Question
Why is there such a short supply of designers in Silicon Valley?
Answer
I am surprised people haven't really separated out "design" into better defined subcategories. The scarcity is not evenly spread across all of them.
I distinguish 3 levels in the design stack. The scarcity is due to a poorly-filled "gap" between levels 1 and 2 created by the fact that the formal training at both ends lags real-world needs. So only a few autodidact talents are able to fill the gap from either end.
1. Conceptual design (medium scarce): this is basically an unteachable skill, but degrees like engineering help you polish it up if you already have the basic instincts. It relies on having a certain holistic vision (right brained plus left brained) of the technology world in general, and the ability to conceptualize ("think through") the overall product and business model from an "experience architecture" point of view, in a way that is cutting-edge with respect to available technology. You generally need some engineering instincts here, and a strong understanding of conceptual metaphor, as well as business instincts (eg. p2p vs. master-slave is a conceptual design decision because it comes out of business level assumptions/logic, and requires a basic understanding of the engineering distinction and its implications). Input: general business idea (eg: "design groupon for zebras for me"), output: paper-napkin level wireframes, flow diagrams, etc. Main degree: engineering/software dev or business with a strong engineering instinct. Must read techcrunch and use a lot of Web 2.0 stuff, in the case of Web.
2. UX design (scarce): this IS 50% teachable, and is what HCI people are good at. I think of this job as a "bridging triangle." It has conceptual design on one vertex, user and market research on a second vertex, and graphic design on the third. You can often get away without a UX person early on in a product (like first prototype), if the conceptual designer can stretch a bit to do more detail, and the graphic designer can stretch a bit to think about some simple usability issues. But once you've got the basic design down, and real users are in the loop, you really need somebody at this level. Able to conduct usability research (A/B testing, stats, eyeball tracking, interviews, focus groups), think in terms of UI metaphors (right brained), evaluate UIs in information-theoretic terms (left brained: "do we need an alert here? are we giving enough feedback here? what's the decision tree from this point on?"). The big challenge is that this job requires synthesizing empirical data into creative output within the constraints of business and engineering logic. Some people at this level are highly analytical... they don't like to do any of the creative work, but are great at empirical inbound stuff using everything from interviews to eyeball tracking. Others are much more about "creative" synthesis in the sense of advertising creatives. Where the conceptual designer generally prefers to stop at the point where the design has accommodated the business/functional logic, UX designers get into detailed psychology (or for social media, the social psychology) of every step of the interaction (the fly-in-the-urinal is the sort of thing a typical conceptual designer would not think to think of...). Input: user data, conceptual design, defined unknowns about the users. Output: define the job for graphic designer, conduct usability research to fill information gaps. Main degree: HCI.
Important point: conceptual metaphor in the sense of Level 1 of the stack is NOT the same as UX metaphors at Level 2. I wrote an article on Mashable a while back about the former: http://mashable.com/2010/01/13/c... ... UI metaphors are generally much more localized, literal, and get the immediate interaction job done as opposed to framing the whole product (eg. using the metaphor of a "dial" to carry a particular interaction versus conceptualizing an entire service, like YouTube in terms of "channel architecture."). In good design, the overarching conceptual metaphor(s) are nicely aligned with the individual UI metaphors and UI text-string copy.
3. Graphic design (not very scarce): easiest to define: can draw, gets colors, gets fonts, gets aesthetics (minimalist vs. busy etc.) keeps up with evolving graphic design trends to keep a design looking "fresh." The parts that are harder to define are on the iterative communication with the conceptual and UX designers. You don't need Rembrandts. You need people who enjoy "functional fine arts."
The scarcity is most acute in the 2nd level (UX design). This is because the formal training in usability/UX design is no longer enough, and only the real talent is able to do the *real* job. The "real job" at least for Web products today, involves about 10x more understanding of the business logic, social psychology, analytics, and engineering details than with older UX design domains like (say) a car dashboard or a washing machine control panel (== industrial design). With computing interfaces, unlike dumb interfaces, a huge amount of the engineering logic is very much on the surface, as is the business logic. The UX designer can't just say "I'll define the ideal UX, let the engineers figure out how to implement it."
This becomes a gap because the conceptual design types are generally not detail-oriented enough (or good enough listeners) to understand or deal with the UX work in all its glory. OTOH the UX designers often start from either a graphic design (artistic, right brained) interest or a market research interest (people, surveys, psychology), and simply do not have the training or background in the engineering and business end of things.
People don't notice how big this gap is because for Web products, the entire company is often the product itself, in a sense (i.e. it encompasses sales, marketing, engineering, manufacturing, finance etc. etc.). In an automobile company, nobody would expect the CEO to work closely and directly with the guy designing the dashboard to run the company. There is an impedance mismatch. Yet, that's exactly what we ask in the Web world. So the UX person must think like a CEO, and the CEO must be a lot more hands-on.
