Ask HN: Is a front end dev who's also good at UI/UX desirable on the market?

3 points·nassimsoftware··3 comments

By UI, do you mean graphics design? Because front end development often refers to building websites with HTML, CSS, etc., which I would count as UI work.

By UI I meant that they're capable of creating beautiful user interfaces throught strong command of CSS on their own. This implies that they have a good eye for what looks good vs not. I guess this what we commonly refer to as graphic design but is implemented for real instead of living in a figma file.

They also have good design sense (UX). So they know what makes an intuitive UI and where to put things. They also can fill in on the designer's blind spots when doing the implementation of a design.

I think that you will be way more successful if you have a solid understanding of usability and a good sense for aesthetics. But I also think that it's more important if you free-lance or work at a small-ish company.

In bigger projects and companies, there might be a dedicated person for each aspect of the process, a designer, and front end developer, etc. But the responsibilities are also different in that case. For example, a UX person doesn't just tell you that something isn't as intuitive as it could be or even improve it, but conduct actual research like A/B testing etc. to properly asses the usability, compare different design solutions and so on.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com