Hybrid Designers Mix Code and Writing to Help Technology Firms
March 31, 2017 | Design Trends
John Maeda is my hero. He’s one of the most visible people to successfully promote design thinking and make it relevant to the business community. His career shows a fascinating vacillation between jobs typical held by designers and posts that are usually for the MBA crowd. He has won recognition, awards and scrutiny from both the design and business world.
For the past three years, Maeda has issued a Design in Tech report. The key data is compiled in a document and he delivers an address that can be watched by video. This year, Maeda continues his exploration of how designers can help solve technology problems.
Here at Visible Logic, we love working with technology clients. We’ve had software developers, mobile technology developers, and consulting firms that focus in many different technology sectors. We like to help make complicated technological processes understandable to buyers, partners or investors. We work on branding projects, web sites and pitch decks to help communicate with the target audience. I can see why Wired Magazine’s coverage of the 2017 report ends with: “Designers who can code and write have always been attractive to tech companies.”
This year, Maeda talked about how a singular vision of design is diminishing because hybrid designers—those that can cross over to code, engineer or write, are so beneficial. They weave their insights into product development and no longer are about a separate “make it pretty” phase slapped on at the end.
Wired Magazine summed up a key point of the report by writing:
Maeda makes the case that the most successful designers will be those who can work with intangible materials—code, words, and voice.
I love to hear this quote. I see that our ability to mesh visual design with code and words is what makes our web sites so successful. Our in-house team takes a complete view of how a web site communicates: what it looks like, how it functions and the specific messages that are included.
Are you a tech-based business that needs to improve your brand, web presence or pitch? We’d love to talk.
