FYI: Survey is heavily biased đ - this is my experience within my own specific team. Obviously itâs a great thing if survey turns out many people work with good designers! I think I work with some of the worst UX and UI software designers. Theyâre slow, always ask questions that have nothing to do with the project (their go to is always âwho is our user?â when it already is established in the parent portfolio of projects), slow down technical meetings, and most are just plain dumb. Most just shift around buttons and colors... and theyâre already defined in the design system. Oh, and without any user research or data to back up their claims. Itâs usually âoh this is part of design thinkingâ âour users would want thisâ (like the 3 people who use it). Their work always come out looking like crap. When the design is made and anyone complains about lack of improvement from metrics, their response is completely non-sensical (âoh this is off by a pixelâ). Some questions and statements I had to deal with... 1. What is a URL? 2. We need to redesign Google and Facebook SSO pages to match our visuals because we believe in branding. 3. Can we make everything load instantly? 4. What do you mean we should filter out user numbers for just sign-ins apart from users who actually interact with the product? Arenât they the same? 5. I just donât know why itâs so hard for you to change this page when itâs so easy for me to move the boxes around in Sketch. Is this just exclusive to me or do others have similar experiences?
Sounds like an IBM problem. Not exactly known for good software design.
Thatâs good to hear really.
Iâve heard some horror stories from other companies. One involved the designer in a meeting with primary stakeholders, âwhyâs it so hard to just add a button here?â Engineer - âthe button is easy, but if you want the button to actually do something, thatâs difficultâ. Iâve only worked with good designers. One even taught himself the basics of front end development just to better understand the product. He knew CSS better than most of the SWE. The rest at least understood the difficulties in development and asked for input from SWE when designing new features.
Iâve worked with a designer similar to yours. He can basically handle any front-end code, light dev-ops, was good at handling anything Linux related, and even some backend long as itâs Java or Node. Loves to polish all the front-end (especially animations) to the tee when we didnât have time or resources. He left for FB đ
Yeah, my guy left for Google. đ
Iâm a designer. Try to understand what level these designers are on. Are they entry-level? Midlevel? Senior/Lead? Most Senior/Leads will be able to understand big picture strategy and try to distill that vision down to the rest of the design team with tactical things like change button color, etc. If youâre having design meetings with pointless Q&A, like whatâs a URL? 𤣠Maybe put an agenda on the meeting invite so that thereâs focus, and your designers can google âwhatâs a URLâ before asking such a ridiculous question. To be fair, Iâve worked with all types of designers. Some more talented than others.
This is mostly designers who has been here for 4-5 years... including newly appointed Design Principals mind you. New hires seem much better. I guess my point is, they just donât know or understand technology... they donât know what theyâre designing. A Design Principal puts up old sticky notes in the office when thereâs a C-level person getting a tour, mid-levels do most of the work but stall every time when they actually work because they donât understand what theyâre designing, and junior designers are putting together webpages using a component library and an existing layout. We put in meeting notes of course, they donât ask any questions or do any research (for example... they set ratings as the main success metric for a VScode plug-in we were working on... I had to show them that even plugins that have 300k+ downloads only have 20 ratings) they ask questions as they get blocked. Also some designers make an outline, ask 6 devs to join a call for an out then ask them to co-design a UI. Doesnât help that for some reason, these designers are the actual product owners not a PM or an engineer lead. One designer is working on a paper poster đ Best part is that the director thinks everything is going well.
The designers usually kick off the project (as they own the projects), I have to explain to them the as-is journey as well as explain what data is relevant to who and what scenarios, refine their personas, create wireframes and flows that make sense, test it with users, and they come in to fill in the wireframes with components... then I develop them đ Only thing they get right usually is the epic / large scale vision but even then, itâs so generic that it can be used for any project. Oh and I also have to explain that the interactions they create more clicks, and follow no existing interaction paradigm. Also, no motion designer (and no one is willing to pick it up) so I do that as well.
Sounds like the hiring bar and talent recruitment is pretty low at IBM. Which doesnât surprise me working at IBM is probably company 99 on a designerâs list of first choice companies.
Youâll probably also notice the difference between a visual designer vs an interaction designer. The latter should have a better understanding of engineering in general. Visual designers tend to come from graphic design backgrounds which requires zero code obviously, so thatâs that, but really you need better recruiters.
We donât have interaction designers. We have Visual, UX, and User Research. Maybe Motion but itâs really not a core design skills but yea... I agree. But tbh a lot of people just come in from referrals without proper oversight when theyâre being recruited.
You must be from IX
Itâs really just the luck of the draw. Designers can come from such varied backgrounds, and itâs hard for some people to not only screen those designers, but also define what a good designer looks like for their companies or teams. Same is true for developers.
I can vouch for the ibm designer problem. Iâve worked with good ones, but a lot of the recruitment from IBM Design is low low bar standards. Itâs basically design school. Then they brainwash them to thinking they are the backbone of the whole company and you have to just listen and do as they say because âdesign thinkingâ and they are experts. I can vouch for that we have a lot of idiots that dont know their medium not have data to back up their decisions. Itâs all âIâll know it when it comes to meâ BS.
oh my god, it seems my dev will also say me behind. Sometimes, our design team really get a great thing, but hard to get approve by the stakeholders, it is frustrated us to design that shit
Being someone who has been on both sides, ie. Ux design & front end dev, I would say I agree to some of your thoughts and disagree with rest. If IBM has designers who don't know what's a URL, then either your recruiters are compete idiots or your are exaggerating. But I do agree a lot of designers get too focused on trivial things and lose the big picture. 'design thinking' is thrown around like the universal answer to anything ux. Having said that, I have worked with designers who understand technology and they are far more effective than the ones coming out of fine arts or user research background. However, your frustration is little over the top. You sure you don't have any prejudices?
I shit you not, they were all questions asked and statements made by designers. Okay, so the URL thing... it was âwhen I highlight this thing (a link), i see this text here (url shown include lower left part of browser) what is that text?â I worked with really good designers... actually AMAZING designers. But theyâre very rare at IBM. Also, whatâs annoying is that most people who arenât working or good designers are the ones evangelizing and being loud about design. Youâll notice most of IBM designers who write articles or posts always talk about process but never results. Also itâs usually written for their promotion package (yes, writing 6 paragraph articles about how they used design thinking to solve their indecision about yesterdayâs dinner is considered eminence)
Many great designers have worked at IBM. Some still do and some have left. Maybe you scared them off :)