Let me start with a small disclaimer; I love engineers, i respect what they do and i really think without them nothing could really work in this world. They run the show of different ideas being turned into reality, they build houses, write the code and make all thre magic happen.
But, they shouldn’t design.
I’ll tell you why, and it’s completely justified. Design isn’t about perfecting things; it’s a mindset switch that allows creativity to flow. And honestly, many engineers dont have that in them, some of them do, but that’s fine if they dont.
Design is a lot about emotions, storytelling, empathy, and intuition rather than logic. It’s about seeing the world from another point of view, not just the eyes of the system. It’s about asking why before jumping into how. And Engineers are mostly always obsessed with the how
See, when an engineer is presented with a problem, they will solve it meticulously, with beautiful and minimal lunes of code. But they oftent tend to solve the wrong problem, or they solve in a way which makes sense only to them, not the person who will use it. Have you ever used a feature that has worked technically but always felt like a design that is not human enough. That’s what happens to engineers’ designs.
There’s a lot of difference even in the values of a designer and an engineer; engineers value structures, predictability and technicality. On the other hand, designers live in ambiguity, exploring the messy parts of their product, taking feedback, and chasing half-felt hunches. While designers seek to open up, engineers seek to narrow down. Engineers try to reduce the complexities, and designers are in love with them.
And let’s not even get to the aesthetics part of it. I’ve seen so many UI designs from engineers that look like they were built for the early 2000s, using very minimal colours which nobody could like. Pixel alignment? Not a concern. Font hierarchy? “What’s that?” Icon spacing? “Bro, it works, right?”
To be fair now, there are unicorns here as well, people who are brilliant at both design and engineering , but its really rare. Like, Bigfoot-on-a-unicorn rare. Most engineers aren’t wired to think like designers. And they shouldn’t have to be.
When designers and engineers get together, great products are created. But if they try to do the others job, then its a complete failure. The best engineers push fpr performances, scalability and functionality. They understand what is essential and make it seen. Both the professions are utmost important and require deep focus for great outcomes.
But please — let designers design. Let engineers build.
And let’s stop pretending those are interchangeable skills.