This is a fascinating read! I do have a question about the distinction between user-centric engineering and the role of a product designer. From my perspective, areas like accessibility, cognitive load reduction, and workflow simplification feel more aligned with a designer’s responsibilities.
Shouldn’t the developer’s role focus on respecting and implementing these principles when they are thoughtfully presented by designers, rather than needing to develop expertise in them?
On the flip side, I think designers should develop a deeper understanding of front-end concepts, such as validations, error prevention, and error handling, to better align their designs with real-world technical constraints and user interactions.
How do you see the balance of responsibilities here?
A developer who cannot reason through cognitive load reduction and workflow simplification on behalf of their users is at the mercy of the quality of their teammates and the strength and frequency of communication.
In practice, there are too many detailed product decisions to make for engineers to ignore, both because product folks are busy and stretched thin and because engineers tend to have better knowledge of the details. There's nothing quite like implementing and testing an interface to surface all the user-facing questions.
For example, an engineering task like authoring scenario tests requires simulating how users will approach your product and encoding that as a test.
Inspiring post and insightful reply. This made me think about it as well.
In organizations where roles are balanced to improve user experience, I believe these concerns are less common.
In some places I’ve worked where engineers had more power, I observed that the importance of a user-centric approach was often ignored, with a focus only on the technical side. In these environments, designers’ user-centric suggestions are sometimes dismissed.
It is important that all team members agree on and follow the same goals to improve user experience. Having designers who focus solely on user-centric aspects and developers who are laser-focused on coding would sound somewhat ideal.
This is a fascinating read! I do have a question about the distinction between user-centric engineering and the role of a product designer. From my perspective, areas like accessibility, cognitive load reduction, and workflow simplification feel more aligned with a designer’s responsibilities.
Shouldn’t the developer’s role focus on respecting and implementing these principles when they are thoughtfully presented by designers, rather than needing to develop expertise in them?
On the flip side, I think designers should develop a deeper understanding of front-end concepts, such as validations, error prevention, and error handling, to better align their designs with real-world technical constraints and user interactions.
How do you see the balance of responsibilities here?
A developer who cannot reason through cognitive load reduction and workflow simplification on behalf of their users is at the mercy of the quality of their teammates and the strength and frequency of communication.
In practice, there are too many detailed product decisions to make for engineers to ignore, both because product folks are busy and stretched thin and because engineers tend to have better knowledge of the details. There's nothing quite like implementing and testing an interface to surface all the user-facing questions.
For example, an engineering task like authoring scenario tests requires simulating how users will approach your product and encoding that as a test.
Inspiring post and insightful reply. This made me think about it as well.
In organizations where roles are balanced to improve user experience, I believe these concerns are less common.
In some places I’ve worked where engineers had more power, I observed that the importance of a user-centric approach was often ignored, with a focus only on the technical side. In these environments, designers’ user-centric suggestions are sometimes dismissed.
It is important that all team members agree on and follow the same goals to improve user experience. Having designers who focus solely on user-centric aspects and developers who are laser-focused on coding would sound somewhat ideal.