interface design. the skill in demand is the latter. to be good at it one needs to be able to be proficient in html, css, javascript, and have basic abilities in whatever server-side technologies are in use.
I really don't follow. A kick-ass interface designer can know nothing more than Photoshop. A front-end guru can be terrible at interface design. There's very little connection between interface design and the technologies used to implement it.
There's very little connection between interface design and the technologies used to implement it.
For starters, whatever you design in Photoshop typically looks 10-30% different in the browser when converted to HTML. That is significant enough to make the concept look very different than the actual browser interface implementation.
An interface designer who only operates in Photoshop thus cannot deliver accurate-looking concepts.
whatever you design in Photoshop typically looks 10-30% different in the browser when converted to HTML
HTML isn't the culprit here. Any design done in a static medium is going to change when actually implemented on a device, for a platform. But it could just as easily be Flash as HTML. Good designers understand and account for the target medium (flexible sizes, variable fonts etc).
Also I reject your initial hypothesis. With a knowledgeable designer's design I can get a pixel perfect HTML implementation. If your design changes 30% just in the implementation then your designer doesn't understand the medium very well.
I'd never hire a designer that valued Photoshop skills above problem solving, design thinking and usability. Photoshop should be just a tool for a designer. I think as that is where the end product usually comes from, it's seen as the skill that you're buying as an employer. Anyone can learn Photoshop, it's extremely simple, it's design thinking that separates the men from the boys.
The best designers will know HTML+CSS+Javascript pretty intimately for a variety of reasons.
Can you name a few? I work with an absolutely brilliant designer who can't write a lick of HTML/JS/CSS however he intimately understands how his designs will translate to a browser.
I'm not sure it's true anymore. The way something looks is important, but so is how it responds to user actions. This probably started with flash around 2001 i.e. flat graphics were not acceptable anymore but now designers don't have keyframes to tween so knowing css and javascript to manipulate user interactions is essential for UI these days. Even for mobile dev, designers should have prototypes to demo to devs about how an interface responds to interactions.
I wouldn't devalue graphic design as the parent did. There's room for a lot of improvement in the graphic design — what's often derisively called "just the way it looks" — of most digital products. Graphic/visual designers were somewhat restrained by low resolutions and slow GPUs. Evolving display technology will give rise to better graphic design both in the web and other digital products.
Good interface designers should definitely know the basics of the technologies used to implement their creations, in the same way industrial designers are expected to have some understanding of materials and manufacturing processes. It's often said that designers thrive on constraints: a designer does his best work when he knows the limitations of his tools, and works with their limitations and defects to create something useful instead of pursuing some impossible level of perfection. Designers, too, have to ship, and they ship best when they know what's behind the facade.
theoretically, you could just use photoshop (or keynote, more realistically) to design interfaces. however, given that from there someone has to take over and implement it using the real technologies, it is easy to miss things and the process becomes hopelessly slow. i guess it is theoretically possible to operate like this.
contrast that to being able to rapidly iterate on the real code.
i don't mean iterate as in "code a feature, commit to the repo, send for review, do over". i mean the tweaking while coding.
I really don't follow. A kick-ass interface designer can know nothing more than Photoshop. A front-end guru can be terrible at interface design. There's very little connection between interface design and the technologies used to implement it.