Design is not like math nor computer science

Back in year 10, I wanted to create a website for someone as I found web development to be enjoyable with its low barrier to entry, instant results in the browser, and the fact that it’s sharable through just a link in the browser. So I gathered a list of things I would need to learn to do so, which can be divided into two categories:

1. Technical skills: Frontend (HTML, CSS, and JS) and backend (at the time, PHP and MySQL)
2. Design skills: Graphic design and User Interface (UI) design.

So with that, I started looking for resources online to study it, which mainly came in the form of multiple-hour long YouTube tutorials, a long YouTube tutorial playlist, or a Udemy course I got. Thank you, by the way, to all those who released YouTube courses for free and continue doing so, especially freeCodeCamp and the Net Ninja; you all have been a crucial part of starting my journey into web development and programming in general.

Although I got stuck in “tutorial hell” for some time, I was eventually able to prevail to create that website for someone, despite having unmaintainable spaghetti code as it was the first time I created a website of that scale. I was able to get out of it by just forcing myself to start working on the project after going through (and sometimes following along) the tutorials, and to refer back to my notes or search online when I got stuck. Truly I learnt the most through struggling to make a full-blown website.

However, it was a bit of a different story with design skills. I went through a Udemy course on graphic design (because I didn’t know at the time I was supposed to be looking at user interface and user experience design, i.e. UI/UX design), and I felt like I could do anything. I felt like I could make the best design ever, better than all of the existing websites I’ve seen. I could see everything wrong with existing websites now, and why they looked wrong in terms of violating design principles.

But then a reality check hit me when I tried to make my own design from scratch. I tried to follow the design principles I’ve learnt in that course to make “the best design ever” I had in mind, but looking at it after I was done, it looked mediocre and sometimes less professional than what I’ve seen out there. And the worst part was, I don’t know how to make it better! Sometimes I knew what design principle I was breaking but didn’t know how to address it, but sometimes I don’t even know which principle I’m breaking!!

Fast forward to university, I took various electives in UI/UX design. In particular, I took GDES30002 Branding, a graphic design subject teaching how to develop not only the visual identity of a brand, but also its story and purpose that appeals to the target audience. I was initially frustrated with the class, as I felt like I was learning such little theory in the 3-hour workshops; contrast this to the 3 hours of lectures and 1-2 hours of tutorial per week for mathematics subjects. However, those workshops are when I realised that I was learning the most when I was receiving feedback from my expert tutors, who pushed my graphic design skills to the next level. We also spent a lot of time watching other’s presentations of their work and watching tutors give live feedback. Although it seemed like a waste of time, I realised that through this, I got a lot of inspiration from others, and crucially, how to improve a design, which was a skill I was stumped on previously as I said!

That subject was when I realised that design is not like math nor computer science. As someone who has a background in the latter, I study things by learning the theory and doing practice problems or programming exercises. However, this simply does not work with design; although there is much theory to learn, the ability to design in the real world is primarily learnt through practice, and importantly, expert and user feedback. No wonder the word “user” is in UI/UX and user-centred design, since after all, you are designing for them, not for yourself. That is why my university’s UI/UX subjects focus on giving experience, as opposed to giving huge content dumps like my other technical subjects. I guess this is what people mean when they say that some things can only be learnt through experience.

More generally though, every field is different and has its own quirks, and there’s not a one-size-fits-all approach to mastering all fields of knowledge and skills. Even between mathematics and computer science there’s some subtle differences despite being very similar, such as mathematics being more deductive than inductive compared to computer science. Although I might not be as much of an expert in one field by studying computer science, mathematics, and design at university, such interdisciplinary knowledge has helped me build respect for these different fields and made me more flexible in tackling unfamiliar fields, being open to learning and doing things a different way.