When hackers meet designers: hackers are designers

Article Description: talk about hackers and the spirit of designers.

Hackers (Hacker) may be the most misunderstood and most easily abused by the media in this century. Hackers in the public mind, are like a group of invading other people's websites, stealing business or personal information of a group of hidden in the shadow of the bad guys. In fact, the meaning of the word hacker is full of "creativity", which the hacker describes as a person who can quickly creativity the technology, resources, abilities, or achieve a particular goal through an extremely innovative approach.

The designer (Designer) is another easily misunderstood noun, many people for the design, think may be complex to draw beautiful illustrations, create products beautiful appearance of friends. In fact, powerful designers do have these skills, but the real goal of designers is to solve the problems they or the public face through these skills. Designers can use creative new ideas, perhaps simply the way we never thought, so that we don't forget to unplug the car keys when we get off the bus.

When a hacker encounters a designer

In Paul Graham's "Hacker and Painter" (pdf download), he felt that hackers and painters were two of the world's most similar characters:

Like painting, most of the software is designed for human audiences. So hackers, like painters, must have empathy to create great works. You have to look at things from the perspective of the user.

I occasionally encounter these two kinds of people while working, and when I work with them, I feel that they are full of creativity, through different tools, different media, but actually have the same goal. In a way, hackers are extremely similar to designers. They all have creative thinking of the mind, easy to be misunderstood by the general public, and to solve the problem is full of enthusiasm and energy. Hackers are more like information, computers, technology as the media designers, and designers are users Photoshop, Illustrator hackers, they know their own tools, and then try to use these media to create great works.

Designers are divided into several different types, some designers focus on product modeling, some designers focus on the plane, some designers focus on industrial design, there are more in the focus on web design, industrial design and a variety of different media areas. People who are less knowledgeable about design often don't understand the difference between these different majors, but even engineers and hackers can be divided into different areas. From the system architecture, software planning, the various languages of the program writing, framework, in fact, each category has a very worthy of focus on the part.

And a hacker and a designer.

As creators, we imagine how exciting it would be if we had the spirit of hackers and designers at the same time, and if we could have the open eyes of designers and the concentration and creativity of hackers.

1. Keep your curiosity and empathy in mind

Keeping your curiosity in mind keeps you longing for everything around you, hoping to understand how everything works, how it affects people, how you get involved in life, and through empathy, how do we learn to think from the user's perspective and figure out how our products are being used by others? How's it feel to use it? These can help us to create better works.

2. Think with your hands

Designers in the early stages of design always through a piece of hand-drawn sketches to capture their ideas, the real role of the sketch is not to draw the designer's ideas, but through the process of painting, designers can from their own boundless sea, slowly looking for inspiration. When making great program works, hackers often write to capture their own ideas, through the process of writing to correct their thinking, each line of code will help you find the next line of code inspiration.

3. Rough and precise

If a designer or painter does not sketch while drawing, and starts from the top right corner of the screen, it is often hard to grasp the whole picture. They often have a rough outline, first capture the picture of the feeling, light and shadow position. Hackers in the implementation of the great works, but also the first plan the entire product structure, information communication methods, to complete the details of different modules.

4. The Pursuit of Excellence

One of the most rewarding things about designers and hackers is that they can't bear to see their work as flawed. We can launch a small trial version, but to do the best trial version. Designers are very demanding for every pixel on the screen, just as hackers do for every line of code. We hope that the dishes on the table look perfect, in addition to the user satisfaction, but also let themselves meet.

The spirit of the designer and the hacker spirit are very similar, they specialize in their skills, and then through these skills to help us create new things in life. Never be afraid to know new things, we can be hackers, but also designers, can make the world a better place.

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