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amonithHNSource author
Business & incomeExperience excerpt · English

Here's the funny thing though (as a developer which worked for various companies that didn't have …

Here's the funny thing though (as a developer which worked for various companies that didn't have designers): It looks custom designed because... it's not designed at all :D At this point I'm not even sure if what you said is an insult or a compliment. Almost all projects I worked in looked more or less like the following: - a BA meets with the client and creates unstyled wireframes with all of the requested features. (BA doesn't really think about UX here, more or less applies some generic patterns). - the development team grabs the wireframes, uses a generic preexisting "design system" which is the cheapest for the chosen technology (can be whatever: Bootstrap, Tailwind, Material Design) and max. adjusts colors a bit to match the client's brand That's it. There is no design.

Original discussionRules for creating good-looking user interfaces179 source comments · at import
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WH
whstlHN

Companies are definitely not saving money here. They're actually spending a shit-ton of money on designer-hours and developer-hours in order to have everything custom, but still with a subpar experience. It's similar to accessibility: a huge chunk of free off-the-shelf options are more accessible compared to the non-accessible chimeric design system of most modern web apps and sites.

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whstlHN

Doesn't match my experience as a developer. I haven't worked in a place that doesn't use Figma, since Figma was released. And haven't worked in a place that didn't get a dedicated designer before the company was 6 months old. However: I must have worked with 30 different designers in 10 years and TWO of them actually knew how to properly use components and Figma. The rest just copy pasted shit around.

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KronisLVHN

I second this, it’s like people live in completely different worlds when it comes to getting stuff out the door. Of course, that’s still better than a 1 pizza team of full stack devs attempting to create their custom UI component library from scratch, now that’s a total mess.

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codr7HN

And on the rare occasions where there is a designer on the team, they just throw their fantasy user interfaces over the fence to be interpreted by developers as well as blamed for any complaints. What we really need is developers with solid design skills, that should have been part of fullstack from the start.

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