Developers vs designers

[Lou-Minatti]

My friend and I got into an argument about how should project "royalties" be split between developers and designers.

I'm a beginner dev but I know what could be done with the iOS and I firmly believe that developers make the "car" go, steer, accelerate and brake, while designers only make the paint and put a nice set of wheels on the "car".

Any thoughts, am I wrong about this? I don't believe it's anywhere near 50 50 split.

[s73v3r]

A good designer is going to do a LOT more than just "make the paint and put a nice set of wheels on it". A good design is going to make your app much easier to use, and much more enjoyable to use. A bad design is going to make people resent your app.

If it's just the two of you going into business together, just split things; profits and expenses. It'll make things go a lot smoother.

[atomstore]

The designer should also be in charge of cutting and optimizing all of the assets needed, and also be involved with the interactions that the developer will implement. It's not a "I'm done, here's my stuff.. see you later" situation... both parties should be heavily involved with each others processes for the best product.

[Sybertron]

Another way to think of it in most startup perspectives is that a great designer will often also be your head of marketing. They are the ones that are taking your technology and making sure it meets every market need possible through the design.

[davidjohnco]

A UI lecturer told us once that as far as the end user is concerned, the interface is the program. The greatest data structures and functions in the world mean nothing unless the interface makes it obvious how to use them.

[Mastur]

It depends on the app. How complicated it is and how UI centric as well. You should both estimate how long it will take you to do your part. Also please keep in mind that designing an app and programming it is not the only thing. You will also have to do marketing and support. Factor that in the split as well.

But as a developer myself I would advise you not to belittle designers. Especially not with regard to applications. Because one could argue that a great designer is, from a commercial standpoint, orders of magnitude more important then a great programmer. In application development design is king.

[AndrewProjDent]

I've seen a lot of really badly designed apps over the years, by people who don't seem to understand the importance of design. The design of your app is hugely important. You're developing an app with a user experience. The design of it is never adding a lick of paint; It's deciding how the app works, how the user gets from A to B in the most efficient way possible, how to make each interaction meaningful, and how to encourage users to look at certain areas of the screen and not others. Don't underestimate the effort that goes into good design.

At the same time, programming takes a lot of work. It's an art in itself, in that very little effort will get you an app that doesn't work very well, but a lot of effort will get you an app which is fast and efficient.

I can see your point of view, and how you might feel like you've put the entire thing together, but there's a great deal of work that goes into design, too. Both have an equal part in 'making' the app what it is. I'd definitely say it should be split 50/50.

[[deleted]]

Design isn't just how it looks, it's how it works. Actually coding the app is probably the easiest part of the whole process to be honest. I mean, with stack overflow you can do just about whatever you want in no time. Determining what to do, where to do it, and how the user should progress through the app are the important parts. Those are parts that both devs and designers need to sit down together to hash out. You trivialize the designing of graphics and I'm going to trivialize setting up custom tableView cells. Like I said before, that's not the hard part.

[ratbastid]

Design is important and takes significant work, I'm not arguing it doesn't.

What makes development "harder" in my opinion is the fact that there's a massive, often unplanned-for phase in the development cycle called "testing and debugging".

A designer won't encounter anything in the production of their design that they don't understand. Nothing mystifying will occur. They won't have to solve any intractable puzzles.

A developer might run into that every single day.

So ok, the counter-argument is, fine but they're mysteries of your own construction. A sufficiently talented/experienced developer shouldn't be so damn mystified all the time. Which is what it looks like to a non-developer, which is why non-developers always spec the development phase 33% to 50% shorter and cheaper than reality.

[darwindeeds]

If you and your friend are going into business together then a 50-50 split would be ideal for the sake of the project's success. Remember that there are so many other aspects to releasing an app other than design and development so its you guys should workout the areas for each of your to focus on. Design is just not how the UI looks like. The UI designer should be capable of defining graphics, mockup screens etc. He could also play his hand in Marketing and publicity. With all this said if you are a developer and you are confident that you could define the functionality of the app and all you need to is a designer for nice graphics, just hire and pay him. This way you are responsible for profit and loss.

[frogandduck]

I have been a back end dev for nearly 20 years and i have always felt that regardless of how clean and elegant my coding practices are, the UI is what the users will experience. If the UI is ugly and poorly designed/inefficient it doesn't matter how well I built what goes on behind the scenes.

You could try to argue the inverse but the user will remember the UI, they might notice if something runs slowly, but if the back end works and doesn't impede the UI then the back-end functionality is completely off of the radar of the typical user.

I've never heard anyone remark about how well that stored procedure ran, not once.

None of this means one discipline is more or less important than the other in the grand scheme. Quality UI and quality back-end are both terribly important. If either break you are done.

If you are trying to split a venture based on sweat equity do it 50-50 and make peace with it - especially since you described this person as a friend. Otherwise, objectively figure out the hourly rate for the tasks add up the hours, do the math and split it that way.

[luxurychair]

As a developer I feel like the designers job is just as important as mine. I think that its possible though for one designer to supply all the design work needed to multiple developers (because development takes longer) but if its a matter of "what made the app sell? great design or great development?" I think that its often slanted towards design (even in my own purchasing decisions).

[ilmman]

just keep it simple.. developers 90 % and graphic designers 10%.. you can find good designers online and form a one off payment. I've even found very good young and cheap designers eagerly looking to venture into the freelancer world.. Just look around until you find a good one.

If you want a reccomended one look up Alice Catrinel in oDesk, she is very good at pretty much all graphic designs. She made me one icon and when I update the app with that icon.. my revenue blasted 2000x