To add more about Visual designers, they work on designing visual
experiences, which includes the visual design and consistency of a
brand, which then happen to include components or anything that falls
within that realm. If an experience does not require users to see to
experience, we wouldn't need to visualize it, hence no visual design.
There isn't a pure visual designer in the foundation, I'm a Visual
Experience Designer, which means I am more of a visual designer but I
also work on user experience. The role between Visual and Experience
designers are distinct, but often the line can be blur. Some UX
designers also have varying degrees of visual design chops here.
But, I agree with you that we need more Visual Designers. UxD and VD
cannot come up with great experiences by themselves. I'm sure you know
that without Design Research, UxD and VD, the whole experience would
be mediocre and inconsistent. We used to have Visual Design interns
where they get to be integrated into more teams, but we no longer have
budget for something like that. We try to make things happen with what
we have!
mm
On Tue, Nov 10, 2015 at 2:50 PM, Sherah Smith <ssmith(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
>Why do you
make the distinction that UX designers also do visual when you
> stated already that you also have specifically visual designers?
Because interaction design and visual design are separate things. Visual
designers are hired to design visual components, while UX designers are
hired to design user experiences. Sometimes building experiences involves
visual design, but not always - for example, in cases where we are
innovating new ideas that do not yet have standards.
>Are the visual designers the ones doing the UI
standardisation?
May, who is a Visual Designer, is indeed working on UI Standardization,
along with Volker, who is a UX Engineer.
>How does Design Research relate to the rest of
this?
Roughly:
Design Researchers conduct user research ---> UX Engineers build interactive
prototypes working with Design Research and Designers ---> Designers polish
and iterate the prototypes with the prototypers ---> Engineers build the
designs
As for the difference between UX Designer and UX Engineer, the main
difference is that the UX Engineer has an engineering background and applies
that to the building (coding) of interactive prototypes.
On Tue, Nov 10, 2015 at 2:32 PM, Isarra Yos <zhorishna(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Er, forgot to cc the main list, since I did cross-post in the first place.
Sorry about that!
On 10/11/15 22:25, Isarra Yos wrote:
Hi, thank you for your response. This does clarify a lot.
Why do you make the distinction that UX designers also do visual when you
stated already that you also have specifically visual designers? Are the
visual designers the ones doing the UI standardisation?
How does Design Research relate to the rest of this? You state that they
are not designers, but their work is an integral part of the user experience
design process.
Also, in the future, could you please use a darker colour (or even just
leave it as the default) for your emails? That grey is really hard to read
and I misread a few things the first time that made it look a little...
different from what you obviously meant.
Thanks!
On 10/11/15 22:04, Sherah Smith wrote:
Hi Isarra,
> what is the 'design team'?
Even though the design team (as it used to be) is now split out under
different managers with no centralized Director, we still consider ourselves
a "team" in that we still work together across teams to maintain consistency
and provide feedback, collaborate, and review one another's work where
needed. We have a weekly meeting and regularly talk and brainstorm in person
across teams to support one another in our work.
Design Research is the team that conducts research that informs the design
of products we build on all other teams. The employees on this team are not
designers.
Reading Design is a sub-team under Reading, and it designs reading
experiences, mostly for mobile platforms. Where you see "Visual Designer" as
a title, that person works on visual designs. "UX Designer" works on
combinations of visual and user experience design, mostly the latter, and
"UX Engineer" builds interactive prototypes and interaction design.
The reorganization that you reference happened in late April this year and
was not a decision the design team itself made. Rather, it came from upper
management. We do now work within the teams you see listed on the staff
page, on experiences for those teams specifically. So for example, you will
not see a designer on the Search & Discovery team working on experiences for
the Editing team.
Is there a particular concern you have about this organization that you
feel like we should be discussing, or does this answer your questions?
Thank you,
On Tue, Nov 10, 2015 at 1:21 PM, Isarra Yos <zhorishna(a)gmail.com> wrote:
From time to time I see references to the 'design team' on lists and on
phabricator. But what does this really mean now? As I understood it, the
previous monolithic Design Team was essentially disbanded toward the
beginning of the year, with the designers themselves distributed amongst the
other WMF teams in order to more directly integrate their services into the
development workflow (which sounds like a pretty good idea to me, at least,
since design is such an integral part of most development). Did this happen?
According to
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Staff_and_contractors,
there seem to still be two teams now with the word 'design' in their names,
Reading Design and Design Research, though these both seem to have somewhat
more specialised functions than just general design, namely Reading (sounds
like front-end non-interactive mw stuff, the visuals perhaps?) and Research.
So what is the 'design team'? Is it one of these, though the teams only
have 5 and 4 people on them, respectively? Is it just WMF designers in
general?
As much as this is also just a plea to please be more specific, if you
have an actual answer, or if you have been saying this, please, speak up,
share your experience and where you're coming from. As confusing as it is, I
suspect a discussion of what and why this has been going on could also clear
up quite a bit.
Thanks.
-I
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--
Sherah Smith
UX Engineer
Wikimedia Foundation
206-660-6585
sherahsmith.com
donate.wikipedia.org
_______________________________________________
Design mailing list
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_______________________________________________
Design mailing list
Design(a)lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/design
--
Sherah Smith
UX Engineer
Wikimedia Foundation
206-660-6585
sherahsmith.com
donate.wikipedia.org
_______________________________________________
Design mailing list
Design(a)lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/design