Designers Should Help Build the Real Thing

Before “Design” was as established as it is today, most “design-minded” people were actually just engineers and craftspeople with an aptitude for design.

Excited that it’s now the norm again—designers helping to make the real thing in the final medium. E.g. majority of designers on my team at @NotionHQ now open PRs.

— Raphael Schaad

This is what I’ve been trying to say, but it feels too controversial to bring up in a meeting with other designers at work.

James Dyson was a design engineer.

Believe it or not, Jony Ive was a design engineer, too. His team frequently experimented with the CNC machines at Apple.

The design handoff process doesn’t work when:

• The designer doesn’t know how to build things.
• The engineers don’t care about—or aren’t good at—the design details.

It seems like we’re finally at a point where this wide chasm between designers and engineers can begin to shrink again.