Comments for Rikcat Industries

Comment on Should Designers Do Their Own HTML/CSS by Joe

Joe — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 16:50:58 +0000

I am super late to this argument. I think User Experience Designers should know how to code HTML, CSS, and user facing Javascript meaning you should know some transitions. I don’t think you need an understanding beyond that. I think a perfect team is a purely graphic Designer who makes buttons, chooses pictures, makes backgrounds etc, a UX Designer who lays out the site as well as designs and codes user interactions and a back end developer who ties the design work to the data. All three should work very closely together.

Comment on Should Designers Do Their Own HTML/CSS by Rik Catlow

Rik Catlow — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 01:46:28 +0000

I agree web guy, but there are still pockets of places that have those old divisions. I happen to work at one.

Comment on Should Designers Do Their Own HTML/CSS by That Web Guy

That Web Guy — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 00:04:06 +0000

From where I sit, I would never hire a designer who wasn’t comfortable turning their designs into a hand coded harmony of XHTML and CSS. Any self respecting designer should want that anyway. Long gone are the days when designers only designed. I think it’s reasonable to expect designers to code as well.

Comment on Simplicity as Innovation by Prakash

Prakash — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 06:14:50 +0000

Great post! Couldn’t agree with you more. I really believe people complicate things to make it look sophisticated.

Edward Bono has a book called ‘Simplicity’ that gives great insights how we can achieve complexity through simplicity. He believes chess is a complex game cause it achieves it’s complexity through a large number of pieces so he designed a board game with just 4 pieces.

Comment on Twitter App – Critikr by Twitter Search

Twitter Search — Wed, 27 May 2009 02:46:03 +0000

thats great that you are talking about the twitter api,a good example of searching with the twitter api is on twiogle.com because you can search on twitter and google at the same time.

Comment on Simplicity as Innovation by viva

viva — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 09:33:30 +0000

Yes I think that is key when doing any product design. Although minimilist can’t be categorised as simple either, and a lot of people don’t think about that. You could have a minimalist site which is just as hard to use as a complex site.

I think no matter what we create as designers, we should have UX at the center. Whether a minimalist design suits the project or not is a whole other decision to be made.

Comment on Simplicity as Innovation by Ethan

Ethan — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 02:18:32 +0000

This is true for me. I love minimalism, like your site. Sometimes less is more.

Comment on Should Designers Do Their Own HTML/CSS by Steve D

Steve D — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 16:50:21 +0000

I would never expect a developer to understand the ins and outs of typography, just as I wouldn’t expect a web designer to build their own custom CMS.

For a designer, busting headlong into PHP is rarely inspiring, and less often is it productive. I feel that in many cases things like PHP, Content Management and the building of more complex functionality is left to a designer who may not understand the power of the language they are dealing with. Designers can run through a tutorial or use a library like jQuery to add more complex code too, but anything more is going to take experience and expertise.

Likewise I have seen sites designed by developers and the problem is reversed. Sure they can make it work, and sure the coding is great, but visually they tend to leave a lot to be desired. Again this is due to a lack of understanding from the developer about the power of the medium they are dealing with.

The two jobs were always intended to go hand in hand, and it can work. The designer should be able to design, code the front of the site, and concern themselves with any issues that involve user experiences. Any functionality such as complex back end coding, scripting languages or systems should be dealt with by a proper developer.

I think web designer and web developers like to have the “all in one” approach as their customers will get their website with one person/company. However I’d like to see more developer/designer teams springing up to give the clients better and more realized solutions by drawing on the expertise of both.

Comment on The Laws of Simplicity by Paul

Paul — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 17:57:07 +0000

While I do love designing creative graphics, I’m also becoming more and more a fan of simplicity in regards to web design (have always been an advocate of simplicity in logo design). Haven’t read the book, so thanks for the tip; I may have to pick a copy up :)

Comment on Should Designers Do Their Own HTML/CSS by whcs

whcs — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 07:21:34 +0000

Well…. I agree that designers should be able to code their own. First off, learning XHTML, CSS, a choice of your server code – PHP or AJAX for example, and Jscript are not by means hard. They were written to be understood easily, and are among the most basic of computer languages. Any respectable designer should be able to do a simple site – portfolio/web forum/blog/etc. Compared to what programming-heavy professions have to go through (real languages: C++, C#, Java, etc.), site and server coding is a piece of cake.

A great (WEB) designer must know both design and… basic coding.