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Ask HN: Examples of startups where engineers design the UX

10 points by dreamdu5t ↗ HN
My experience as both an engineer and designer is that optimal UX is best achieved by having someone who can both design and code - not from someone whose only output is wireframes and diagrams or PSDs.

Essentially, I've witnessed the horrible UX created by "product designers" and every startup I've worked for has never clearly delineated UX responsibilities.

Are there examples of startups where the engineers do the UX? I'm really interested in the different ways various web startups manage and delegate responsibility regarding UX?

5 comments

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dchuk
I'm not technically an "engineer" in terms of qualifications but I am a coder who did all the design work for my startup (serpIQ.com).

It's common in small bootstrapped startups because you have no choice but to wear a lot of hats.

vitovito
This is interesting to me! I've never met an engineer or artist who I would trust to do the UX. They are very, very disparate skill sets with very, very different goals. And, all the "hybrids" I know understand where their limits are, and we often work very well together on the nitty-gritty details of interaction design, like the precise timing of transitions and such, but they're generally more than happy to let me do the bulk of the UX work, figuring out all the edge cases and flows off the happy path.

But, I do have a theory that if the entire team understands the user goals and how the product is supposed to best support them, and everyone has a modicum of good taste, that maybe you don't need dedicated UX people.

Maybe you can workshop the entire UI and flow, like in a design studio. Maybe you need a short-term UX person to facilitate; maybe that can be taken on by a manager, or it can be a role that's rotated through.

I've never met a team like that, though.

new299
I think a good UX guy is almost an engineer perhaps not to the point of hacking code, but rather more scientific than handwavey in their approach.

But like coders I think there are a lot of bad UX guys out there. It's also probably harder to assess UX people than it is to assess coders.