Inspirations from design engineers

This thread is inspired by Maggie Appleton’s tweet (and subsequent thread) about whether she should become a design engineer:

Tweet from https://twitter.com/Mappletons/status/1766154766210502812.

At first I thought I was a “design engineer” since I do both design and write code. But after looking through this list, I’m less of a “visual” design engineer and more focused on using code to improve processes and outcomes.

It’s a fascinating thread, and many people started dropping names of people who fall into the category. Many of them are new to me, so I need to look at their work and dig into what makes them so great (plus, it’s an excuse to spend a few hours on twitter for “research purposes”).

I’ve added some of my own. Edit the Notion page to add more or tweet at me https://twitter.com/yawnxyz

I’m probably missing a few.

Feel free to edit the Notion page to add more or tweet at me https://twitter.com/yawnxyz!

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The following is work in progress and some ideas and thoughts I had after reading up more about design engineers. I’ll probably break this into another page later.

What is a “design engineer”?

Still to be written.

Topics to be covered:

• Is “design engineer” a defined profession (e.g. welder) or something more fleeting? Will it be called something else in the future?

• Is “product engineer” or “ux engineer” the same thing?

• Thanks to generative AI and agents like Devin (https://twitter.com/cognition_labs/status/1767548763134964000), should design engineers focus on the “design” aspect or “learning how to engineer” aspect?

• Are they really “engineers”? (Mention the differences between a “hacker” a “software engineer” and a “real” engineer) (Are API designers “design engineers”? Is designing the “UX” of an API interface “real UX”?)

• Is the emphasis on prototyping?

• In the world of AI-driven UI and generative UI/UX, does it mean “traditional” UX designers lack the tools to express new interaction modes?

• Add some notable work from design engineers. Maybe show work that’s the sum of its parts, e.g. are there new designs, interactions, or media that emerge from being able to both write code and design? Especially in the LLM / UI world?

Readings:

• https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2022/the-case-for-design-engineers/
• Back in the day Design Engineers were “web designers”
• With new web applications, responsive design (e.g. needing to ship dozens of artifacts for each medium to denote all possible states of a UI), pushing designers to code makes more sense — because code is more declarative.

• https://www.proofofconcept.pub/p/design-engineering
• Argues that like a good Cronut, a Design Engineer is more than the sum of various parts (the parts being interaction, UX, UI, and visual design, along with front and back-end engineering).
• Outlines three areas where these roles shine: product architecture (where design and engineering and closely linked, they can explore product needs, information architecture, and underlying logic. e.g. Figma, Replit, Webflow); design infrastructure (contributing to component libraries, internal tools, prototyping new patterns, and creating new experiences that are hard to mockup statically in Figma. e.g. designing LSP, site builder/layout engine interactions, and new LLM interactions); 0→1 R&D (exploring new product directions / growth opportunities for companies)
• Emphasizes that clearly defined expectations and reporting lines (either to design or engineering teams) is necessary; otherwise their efforts are wasted / undirected to the goals of the org.

• https://twitter.com/ridd_design/status/1748080351053017241
• “Craft-focused” companies will want to build out their design engineering teams
• Notion only hired designers who could code
• Better handoff between design and engineering teams, which leads to better craft and execution speed = shipping faster

(future)

• Why are these people cool? Add some of their cool work!

• If the list grows too long move it to a Google Sheet instead