This may speak to a growing need for people who have actually studied human-computer interface design, combined with other skillsets (probably graphic design principles, too), to be primarily in charge of the screens and flows.
HCI (as a CS science-based discipline) is not design and never has been (though there are definitely aspirations).
We need people who have actually studied and practiced design (interaction, graphic, visual, industrial, ...), the latter being important because design is as practice based, if not more so, than programming. So developing junior designers under the mentorship of experienced designers is essential and often left out in companies (especially startups) who don't get design.
And this is what gets me about the "designers must code" meme: if they are coding, they are not getting experience designing.
I have always felt that learning code as a designer is no different to learning to take the production of print work into your own hands. Foil-blocking? Better talk to the printer. Six spot colours on a 64 page handbook? Best check with the printer. Half fold gate sleeve design with laser cut matte finish front over a high-gloss neon backing? Jesus, I better check with the printer.
With digital design, the turn around is so short that it can be incredibly beneficial to learn similar digital techniques yourself instead of waiting for the reply that tells you "can't do it".
You specifically mentioned interaction design as the first discipline (and i would URGE companies to hire classically trained designers), and ffs, of all the disciplines, it's the most tied to coding. It is integral to learn of the production processes to be worth your salt. In college, we made books by hand. We made websites without frameworks, exhibition designs in foamcore real-life mockups. Any course worthwhile will continually stress the understanding and competency in the production methods. I'd like my architect to know the theory and have some practise in building a basic wall, wouldn't you?
Sure a web designer should know some CSS, but javascript? I think many design schools do teach some web production technologies, but designers almost never have time to specialize in production.
You are also exhibiting a web bias here; a lot of design work doesn't occur for the web. Should a designer for mobile learn ObjC or Java since that is what is used to implement their designs? And god forbid the designers that work on AutoCAD; must they really learn about C++ while they are becoming experts on CAD?
Many IxDs that I've met are trained programmers and architects (though my wife is an IxD trained in visual design). Even the ex-programmers have no chance to program (our company tends to have more design work than designers, and enough programmers). I haven't noticed any difference in design quality between the ex-programmers and ex-architects (but that was mobile, not web).
On the other hand, I have also met some good researcher-style designers who get their hands dirty with design-oriented programming platforms like processing and arduino in their more open ended projects. This is sort of a different style of designer beyond professional, though (professional designers just don't have much opportunity to go this route).
Completely agree I have the web bias, it's what I grew up making, yet I think the further comparisons you mention (autocad + c++ (tbh, no knowledge there)) separate the implementation from the final artifact much too abstractly for it to be a viable recommendation for career designers. Want to design a stool? Learn joints. Want to make an app? Learn flows. I wanted to make cool shit happen on a screen when you clicked, so I'm learning javascript.
You're right in saying that design schools can't offer the specialisation of a particular production mode to all students, it's not feasible. Yet what is feasible, is that the interest is there, and it can be built upon by one lecturer or third party resource (on recommendation) to a particular student. There are people who I graduated with that gained an incredible amount of print production knowledge in their final year that stands to them completely, while I focused on "hey why can't i make stuff on this website move and interact in a more delightful[0] way.
The main point here is that there is a investment in learning any production technique, and anyone who has that knowledge will always be more valuable than someone who does not. The choice for designers is to work it out for themselves if it's worth learning it for what they want to do.
Now I've gotten ranty :( sidebar: That's a fierce irish name you have, are you from Eire? :P
There are plenty of ways that designers get their hands dirty in production, but this is enrichment to improve their design capabilities, not skills they will put 10,000 hours into. I guess I'm not so much against "designers must know how to code" as I am against "designers must code on the job and be good at it." To me, this de-values design itself and takes away valuable cycles from its practice.
In experimental prototyping situations, you'll see designers learn the non-design skills they need to build their prototypes and express their ideas. That's great, but we must never mistake prototypes for products (prototyping is a distinct activity from production with different goals). So a designer might code, but they might not test well, or write comments, or any of the other million things you need to do for production-level programs.
I've been in hiring situations before, and I often find those who identify as "designer programmers" to be neither great designers nor great programmers. There are of course some great designgineers out there, but they probably won't apply to our company :(
Disclaimer: I'm a self-identified programming language designer whose niche field necessitates programming (since we are designing for programmers...duh!), but I have a lot of design studio experience working as a prototyper (never as the designer) on more conventional areas (web, mobile, even old-style surface when it was a table and not a tablet). Not Irish, just typical mixed up American with Scottish and Irish heritage (among everything else).
Going back to your comment a couple of levels above, I think it would be wonderful if more designers could produce their designs in a form that's closer to to the end environment instead of Photoshop and tools like that.
Of course there is something to be said for people specializing in what they're good at, while also listening to others with complementary skills.
It seems like it would be a good idea for a design team to have an embedded developer involved in the design process from the beginning. (I mean a developer "embedded" in the design team, not an embedded systems developer.)
In a web design shop, this would be somebody who could make the jQuery plugins or whatever libraries/utilities are needed to implement, or at least do a proof of concept of the trickier parts of the designs. Have a fancy transition in your design and don't know if it can work and not be janky? Then it's your team's responsibility to not only provide the design, but the basic jQuery plugins to demonstrate that it works and give the main dev team a head start on it.
Maybe I'm speculating on this because it sounds like the kind of job that would be fun for me. As long as the designers treated me like an equal member of the design team and not just "their coder." :-)
> It seems like it would be a good idea for a design team to have an embedded developer involved in the design process from the beginning.
Ya, that used to be my job. This actually happens at Microsoft (my company), you'll get one or two people who can code and do prototypes working directly in the design studio working more directly with the designers (also useful for calling out BS when the devs say they can't do something).
According to the authority on everything (Wikipedia) [1], HCI connect CS and design, amongst other fields. But it's really just semantics. I want someone with that skillset and good design fundamentals in charge of the user interaction of my product.
You could have a point that design is more practice based than programming, but you haven't backed it up at all. Programming is very much practice based, in my experience.
