Interdisciplinary Tensions

During the 5 or so years I spent working at Mattel, I was in a sort of odd place between the creative and programming departments. I was hired into the interactive group - a predominantly creative one - because of some odd circumstances, but most of my work was technical. So I spent a fair amount of time with (and sometimes between) designers and programmers. Both sides thought I was one of them, so I would hear gripes on both sides. Don't get me wrong, Mattel was a great place, and our teams worked together phenomenally. But there's always potential for gripes between the two, and sometimes that potential is realized.

At the end of the day, I'm a programmer. But working between groups makes you realize the very real dependencies. At Mattel we were making games, so it was really emphasized. Programmers usually make ugly games without some serious creative help. Without the programmers, designers have some nice looking screen shots. Both are equally worthless.

The dependencies don't feel as real when you get into application development. There are some really great tools that will allow a programmer to create a working piece of software, but without a good user interface designer (or a programmer that's into both disciplines), you still usually end up with something that feels like a traditional Microsoft app (i.e., not great).

The UI is what makes you look good. A killer app with a bad UI is like driving a Lotus covered in Bondo. It's impressive under the hood apparently, but I've never seen it. And that's the point.

So if you're a programmer, and you haven't bothered, dig into some design theory. It's actually quite interesting, and much less about emotion than what your stereotypes will let you believe. Some good starting points:

• A two-part series by Mauro Marinilli on UI Theory: Part 1 | Part 2
• A classic article on Fitts' Law from Bruce Tognazzini's site
  

Marinilli's first article has a slew of resources at the end as well. If you know of some great ones, please share!

My point is this: I've had a lot of opportunities open up to me because managers or clients have viewed me as "having design ability." I don't consider myself a particularly good designer. But just having some basic awareness, and being able to integrate it in some basic way, works wonders. People become impressed, and sometimes that even gets reflected in your paycheck.