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Not seeing as much mention of tooling as I expected: to me the term includes automating the pipeline of artefacts from design apps into a dev context Examples: - Making Design tokens available as CSS variables - Extracting palettes from source images - Exporting icons into SVG spritesheets

My answer does not fit onto this reply

A developer who can balance technical needs and design needs in near-equal measure

Isn't it basically what "web designer" used to mean? A person who both designs and builds websites?

A pithy answer would be front end developers, but we’ve been forced to rebrand the role because people vastly undervalued it with the rise of things like react/full stack. And it’s left us with horrible sub standard ui’s littered with the problems of a lack of craft/ability

I have a bit of a sour take specifically on the title "Design Engineer". I've been an advocate for the split of "UX Engineer" and "Design Technologist" where the former is focused on executing usable product design and the latter is focused on making art interactive. "Design Engineer" blurs these.

The issue I have with "Design Engineer" is jobs are now aligning to this title, but many are expecting the "Design Technologist" role of making art interactive. The usability of apps continues taking a back seat to "make it pop". I believe DS engineers are better titled as "UX Engineers".

For me when I see the title UX Engineer I think of social engineering, where code isn't used at all and the user experience has been engineered to perform in a particular way. Design would come after and then the development form of engineering after, which is where I see the bridge for the role

Design engineer between design and FE is the same as full-stack in between FE and BE to me. I'm waiting for the future where instead of having Visual designer -> UX designer -> Front-end -> Back-end, we have Visual designer -> Design engineer -> Full stack.

Designer: Deep on visual work and product design, basic understanding of engineering Design engineer: Deep product design and front-end engineering, understanding of BE Full-stack: Deep front-end and BE, basic understanding of design

A design engineer makes me think more of hardware, product design, engineering for manufacture etc. At least that was my degree, which was called Engineering Design - using it for software sort of makes sense but using the term would bring of overlap and confusion with non-software engineering.

Wikipedia is more about hardware design but does include a software section, with a quote from @maggieappleton.com: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_...

It has a much stronger history in classic industrial design. Schools of design in this area often include extensive workshops and classes in CAD and materials. The history of design is often linked to innovations in engineering. UX/UI-Design has somehow deviated from this path.

this is an interesting question considering my son is starting a Design Engineering degree next year. Not directly related to the field of Design Systems as currently constituted, but I thought you might find it relevant to your question. www.bristol.ac.uk/study/underg...

I did a talk on this topic at @clarityconf.com though don’t think the video is online. Here’s an earlier iteration of the talk from Copenhagen Developers Festival: youtu.be/c1uEHfmJMTM?...

To prep for the talk I interviewed folks with a spectrum of roles and titles from technical product design, design systems, brand & marketing, software engineering, as well as folks with the design eng title.

To me, it means "designing in browser" and not being blocked by either discipline

I like the term as basically a designer who codes. Or vice versa. Combining code an design skills reaching and developing solutions beyond design tools and frameworks. They can also lead testing and ensure regulatory compliance like a11y concerns. (1/2)

Though in German speaking countries this term is used in classical product design. They use CAD software to create 3D models and simulations, and conduct tests to ensure designs meet performance, safety, and regulatory standards. There are parallels to the term in the use in frontend.

On where you said "I like the term as basically a designer who codes. Or vice versa." In my mind there is a distinct difference between designers and engineers, so you cannot use one term to describe those that do both. 1/3

We don't have such a role at Crytek, but whenever I read the requirements for such a position in job boards, I interpret it as "engineer with design sensibilities", rather than "technical minded designer who codes"(which is my profile).

You're not the first to say this, others have been developers who don't think they have the design skills. Maybe you're putting yourself down too much? 😊

So, I'm an engineering manager at Stripe who is most responsible for our Design Engineering discipline, and my team would be the first to tell you that our definition is a bit imprecise. (It's actually a thing we're actively working on collaboratively as we come back for the year.) But my take:

Design Engineering: 1. Builds production code 2. Exhibits Technical Excellence 3. Exhibits Creative Excellence 4. Works within systems and breaks out of them when appropriate

The best final product comes from having the most creative, detail-oriented, obsessive folks working on it directly. So while prototyping is part of the Design Eng toolkit, it's vital that Design Engineers build production code. Maybe that's a single DE, a team of DEs, or multiple Eng disciplines.

I remember reading Design Engineering Handbook by Natalya Shelburne, Adekunle Oduye, Kim Williams, Eddie Lou, Caren Litherland and thinking, “finally! — this is me”! It was from InVision and now the links aren’t working. Going to keep digging.

I did find it on Apple Books but asked Natalya Shelburne where else I could find it. books.apple.com/us/audiobook...

From my experience, working with Design Systems, a Design Engineer is someone who can bring meaningful context to both designers and developers when systematizing digital interface design. We bridge the gap, become the glue, and can help stretch ideas to see if they have legs.

I've worked in a role titled UX Developer for almost 6 years. I'm guessing it's similar. In our org, the UX dev is basically a high performing FE dev that knows / cares a lot about the design space. We use empathy to problem solve, primarily translating design intent into reusable UI....

... Which as you can imagine, has a direct relationship to design systems. Early on our group were some of the first to build component libraries and now we have many that either work directly with our DS or make meaningful contributions to it.

I've moved directly into an accessibility role, but I still support our DS and still consider myself a UX Dev. I've seen others mention the relationship between this role and a11y, and I couldn't agree more.

IMO not enough clarity and alignment on the title. Design systems need design-centric engineers and engineering-centric designers. From what I’ve seen, any time “engineer” is in the title, the role slowly becomes synonymous with “front end product engineer” which is a shame. I avoid it for that.

The thing missing from a lot of DS needs is someone who can create tools for system design (for designers). Not “components” but systems with variables and constraints. The person doing this shouldn’t be focused on making storybooks and unit tests. They’re typically more like designers

I solved this by not being able to solve Leet Code interviews. This squarely puts me on the Product Design track and I get paid less to doing what you just said. 😅 Never mind the fact that I’ve worked in Frontend since I was 14 and have moved enterprise apps through many React versions, etc.

As much as your view saddens me, I can't argue it. The corporate pull towards the engineering side of things, because it seemingly holds more value, is hard to push against

A role combining the skills and perspectives of an UI Designer (not UX/product designer) and a front-of-the-frontend-Developer.

I would give the definition of what we lack by convenience: a designer that isn't scared to go technical. And by technical I don't mean dev stuff. I mean to go deeper than average about colors math, spacings, typography, tokens logic, automatisation inside designer tools and design deliveries.

Haven't encountered it but, looking at the replies, everyone seems to be going for a front-of-the-front-end sort of arena? (term courtesy of @heather-buchel.com) I've heard 'designer-developer' for that too, ie: designs and builds the working prototype/components, hands off the back-end work.