Artists cannot design interfaces.

[Asher]

The potential for this is too big to threadjack the other thread.

It started here or so:

http://www.apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?t=187113

Apolyton feels better now, it's like a ship without a captain.

But I'd like to know who is responsible for maintaining and upgrading the website?

If i'm not wrong, the new design is running on Drupal, which is a bit of a shame because Joomla has taken a good lead, I guess good interfaces do matter *cough* are you reading Asher *cough*.

The real question is, what can Apolytoners do to get ahead of CFC?

GAMBLING!

Frosty, you're preaching to the choir about good UI.

I'm a champion on competent UIs. I've taken university courses dedicated to the subject and I've designed UIs used by many people in many ways.

I also know one of the worst things you can do to design a UI is hand the reins to an artist. They're the reasons why we have Flash websites.

A good UI is a marriage of aesthetics and functionality.

OooooooOoo UNIVERSITY COURSES.

*bows down to Asher, the UI King*

Good interface design requires natural born talent. Judging by your university course comment and your avatar, I'd say you don't have what it takes.

I did not make my avatar, nor is it an interface.

HCI is a science. Prettyness is an art.

A good UI is not necessarily a pretty UI.

This is why arts people should not do UIs.

Thanks for demonstrating. HCI designers make the UI, arts people skin it. Sorry bud.

Please Asher, i'm sure you're not so narrow minded.

Artists don't get paid more than programmers for no reason. Color theory, typography, sizes, shapes, placement, all of these are important because they manipulate how the USER interacts with the INTERFACE. If the design sucks, (i.e. Blackberry), then the product will generally suck, no matter how good the programming is, especially true for the unsavvy. Of course, an application with a lot of powerful features and a **** design is still a great application, just frustrating to use.

[Asher]

.

Er... what? So many things wrong with this. Artists get paid more than programmers? Where? Not in the UK at equivalent level jobs.

Blackberry's suck? They are still the market leader in smartphones, despite increased competition because their functionality is much better than their rivals for business use.

Genuinely good web designers require pretty good technical skills, just as any good designer requires really good technical skills. They can be pretty well paid but your average photoshop monkey is 10 a penny, it's an incredibly popular career choice, loads of people want to do it and the pay is relatively low.

At the end of the day if an application looks nice but doesn't work it has no value. For business applications, which is what Asher and I make, functionality and business results are king, usability is very important as is how nice it looks, but at the end of the day if the user can get the results of the financial reports or whatever it is they require easily it doesn't matter what font or colour the numbers are in. This is true on the web too. It doesn't matter how nice the website looks if it doesn't work, and a really functional website, or one with great content will succeed even if it looks a bit ****.

eg. craigslist, twitter, myspace

FWIW, I make nearly twice the salary of the many graphics artists on my floor (and we have a lot of them, I work on the marketing floor), according to the job postings.

I'm also about ten years younger than most of them.

I basically go to them and say "hey, I need icons with this dimension and this functionality. Make it so." Occasionally I use their eye for aesthetics, but never for UI design itself which is a functional problem, not an artistic one.

I sure hope Asher is right, it would be so wrong if the graphics guys earned more than the programmers.

I was confused by FrostyBoy's post as the last part contradicted the first part.

Did you mean "I can't see any reason why artists don't get paid more than programmers"? Rather than what you said, which means the opposite.

In which case, take my post as explaining why they don't.

Btw, just to defend us artists, , I believe artists are much harder to come by than programmers, especially good artists. Hence why I think they get paid more. I'm interested to see the wages of an artist compared to a programmer over at Blizzard.

This is where I think Asher gets confused/frustrated. An interface designer is similar to a movie director. He should understand the technicalities behind the camera, effects, etc, but not necessarily have to work on them, primarily he needs to be creative/artistic. I don't classify myself as an artist primarily, in my line of work, I am a designer.

I believe it is more natural for an artist to become a designer than it is for a programmer to become a designer and I don't mean just any designer, I mean a good designer; this is because artists naturally have the foresight of the end product before a programmer will. Programmers seem to need everything to be written out on paper before they can begin work on any project, in the end, their systematic approach leads to a boring product good enough for other programmers and robots.

