I completely disagree with the assertion that interface design is an "inborn" trait. Most people suck at it because they have not spent the time learning how to design a good interface (the whole 10,000 hours thing), usually because it isn't a priority or interest for them.
Here are some qualities I've noticed in great UX/UI designers:
- Deeply understands the technology involved and how people want to use that technology
- Looks at UI the way users do and is disgusted by pain points (ala Steve Jobs)
- Empathizes with users who use technology differently than they do (or anyone else on the team), and is able to build out UI specifically for their use cases
- Wrangles the development team to do everything possible to make life easier for the user; set-up that auto-detects your rig, Mint's on-boarding process where all you have to do is enter your username and password from your bank website log-in, etc.
- Concepts and implements things like emotional hooks, look-and-feel, embedded tutorial, etc.
These things are "seen" and not "done" like playing the piano or other activities which require 10k hours to master. Some people have excellent product experience vision and give themselves permission to use it in a business context. Other designers will push pixels their whole careers.
Some people think deeply about why they do things, others don't. I think that's the critical skill in UX design and cannot be trained.
Thinking deeply about why you do things a particular way is critical for being good at anything. You can replace "UX design" with "programming," "writing," or even "salsa dancing."
Speaking from experience, becoming a "good" UX designer has definitely taken me at least 5,000 hours already. In that time, I did plenty - specifically, I made a whole bunch of UIs that, for one reason or another, sucked.
In time, the more designs I made, the more I started to develop an intuition for things that worked or didn't work. Not to mention that before I learned how to design, I had to learn how to listen to my users - and before I could do that, I needed to learn to check my ego at the door and realize that even as the "designer", it didn't mean I knew a darn thing about what my design should look like until I talked to them (and sometimes, not designing what I originally "wanted" to design as a result). Yes, there are definitely skills involved in "doing" things that are hard to train, and there's a sense of "natural" talent - but with enough effort, even a computer science major like myself can pick up those skills.
And conversely, the hours you spend doing design are hours that are necessarily taken away from other things you want to be an expert on. Like NoSQL databases, or sleep. :)
"usually because it isn't a priority or interest for them" is the real sticking point. In order to make a really good UI you have to make sacrifices. A lot of them. All the time. Your time, for one thing. Most of your good ideas, the ones that you really liked...will end up not quite working, and need to be abandoned. Especially the really cool ones. That back-end that you wrote so elegantly? Well there's a critical use-case that requires you to write in a section of special-cased inelegance. Or, even worse, in developing the UI you realize that it really, really needs this feature...which will unfortunately require you to redesign your backend architecture.
Most engineers who set out to "make the UI" aren't willing to make those sacrifices, so you get a crappy UI. That's not meant to insult engineers, because they have plenty of other things to worry about. But unless you take it truly, painfully seriously, all you get is shit.
Yeah I've always been tweaked by the "inborn" trait thing. I think there's a natural affinity that people can have for things, but at the same time, anybody who puts in the hours can get there with this stuff. Yes, some people "get" how to play a piano right off, and they're naturally really good. For many people who are really good, though, they put in tons of practice hours honing their "piano qi". My 2 cents, at least.
It usually doesn't make sense to invest 10K hours in something that you rarely do. And if you want to do something as a professional , it usually make sense to choose a field in which your innate talents could be useful , just because jobs are competitive , and people with better innate talents could improve much faster.
So in real life, capable professionals usually have some innate talents. But it doesn't have to be specifically ux design talent. maybe a talent in fast learning , and grasping complex stuff could be used. maybe a deep natural empathy you have with users.
I wonder if that is due to the nature of how many of us got into programming, i.e. spending hundreds-to-thousands of hours in front of computer.
I've been "programming" in one sense or another since I was about eight years old. Anything that you have been doing that long since that early is going to seem "inborn" if you don't think about it hard enough.
Certainly, some people are better at certain things than others (just watch me throw a ball), but that can be overcome with hard work (IMHO).
> hold the view... that programming ability is an inborn trait
I recently wrote someone a recommendation where I argued that programming languages and patterns are readily teachable, but holding a complex model in the mind and communicating it effectively to peers, laymen, or computers (the computer is the ultimate simpleton) is less easily taught.
Heh, I suppose I was being too polite. I'm not sure holding that mental model in the head can be taught. I think it's a key driver of excellence in innovation and insight across a variety of industries, not just software development, and whether nature or nurture, seems to be formed very early--through avid reading or story telling, perhaps?
I agree with your linked comment about teaching. One university teacher told me that to lead someone to your point of view, you must first put your arm around them making you start the discussion from where you can see theirs.
The idea of an "inborn" trait in this context seems to me as a person who was able to learn something without really knowing how they learned it, which prevents them from being able to effectively teach it. Hence the inborn trait as an explanation of the magical process of learning how to do something.
