Design for programmers

[normloman]

Programmers are not an alien species that needs special instructions catered to their profession. They're regular people, who learn the same way anyone does: by doing.

This website wastes time talking about how programmers are analytical people, and can't hope to understand design without special teaching methods. Let's end this myth. Programmers are not inherently more logical and analytical than other people (Lots of jobs require logic, even design jobs). Programmers are normal people who learned a skill.

[curun1r]

From the blog post, I think the point isn't that developers need to learn differently. Their contention is that developers need to unlearn some of the things that make us good at what we do. For example, as developers, we're trained to think about the data model first which leads to scalable architectures, well-structured code and UIs that are little more than CRUD interfaces. The blog post lists a few other developer tendencies that sabotage our designs.

[V-2]

As a programmer myself, I believe there is some truth to it though. Programmers tend to be superusers and therefore design for other superusers.

By the way, old but gold: "User Interface Design For Programmers" http://www.joelonsoftware.com/uibook/fog0000000249.html

[seanmcdirmid]

Design is also a very experiential field: you don't learn how to do good design, you eventually get good at it by doing it a lot. It helps to know some basics before getting started, but most of what design school does is force you to do a lot.

[superzamp]

This. I don't understand why people desperately need to categorize other people. Just yesterday i saw some guys being confused by someone on TV who was an electrician and enjoyed sewing.

[duopixel]

Co-founder here, sorry to let you know this course will no longer be. So many things have happened since we had this idea, it's been difficult to even change the homepage to reflect this. I'll put up a placeholder homepage asap.

[dethstar]

Interesting, I guess since I'm used to seeing sites for programming for designers a lot.

There's something that looks a little weird: http://i.imgur.com/BIbGxZUl.jpg I'm on Firefox 32 using Ubuntu.

[nikaspran]

While this is a pretty fun idea, it's pretty much dead:

=================

Hi <...>,

I'm glad that you find it amazing but we have Method on hold for now. We are focusing on other projects we think will work better.

Thanks for your kind words,

Maria.

mariamunuera.com

=================

I got this response after I sent an email asking for any status updates sometime in April. Unfortunate.

[geoffbrown2014]

Very cool, I did the font one. I found myself first adjusting the leaders based on how well the letter looked to my eye and could easily get into the 80+% range. But when I tried to use my analytical eye by lining up the dimension leaders, I dropped a solid 10 points. Guess I have a fair eye, but no skill. Thanks for posting.

[adamnemecek]

Even though it still hasn't launched, I posted this since I thought that the design games at the bottom of the page were cool.

[oliv__]

I don't think that design (or programming) is for everyone though. You can only learn so much

[AnonJ]

What do you mean. I dont get it. It's just a skill, as everything else.

[viktorppt]

It is much needed course but it really doesn't compare with Codecademy's beginner course.

The design games were very vague and had no clear objective. I guess it is a bit harder to gamify something that is more subjective and "looser" in nature

[jlmendezbonini]

What Codeacademy course are you referring too? I went to their website and didn't see any beginner design course.

[teleclimber]

I played the kerning game. It's true they don't give you any instruction on what good kerning is, so if you've never been exposed to the concept you have to discover it by failing through it.

[arnvald]

Although different in nature (less interactive, more articles), HackDesign course is worth mentioning. I learned a lot there: https://hackdesign.org/lessons

[general_failure]

Very interested. Are there any courses already out there that can teach basic design?

[adamnemecek]

This book is pretty good http://www.amazon.com/Design-Hackers-Reverse-Engineering-Bea...

Also, the other day I came across this pretty exhaustive blog post https://medium.com/@karenxcheng/how-to-get-a-job-as-a-design...

[jlmendezbonini]

Check https://hackdesign.org. It's great resource. Not entirely focused on the analytical minded people, but I found it nicely paced and structured to build a mental "how design works" framework.