In my post, Are You a Deluded Developer, the issue is raised as to whether a developer could be both a desktop developer and a Web developer. The real focus of the post ended up being about designers. As a result of this blog entry, a few discussions on the topic occurred on the forums. More interesting was a follow-up comment made by FunkyDexter on VBForums:
“Desktop Developers don't have designers! Ask one of us who designed the application and we'll scratch our heads and mutter....”
It is interesting to think about the difference between desktop and web applications and the level of design each gets. There is actually some truth to the fact that Desktop applications don’t (as in do not) need designers to the level that Web applications do. In fact, most desktop applications don't have designers involved.
When you think about it, most standardized desktop applications use standard windows colors, borders, and controls. That is the glory (or should I say "gory") of using an operating system like Windows – everything has its place and Windows helps with the style. There are generally Ok and Cancel buttons, and they are generally located on the bottom of the page. If you follow the standards for design that have been developed by Microsoft and others for building Windows applications, you quickly realize that there is not that much room for design. Rather, you get to create relatively drab, unexciting applications.
Of course, the drab design comes at the benefit of usability. While the application might look drab overall, it will be similar and thus familiar to people. Such similarity makes an application much easier to use.
Web applications are not confined to the same standards as desktop applications. While they are generally confined to browsers, the rules applied to desktop applications are not being applied to the web. In fact, with the growth of RIAs that use technologies such as AJAX, Flash, and Silverlight, there is a bit of a move away from the standards set for Windows applications. While the rules could be applied in the same way, they generally aren’t.
The end result of all this? Developers have gotten away with building desktop applications without having to need a designer. With Web applications, suddenly having a designer is much more important. Just following desktop design standards won’t give you a Web application that most would consider very good looking. In fact, many times it is likely to be seen as gory.
What is the bottom line? While you while you can get away with building desktop applications without a designer, you can't do the same with Web applications. For this reason, many developers who got away with "designing" desktop applications, really need to think twice before believing they are Web application designers.
All
del.icio.us
Digg it
Furl
Google
StumbleUpon
Yes, I know the title is a double negative. That was on purpose!
No, but both desktop and web app developers need [/access to someone who has] an ability to design something usable within the bounds of HCI sensibility..
Ultimately one should proabably consider that the target audience of a desktop app is typically going to be more specialised than that of a web app and probably have a more "serious" use; people will use it because they have to rather than because they want to and therein steps the difference as to why desktop developers get away with HCI stupidites that web users wouldnt tolerate.
I think that someone can be both, because I know when something is HCI poor (even though I can't draw the graphics that make it lok pretty) but it is going to be a limited subset of all available developers. If the human population can be split into artists and scientists, it follows that developers (as a subset of ?humans) can be thus split also.. You won't catch me writing device drivers or some low level horror like that, but I love creating a nice UI that is easy for someone to use; I guess that makes me an arty developer rather than a sciency one.. And I think the sciency developer is going to be less interested in making a UI that is universally usable
It is true that a lot of standard desktop applications come in the grey and drab colors. However a lot applications now apply skins to the end product. The last company I worked for sought out a design company to develop a few set of skins (as well nice icons and images). So we continued to develop as standard. Once the skins were done we made a few minor code changes and hey presto. We went from dull grey and square buttons to windows with rounded edges and rich colors. It makes sense to delegate some of the artistic work to people that specialise in that. However things like structure, navigation through the application is the responsibility of the developers.
The whole article is running on a blind premise. Design not just about aesthetics. Any 'true' designer understands it's a balancing act and top priority is UX/fucntionality. To often folks think the 'designers' only care about aesthetics and trends. Though those folks are out there, they are just amatures and by no means speak for folks who care about the craft. Design is marketing, user experience, functionality, identity, etc, and to that, I'd even say that most experienced designers actually can do a great deal of developing because the lines between front and backend are more and more blurred.
"Design is marketing, user experience, functionality, identity, etc, "
Nice comment. I agree that design goes beyond just the aesthetics. That is even more reasons why a developer might not "get it" when it comes to design.
I remember this stuff, apparently they are still working on how long it lasts. Last time I heard they only last less than a 2 years.