Designers generally shouldn't be worrying about the things Bootstrap covers, like how a button looks. That's a commodity. It always has been. Instead, figure out where to put the button, and whether it should even exist. That is as valuable now as ever.
Furthermore, all the designers I've ever worked with like to throw a PSD over the wall and say, "Make that." Every little detail reimagined and drawn from scratch. They don't know how to build and work from a set of reusable CSS components like Bootstrap. So as a developer, I'm inclined to say forget your PSDs, learn CSS, we're on the web and it's part of the job.
I don't know why how a button looks should be a commodity. However, how a button looks by default clearly is.
In general, for example, I might want a certain set of buttons to look different from another set of buttons because this provides useful information to the user of the system.
I haven't worked with bootstrap yet, however it looks very promising. The key to a good framework is how much it makes what you want to do easy when the tasks align, and how it stays out of your way when the tasks do not.
I actually look forward to playing with Bootstrap to see what it's capable of doing. It looks like the alignment handling might be worth it by itself. However, the article here made me somewhat less enthusiastic. One of our goals is to produce something easily themable. If bootstrap helps, great. If it gets in the way, that would be a bad thing.
Commodity means “parts that aren’t interesting”. Design, as in conceiving what a product is and how the user benefits – well, that’s your whole business. Interesting.
Deciding how CSS should be organized, some reasonable assumptions about type and layout and UI primitives – these aren’t your business. They should be commoditized to your benefit, much like cheap CPU cycles.
But that's the thing, Bootstrap only covers all of the things that most designers don't want to worry about. Something that programmers sometimes don't understand is the staggering scope of what comprises design these days. Everything from layout to typography to color theory to information design and human factors.... To burden a designer with coming up with reusable CSS conventions or a module system for fancy UI components is unnecessary and cruel!
I'm a designer and recently started a side project with a friend. We decided to use bootstrap because it was super easy to get started with off the ground..no reset stylesheets, defining default fonts, sizes, etc, and no implementing a grid framework. It was all right there. And for the most part everything was generally a good starting point. I changed the header color, used a different font for the logo (a google web font), and then built off the base that bootstrap gave me.
I say it's useful for two things: quick and dirty way of getting a prototype barely functioning and looking decent. The second is getting me right into the design cockpit without worrying about all the defaults and resets and foundation of it all. I change a few heights/widths/colors/fonts and we have something decently unique.
Edit: I might add that if a.) my app took off or b.) I was presenting it to someone important, I would make sure it was very unique and all my design and UX principles were put into play. But for simply prototyping an idea, or having a good base for a project, it's a great tool.