In conclusion, if you're making a product for human interface, leave the design to the artists.

No, they are not harder to come by. They're a dime a dozen. That's why their pay is substantially less.

And don't confuse a "programmer" with a professional software engineer. They're very different discipline with very different salaries.

Artists do not get paid more. I don't know what you are smoking, but you are clearly demonstrating you know nothing of the field.


The problem with you artsy types is you don't understand the functional aspects of HCI. I'm not talking about being the guy to technically implement them myself -- most of the time these days I don't even program a single bit of the UI. I design the UI myself and pass it on to subordinate developers who then implement it.

HCI is a discipline, it's far more than someone who thinks they are an "interface designer" such as yourself. I guarantee you that you are not well-versed in competent UI design, like leveraging Fitt's Law. If a software company has a competent HCI team, it's lead by an HCI expert which almost always comes from a computer science background, with a specialty (which also has frequent dabblings in Psychology as a background). Very, very seldom do any of these people come from "artist" backgrounds. Artists are employed on the team, but only as part of creating a visual aesthetic but they are kept miles away from the functionality and substantial UI design components.


The problem here is you don't understand what I do, you don't understand the distinction between software engineer and "programmer", and you generally don't understand much of anything. In terms of salary, software engineer > programmer >> artist.

You're way wrong, in any case.

My job isn't as a programmer, FWIW. My job involves programming, but that's not my job. I design and architect UIs and entire programs on a huge array of platforms (from cell phones to internet tablets to web sites to back-end software). Your characterization is that of a code monkey, which I will agree with you is no more competent at designing UIs than an off-the-shelf artist.

And for the record, I'm not the one confused here. I've done this professionally for a few years now from the biggest of the big companies (IBM) down to small private consulting companies. All of them had dedicated HCI teams (IBM's HCI laboratory was actually across the hall from me at their Markham, Ontario campus). I've talked with many people who've done HCI in the professional sector for a living, both as my professors in school and at the company I've worked at. HCI is a full-out discipline, one that is almost always held in the department of Computer Science for a reason. It's a multi-disciplinary field with a strong emphasis on psychology and computer science, with a tiny sprinking of pretty-making artists.

Then you're mainstream, you're the system, you're the guy who follows procedure because without it you would be lost.

You made Transformers. The designers I'm talking about made A Clockwork Orange. This is the stark difference I am talking about and why I say the iPhone is an all round better phone than anything else right now.

This is actually precisely why artists are terrible HCI people.

The iPhone is undeniably prettier than the Blackberry. In your eyes, it is better.

An HCI person understands the concept of "target audience" and "use cases". The Blackberry user is one who sends and receives many emails. For this reason, the interface for the Blackberry is designed around making sending and receiving emails quicker and easier. And it succeeds here.

The iPhone user is typically a multimedia user. They surf the web, play music, play games, play videos. The UI is better for this than the Blackberry, but inferior to the Blackberry in the areas of massive email use.

You are completely oblivious to the nature of functional interfaces. A good UI is not just one that is pretty, but one that lets you quickly, efficiently, and intuitively perform the task.

This is precisely why you cannot let artists design interfaces. They only see part of the picture and -- quite frankly -- most artists' brains aren't wired right for true HCI design. You need have a highly analytical mind to anticipate the factors and compromises in HCI design. On top of that, a good HCI designer has studied the field, which involves lots of research and reading, something I've found most artists fail miserably at. Take you, for instance. You can't even read and comprehend simple online posts, let alone 1000+ pages of case studies and functional interfaces.

I'm just curious, but could you link me to some of the web site UIs you've designed? I recall asking you this question months ago (if not years), and you then linked to a site that was God-awful...

[Ben Kenobi]

Question, would you consider an architect to be an artist?

Not all of us paint pretty pictures, asher. Design requires both elements, the technical precision in knowing how stuff works, and the 'pretty pictures' to get people to buy it.

[Asher]

Question, would you consider an architect to be an artist?

Architecture is both an art and a science.

