What is Your Biggest Challenge As a Designer or a Developer?

I have a few challenges:

1. Sometimes I catch myself limiting my creativity – designing what I know how to code rather than doing something completely innovative and figuring out how to make it work later. :)

2. Not making enough time to explore as a designer. I tend to use up all my time on work projects and need to get better at allocating time for creative freedom.

Getting better at overcoming these challenges is on my new years resolution list :)

Thanks for sharing Allison, I totally agree with your number one challenge. I find myself googling a jQuery plugin then deconstructing it when I should be coding it from scratch.

I'm in the same boat as Allison. As I pointed out in my reply to the new Treeview episode(s), I'm not comfortable with certain aspects of web design and instead of challenging myself, I fallback on frameworks and jQuery plugins instead of going my own route.

I actually joined this website as part of a new years resolution to get up to speed with the lastest in CSS, typography, and JavaScript and challenge myself to learn more about it so that I can overcome that fallback. :)

Well I don't consider myself a developer, more of a 'DIY webmaster' :D

The thing is, I know I'm capable of customizing CSS and HTML, or writing a WordPress PHP scripts to enhance a site. But it's hard to learn how to do that when all the information out there on the Net is written by pro developers and geared towards others like them.

So I guess one of the big challenges facing me, and others like me, is the hostile attitude many developers have towards non-developers - like when they blast us for using W3Schools (you can't blame us, because it's one of the few resources that actually is beginner-friendly).

And even if they're not hostile, they just don't understand what it's like to not be part of the 'developer club'. They skip over the basic details and use advanced terminology and concepts.

This is because, the more experienced you are, the harder it is to be a good teacher because you can't put yourself in the shoes of those you're teaching. (I think this phenomenon actually has a name, hopefully someone knows what it is)

I was really glad that I found Lisa Irby's site, because she explained coding from a normal person's perspective. I found I could really relate to her info because she's not a developer and understands that not everyone wants to be.

This was also the reason I created my website - I wanted coding to be explained in a way that beginners would understand. I think people like myself and Lisa can do this best because we're not developers and can understand what it's like to be just starting.

As a designer, having to depend on other people and their skill set to build out my design as I am not a true developer, only a code tweaker.

What's always frustrated me as a designer (first in my video game career, and now with the web) is I've always been a conceptual designer, not an artist. Relying on someone else to "make it pretty" can be a really frustrating scenario, because no matter how great the concept is, it still needs to be realized.

Now if we programmers can just perfect that "Make Art" button we all dream about, we'd be set :)

Like others have mentioned, I've also found myself relying too much on looking to other people's ideas for my own. Too often I find myself trying to perfect what others have already created to prove (even to myself) that I can do it too. It's taken me a while to realize part of being creative is taking inspiration and putting your own spin on it. Just because your idea started in someone else's mind doesn't mean you can't make it into your own by the end.

Conceptualising something.

For example, if I am new to something, I kind of have to get a working model of it in my head. Often documentation isn't enough. Just prodding it with a stick is the way to go until it becomes a part of you. I wish it wasn't so time consuming and frustrating.

@Charles I agree. It can be hard for experienced developers to teach beginners. As someone that has sat on the 'teacher' side of the fence a lot recently I can really relate to this. I found the best way to deal with the challenge was to use something called Shoshin (or 'beginners mind' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoshin).

It's a concept from Zen Buddhism but I found it works remarkably well when I needed to explain technical concepts (or at least I think it worked well). Basically you have to try and forget absolutely everything you know about a subject and then approach it like a complete beginner. It's not always easy to do but if you can master it, it's an incredibly powerful skill to have in loads of different scenarios. Especially if you're teaching or building a product that you want to be simple and intuitive.

I think my biggest challenge changes from year to year. One of the biggest of my career, though, was overcoming the feeling that everyone knows more than me. I know that people still know more than me in many different ways, but now I at least feel comfortable asking questions when I don't understand something. I used to feel like I should know everything or risk being viewed as incompetent, but watching good developers ask questions helped me realize it is okay and right to stop people when you don't understand something. Figuring it out later on your own is a lot harder than having somebody explain something a second time or send you some information to look over.

It's also given me peace to accept that I will never know everything about this ever expanding and changing field. Letting go of wanting to know everything has helped me focus and appreciate what I do know more deeply, as well as appreciate more what others can bring to the table.

@Matt - I never thought of using the anaology of "beginner's mind" when explaining to other people how to explain things -that's brilliant

On a related note, I find the biggest challenge to be finding good documentation, as the vast majority of all documentation written I've read is crap.

My biggest challenge is feeling overwhelmed with everything there is to learn and comprehend.

At times I feeling like I'm juggling, HMTL, CSS, Javascript, PHP & MySQL in one hand, responsive Design, Interactive Design, and digital artwork creation in the other. Throw in frameworks, and new technologies and languages such as Ruby and jQuery, Sass/Less and Bootstrap and things start to feel like they may come crashing down on top of me :).

I allways get annoyed with things that have not being builted so I decide to build it by myself (or with a team). I could say my challenge is to help people and make a difference.

Shipping. I have a hard time especially when working on personal projects ever feeling finished. there's always something that can be added, polished, color schemes, etc.

It's hard letting go of something you want to be the best of your ability and send it out in the world.

"Real Artists Ship" - Steve Jobs

I really been thinking of this quote lately, to improve my work and to let my work, go. It's definitely something to consider and think on.

@Steve I can relate to your mindset. I had to scale back what to tackle. I had to learn to focus on skills that directly related to one another. No one can know everything there is to know in this industry, and that is actually a reassuring thought.

@Brandon If Josh Long were here, he would say to just Execute your idea. I find that if I power down on a project, it's better overall for me. There is a real focus on "pixel perfection" and all that out there. It's OK to iterate.

@Ben Everyone DOES know more than me. But I really can't quit now.

My biggest challenge is just keeping up with what is necessary to be considered for a job in 2013.

I'm terrified on a daily basis that I'm not going to be able to break into this industry.

It's a very legitimate fear.

@John - I think a lot of people around the web community are addicted to buzzword bingo. My advice is to focus on design, not worry so much about what technology is popular in this month (or quarter).

@James I very much feel you on that one.

I agree with a lot of these here, but the biggest challenge for me is applying what I learn to my work and business.

I manage it every day and am making strides - the teams I work with are happy with our work but we all want to push it to the next level.

Asking questions here and on Reddit helps quite a lot. There are a lot of knowledgeable people out there.

Paul