be seen as gory.

What is the bottom line? While you while you can get away with building desktop applications without a designer, you can't do the same with Web applications. For this reason, many developers who got away with "designing" desktop applications, really need to think twice before believing they are Web application designers.



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In fairness its about bloody time. I work in the telecoms industry and every single one of our enterprise applications could do with an overhaul. The problem I find is that people see graphics as a secondary thing but proper UI design with a pleasing color scheme and some innovative uses of the latest UI technology can make an application easier to use.

I for one am currently interested in finding a designer who knows there way around XAML or even Illustrator so I can make some cool new apps.

What's with the messed up characters in the title and text? This must have come from MS Word.

I tend to roll out apps in a tight timescale and TBH I don't have the time to mess about with how it looks.

I generally keep it as standard as poss and then make changes to the next version to make it more pleasing on the eye. i do agree that if it looks nicer then the overall experience for the user if improved.

the windows standard has become something that we have become used to and when we cant find something makes the whole experience more frustrating and in some cases makes us give up.

Take Photoshop for instance I find that it is very difficult to use and have tried to get into it several times and cannot. I expect the edit menu to have items such as copy, paste “select all” etc and tools to contain things relating to the specific app this is not the case with PS and makes the application for me much less intuitive than say paintshop pro

I don’t have a copy of PS here and now and I am just listing these per my memory.

Shortcut keys are another thing that I use a lot, as will most of you when coding. I expect certain behaviour when I press certain keys and when this does not happen it make life more difficult.

The freedom given to web devs is not always a good thing, some app I have used are fantastic and very easy to understand, on the other hand there are sites I have just gave up on as they are poorly put together

David

When I saw the title initially, and started reading the post, I thought the "designer" was the designer in the IDE... but if you are referring to a designer as in a person who "designs" the app... on the surface, yes, developers don't need designers... But users do. All too often we run into the same problem Davadvice runs into "get 'er done and out the door"... and that is exactly how we ended up with this drab menuing system, which was devised by developers with no regard to general users. It pigeon holes how we tend to think of things.

I was recently in a discussion about the new Ribbon bar, when it occurred to me that 90% of the complaints of people who hate the ribbon bar, are all developers. The other 10% comes from testers who work with those same developers. That's because it changes how "menus" work, and there's a huge backlash and resistance to using it. But developers is't the target audience for MS Office... We're actually a tertiary market. We use it because the primary targets do. Odds are, we'll never see the ribbon in Visual Studio, because it doesn't work for developers. It goes against the grain for most of us.

Davadvice - I know what you mean... we use a thrid party SQL Server Management Studio replacement.... and the Ctrl+K,CTRL+C doesn't comment things out... it's something like Ctrl-Shift-Alt+LeftElbow+T or something.... I usually resort to clicking the toolbar, which I dislike.

-tg

Hi all, need to throw my 2 cents in! :D
Not sure I agree with the OP's statement about Desktop Apps not needing designers.
I've worked with desktop apps pretty exclusively in my career and ANY app has to be designed.

The person responsible for the app (usually a business user) needs to give the requirements for
the app and the designer needs to apply his/her knowledge of the business' requirements, the
system architecture of the enterprise, the data model, the Database architecture, and
GUI standards (to name a few things), and make sure the app will integrate with all of that,
while also being user-friendly, efficient, and perhaps even "look nice" :).

Now, whether the designer is a "pure" designer (i.e. not a developer per se) or a co-opted
programmer/developer, doesn't matter. The point is that the app needs to be designed by
"someone" and the final opinion will always lie with the App's users (who probably
didn't really know what they wanted to begin with!:D).

Bottom line: An application (desktop or Web, online or batch) always needs a designer.

Obviously all of this is IMNSHO (In My Not So Humble Opinion)! So flame away! I've got
my new flame-retardant suit on! :p:afrog: