Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium Marc Andrew

There has been talk recently of Designers switching off their UX thinking when creating artwork. Do I agree with this? To a point, and in a certain environment, yes. The rest of time, umm not so much.

If you’re creating work to be showcased on Dribbble then, like I’ve mentioned before, just focus purely on the design aspect if you want to, have fun with it, be footloose and fancy free, but know that having a case of tunnel-vision like this just isn’t gonna cut it in the real world. In the real world you cannot design on a whim, and hope that the shit just sticks.

The role a Designer plays in the Product Design process does bring elements of UX into play, of course it does, but some designers are not interested in pushing even further. They are not interested in diving into the deeper UX aspects of a project, they take a brief handed down to them and just run with it.

For more skilled designers, with a wealth of knowledge they have built up over time, they can do this and create something that both the client, end user and engineers on their team will be happy with. But for less experienced designers, having little to no understanding of how their design comps will fare when they’ve been given a shot of interactivity, and if what they’re drawing on the canvas is actually workable at a later stage in the process, is setting them up for a lot more iterations than they bargained for.

There has to a balance though. You don’t want to strip all the creativity from a UI Designer because they have to focus too much on the User Experience aspect, but in the same breath you don’t want a designer that is not willing to take on some UX knowledge in their work, and create artwork that is aesthetically pleasing but is only functional in parts.

You cannot, when working on a project for a client, go into full design mode and switch off your UX brain. Unfortunately some designer brains have now been wired as such to take on as little as possible, due to the fact that there are so many roles now out there. “I’ll do my part, the rest of the team can run with the results, come what may.”

Designers shouldn’t need to feel that they have to take on so many thought processes that things get neglected or spread thin at the expense of others, but to have some semblance of UX knowledge, especially as a younger designer starting out, can prove very beneficial to the work you create, and the product that you and the team help build.

Thanks for reading the article,

Marc

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Do some Designers want to learn the bare minimum? was originally published in prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Do some Designers want to learn the bare minimum?

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