In my experience, it is easier for the UX person to learn enough about engineering/business pieces of the puzzle than for the engineering/business types to learn the UX stuff.
I distinguish 3 levels in the design stack. The scarcity is due to a poorly-filled "gap" between levels 1 and 2 created by the fact that the formal training at both ends lags real-world needs. So only a few autodidact talents are able to fill the gap from either end.
1. Conceptual design (medium scarce): this is basically an unteachable skill, but degrees like engineering help you polish it up if you already have the basic instincts. It relies on having a certain holistic vision (right brained plus left brained) of the technology world in general, and the ability to conceptualize ("think through") the overall product and business model from an "experience architecture" point of view, in a way that is cutting-edge with respect to available technology. You generally need some engineering instincts here, and a strong understanding of conceptual metaphor, as well as business instincts (eg. p2p vs. master-slave is a conceptual design decision because it comes out of business level assumptions/logic, and requires a basic understanding of the engineering distinction and its implications). Input: general business idea (eg: "design groupon for zebras for me"), output: paper-napkin level wireframes, flow diagrams, etc. Main degree: engineering/software dev or business with a strong engineering instinct. Must read techcrunch and use a lot of Web 2.0 stuff, in the case of Web.
2. UX design (scarce): this IS 50% teachable, and is what HCI people are good at. I think of this job as a "bridging triangle." It has conceptual design on one vertex, user and market research on a second vertex, and graphic design on the third. You can often get away without a UX person early on in a product (like first prototype), if the conceptual designer can stretch a bit to do more detail, and the graphic designer can stretch a bit to think about some simple usability issues. But once you've got the basic design down, and real users are in the loop, you really need somebody at this level. Able to conduct usability research (A/B testing, stats, eyeball tracking, interviews, focus groups), think in terms of UI metaphors (right brained), evaluate UIs in information-theoretic terms (left brained: "do we need an alert here? are we giving enough feedback here? what's the decision tree from this point on?"). The big challenge is that this job requires synthesizing empirical data into creative output within the constraints of business and engineering logic. Some people at this level are highly analytical... they don't like to do any of the creative work, but are great at empirical inbound stuff using everything from interviews to eyeball tracking. Others are much more about "creative" synthesis in the sense of advertising creatives. Where the conceptual designer generally prefers to stop at the point where the design has accommodated the business/functional logic, UX designers get into detailed psychology (or for social media, the social psychology) of every step of the interaction (the fly-in-the-urinal is the sort of thing a typical conceptual designer would not think to think of...). Input: user data, conceptual design, defined unknowns about the users. Output: define the job for graphic designer, conduct usability research to fill information gaps. Main degree: HCI.
Important point: conceptual metaphor in the sense of Level 1 of the stack is NOT the same as UX metaphors at Level 2. I wrote an article on Mashable a while back about the former: http://mashable.com/2010/01/13/c... ... UI metaphors are generally much more localized, literal, and get the immediate interaction job done as opposed to framing the whole product (eg. using the metaphor of a "dial" to carry a particular interaction versus conceptualizing an entire service, like YouTube in terms of "channel architecture."). In good design, the overarching conceptual metaphor(s) are nicely aligned with the individual UI metaphors and UI text-string copy.
3. Graphic design (not very scarce): easiest to define: can draw, gets colors, gets fonts, gets aesthetics (minimalist vs. busy etc.) keeps up with evolving graphic design trends to keep a design looking "fresh." The parts that are harder to define are on the iterative communication with the conceptual and UX designers. You don't need Rembrandts. You need people who enjoy "functional fine arts."
The scarcity is most acute in the 2nd level (UX design). This is because the formal training in usability/UX design is no longer enough, and only the real talent is able to do the *real* job. The "real job" at least for Web products today, involves about 10x more understanding of the business logic, social psychology, analytics, and engineering details than with older UX design domains like (say) a car dashboard or a washing machine control panel (== industrial design). With computing interfaces, unlike dumb interfaces, a huge amount of the engineering logic is very much on the surface, as is the business logic. The UX designer can't just say "I'll define the ideal UX, let the engineers figure out how to implement it."
This becomes a gap because the conceptual design types are generally not detail-oriented enough (or good enough listeners) to understand or deal with the UX work in all its glory. OTOH the UX designers often start from either a graphic design (artistic, right brained) interest or a market research interest (people, surveys, psychology), and simply do not have the training or background in the engineering and business end of things.
People don't notice how big this gap is because for Web products, the entire company is often the product itself, in a sense (i.e. it encompasses sales, marketing, engineering, manufacturing, finance etc. etc.). In an automobile company, nobody would expect the CEO to work closely and directly with the guy designing the dashboard to run the company. There is an impedance mismatch. Yet, that's exactly what we ask in the Web world. So the UX person must think like a CEO, and the CEO must be a lot more hands-on.
In my experience, it is easier for the UX person to learn enough about engineering/business pieces of the puzzle than for the engineering/business types to learn the UX stuff.