Do you keep developers away from tasks involving design or the overall look and feel?

When resources are limited, companies often blur the lines between design and development roles in an attempt to maximize efficiency. However, maintaining a clear distinction between disciplines is crucial for creating cohesive and effective user experiences.

For many developers, especially those early in their careers, the risk of making design decisions that negatively affect the overall user experience is high. When Product Owners delegate design work to developers, they may unintentionally accumulate significant UX debt. UX debt, like tech debt, accumulates when design shortcuts are taken, leading to user experience issues that need to be fixed later—often at a greater cost.

While flexibility is important, particularly when dealing with a low designer-to-developer ratio, it's still wise to keep design work primarily in the hands of designers to maintain consistency and quality.

Streamlining design decisions

Design is an inherently subjective field, and even experienced designers don't always agree on every decision.

In addition, effective design demands a holistic approach, where layout, typography, color, UX, and other essential elements work together to create cohesion. When non-designers, especially those without a strong grasp of these principles, get involved, the result is often disjointed and inconsistent, leading to a fragmented user experience.

This situation is analogous to designers writing code. Many designers may know basic HTML or CSS, or use tools like ChatGPT to generate code. However, without a developer to review and refine it, there’s a higher risk of introducing poor-quality code, which can lead to tech debt. This often results in long-term maintenance challenges and system inefficiencies. Even if a developer steps in to review, it adds unnecessary workload and distracts them from their primary responsibilities.