Greetings from a coder - Quick Question - What skills do you guys have?

paddyred9

Hi guys,

I'm a coder myself usually in Java and other more server side languages.
I was wondering what type of skills you guys who would consider yourselves "Designers" have?

The reason I ask is I'm working on a project and I'm taking a look at the UI (User Interface) and it's design. The finer points of good UI design escape me so I've been thinking of getting some help in this area.

What I have in my head is a rock star "UI Guy" (or girl) who would be able to lead the way in terms of the front end of a web based application.
The whole concept behind my project is to make life easy and so I want my application to be as easy to use and easy on the eye as possible.

So I guess my question is, I'd love for skills:

• Help design wireframes and layout for a sweet looking application
• Design the interface of a site to be all about the User having it easy.
• Loves designing and loves cool sites.
• Do up HTML and CSS mockups and designs so we can see what you mean
• Handle the smaller things like images, icons, skinning images for buttons etc
• See what their design looks like, preferibly with some java code and other exp like GWT
• Love the idea of working on a bootstrapped startup in your spare time trying to make something happen.

But do you actually exist? Or is what I described the work of many people like a graphics guy, a front end coder and a rockstar?

Any advice from the designers community on who I'm looking for or what title they'd go by, would be much appreciated..

Feel free to PM me,

A humble coder in seek of enlightenment..
P

smash

Are you looking for advice about something or are you looking to hire someone?

paddyred9

I'm no where near a stage of hiring someone,

I'm more looking for advice about the types of skill sets people have out there.
I'd love for someone to come on board at the early stage but as we have no money yet I'm just trying to get a better picture of the requirements of a good team.

Sorry if I wasn't clear..

smash

The only point I found strange was: See what their design looks like, preferibly with some java code and other exp like GWT

Sure you can see what a design looks like at photoshop stage, then on screen at html/css stage. As for Java, well that's back end stuff and I thought that was your job?

paddyred9

Haha yea what I meant was see it in a html mockup with any other effects, for example the design might have an effect when a button is pressed but I couldnt see that in photoshop really, whereas a html version I could, even if the button didnt actually do anything!!

As for the Java code comment that was just a nice to have, the issue is that the application is coded in GWT which is a java based front end library. We code it in java and a GWT compiler converts it to a java script.

It's not that I need a coder just that being generally familiar with java code or GWT would be quite handy for me as it'd make the UI guy more independant in implementing their designs..

What is the normla skill set of a designer on here? I've found the word designer to mean so much that I'd like some clarification :-)

OctavarIan

Get a design guy and a programmer. Please don't advertise for a 'rockstar'

If you're looking get people to work for free in their spare time there's no reason not to go after a dedicated UI designer and a dedicated programmer. It's a much better option than having one person try to do everything. Besides, someone who's decent at design and Java is likely in high demand.

[edit]I don't think there is a normal skill set of a designer, even the members on here can't agree! Some focus purely on design while others have HTML & CSS skills, others extend into Javascript and JQuery. Some mad yokes design AND do server side programming!

paddyred9

Well the programmer isn't the issue I'm a proffecient developer as is another guy working on the project.

I was thinking I'd go down the lines of a front end developer and a design guy I suppose I was wondering where one role ended and the next began. How much would the design guy do?

Handle things like initial designs, icons, colours etc. and CSS also? or would CSS and that type of thing be more on the front end developer?

Excuse my lack of knowledge on this area I work in some fairly heavy serverside code and I've never had the need to surface above that and work on Front end code but since I've decided to try and create an end to end application now I'll need to bridge the gap in skills and I need to know what Im looking for!

pixeldesign

I'm a web designer and I know html, css, javascript/jquery/ajax, xml, xslt, php ,photoshop and some mysql.

paddyred9

Pixel,

What do you think of JQuery? you're the 5th person to mention it. Do you think its going to become a web standard?

As it's still early days I could probably switch front end technologies. At the moment GWT is tied heavily to Java in everything bar colours and textures.
Which means a java developer needs to work alongside the designer.

do you think it's worth asking someone to come on board working on it on the side? As I said we've no money yet so it'd be more of a you make money when we make money, or am I better off waiting to hire someone when we get some money in?

it's like the toss up between waiting for more experienced people who will probably cost, or giving a less experienced younger guy a shot at trying to build something with us.

pixeldesign

I would say jQuery is a must for any web designer. I suggest you to wait until you have some money and pay an experienced designer to do the work instead of getting someone less experienced because later when project gets bigger is hard to fix mistakes, so its better to get it right the first time.

Feathers

paddyred9 wrote: »

I was thinking I'd go down the lines of a front end developer and a design guy I suppose I was wondering where one role ended and the next began. How much would the design guy do?

Handle things like initial designs, icons, colours etc. and CSS also? or would CSS and that type of thing be more on the front end developer?

HTML/CSS/JavaScript would all be front-end development, although you may get developers who also do design work, which would bring you to Photoshop, or also do wireframes, etc which would be UX (EA/IX/ID, too many acronyms for the same thing).

paddyred9 wrote: »

Pixel,

What do you think of JQuery? you're the 5th person to mention it. Do you think its going to become a web standard?

As it's still early days I could probably switch front end technologies. At the moment GWT is tied heavily to Java in everything bar colours and textures.
Which means a java developer needs to work alongside the designer.

If you're getting a good front-end dev & asking them to work on GWT generated JS, you're going to drive either you or them crazy I'd say if you're going the route of getting a dedicated front-end dev, don't do anything client-side via Java, let them take ownership of it.

Otherwise, scrap your front-end dev & just get a designer & use GWT/Vaadin/Play to do it yourself.

As far as jQuery goes, yes it's a nice to have but it's a library — good for standardising code, getting around browser specific bugs & avoiding boilerplate, but if you get a developer who knows jQuery only (can't deal with regular native JS), you normally get a worse quality developer. On the otherside, get someone who's big into JavaScript proper & you're guaranteed they can pick up any framework you like.

smemon

It's a good question...

I think a truly great UI designer just designs and does very little else - that's why they are 'great' - because they're spending their days in that creative frame of mind.

You then have the next level of 'designers' who maybe do freelance 1-man-job websites or apps where they act as designer / dev / marketer / janitor.

You also have chancers or people who think that because they can doodle and know how to put together shapes in photoshop that they can call themselves designers. There are plenty of these guys who have a "that'll do" attitude and submit the first thing they come up with without any great analysis or thought about how code will wrap around it, whether there's an obvious hierarchy of events etc...

It's pretty easy to spot the difference imo. You won't notice great UI design or if you do it'll be because you're saying to yourself "this is a cool site"... but the average user won't be able to tell you why it's cool. If however the UI makes you think then that's not a good thing

You will certainly notice the 'chancer' design because it'll stand out for the wrong reasons, even if you can't articulate what's wrong with it or why it doesn't look right.

The standard of the design in the middle set of 'jack of all trades' guys will vary quite a bit but will generally pass as 'acceptable' to 'pretty good'. It just won't be flawless.

One massive problem with all of the above though is that generally other people will interfere with the design process. Manager will say he doesn't like 'x', some other guy with influence will say 'y' should be done differently and this is where a great designer will tell them politely who the expert is and give reasons as to why they're both wrong or why their suggestions weren't included in the original design. That's probably the biggest skill you're overlooking - someone who can communicate and justify why every single pixel is where it is on the screen. If they can't do that, then things are likely to get ugly because it'll eventually turn in to design by committee.

smash

smemon wrote: »

If they can't do that, then things are likely to get ugly because it'll eventually turn in to design by committee.

If sites have a CMS this usually happens anyway once it's handed over to the client and they get their hands on it.