Not all of us paint pretty pictures, asher. Design requires both elements, the technical precision in knowing how stuff works, and the 'pretty pictures' to get people to buy it.

No, you don't paint pictures. You're a bull**** artist. Now get lost.

[SlowwHand]

Not a lot to do this evening?

[Ben Kenobi]

Architecture is in the faculty of arts, not science Asher.

Along with Literature, History and Philosophy.

That's a huge chunk of what makes civilization what it is, and none of it has anything to do with painting pretty pictures.

I've been in arts, and I've been in sciences, and I'll be the last to say that science contributes nothing. When you are talking about design, you need both.

[Asher]

Architecture is in the faculty of arts, not science Asher.

Along with Literature, History and Philosophy.

That's a huge chunk of what makes civilization what it is, and none of it has anything to do with painting pretty pictures.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architecture

Architecture (from Greek word ἀρχιτεκτονική - arkhitektonike) is the art and science of designing and constructing buildings and other physical structures for human shelter or use.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Waterloo_School_of_Architecture

The School of Architecture is one of the professional schools of the University of Waterloo. It is part of the Faculty of Engineering and is located on a satellite campus in Cambridge, Ontario, Canada. Some of Canada's most prominent architects are graduates of the school.

Why must you always ****ing pollute my threads with your ****ing bull****? Seriously, Ben, get the **** out. You are not welcome here and you are fundamentally incapable of positively contributing to any resulting conversation.

[Ben Kenobi]

Why must you always ****ing pollute my threads with your ****ing bull****? Seriously, Ben, get the **** out.

How am I polluting your threads? I made a cogent response to the topic of your thread. Sure, you may find my opinion offensive, but that's hardly my fault.

http://www.daniels.utoronto.ca/programs/49

You get a BA in architecture and an MA, and U of T's school is far more acclaimed.

[FrostyBoy]

Asher, let's conclude:

Let's use the architect example.

If the architect were a stronger artist than scientist, his building would turn out something like the China Central Television Headquarters Building & Cultural Centre.

If the architect were a stronger scientist than artist, his building would turn out something like the Sears Tower.


The architect is a designer, a designer is someone who should have strengths in both trades (art and science; something you don't have mind you). My opinion, is that it is better if the designer has stronger artistic abilities if he is designing something that humans must interface with. That's my argument.

[DanS]

From what little I know, Asher is completely right on this, except with too much of a negative attitude toward artists. There's a reason why Google is successful at what it does. It's also the reason why designers/artists tend to leave the company in a huff.

Who ended up with the billions?

That said, artistry helps to add polish. So long as it doesn't detract in any way from what needs to be done, I welcome artistry.

[DanS]

The CCTV building is not a good example. It's ugly. It is not a pleasing building to look at. I don't prefer the Sears Tower either, but there you go.

[SlowwHand]

There's a lot to be said for having structures that are aesthetically pleasing.

[DanS]

What can I say? Architects nowadays think it's a swell idea to build ugly CCTV Buildings rather than beautiful Chrysler Buildings. I'm sure the Chrysler building has more functional space too. The CCTV Building is wholly impractical.

[Asher]

How am I polluting your threads?

You interject with ****ing bull**** on a never-ending basis. You lie, slander, and are in general completely incompetent at every facet of life. You know I can't stand you. Get out of this thread, immediately. You contribute nothing.

http://www.daniels.utoronto.ca/programs/49

You get a BA in architecture and an MA, and U of T's school is far more acclaimed.

CASE AND POINT.

You say they get "BA" as if it's a "Bachelor of the Arts". You get a "BACHELOR'S OF ARCHITECTURE" from the UofT, NOT an arts degree you ****ing lying scumbag. The UofT's school is NOT in the faculty of the arts because it is its own faculty, meaning you were of course WRONG when you said it was part of the arts faculty you disingenuous tool.

Get the **** out. Seriously.

Mods?

[FrostyBoy]

The CCTV building is not a good example. It's ugly. It is not a pleasing building to look at. I don't prefer the Sears Tower either, but there you go.

I agree, I don't like the design, but I'm sure some people do, that's art for you.

But I must say, you seem to be thinking art = make things look good. It doesn't.