In my experience, designers are slower than programmers. It depends on the product but usually it takes some time to tweak all Internet Explorer issues.
To hijack the thread a bit: designer's tools are horrible. Photoshop misleads you, and designs done from PSD are easy to be poorly implemented. On the other hand, CSS/XHTML slows your creativity down.
I find this is an enormous opportunity for profit.
Do you have ideas on better tools for designers? I do for programmers, but if designers are a bigger bottleneck it would be great if their tools could be improved too :)
Unfortunately, no. I'm a programmer and sometimes a manager, not a designer. I don't know their pains too deeply. I merely keep seeing that the period between their "aha!" moment and the final implementation is definitely too long.
If I'd have to give any hints, I'd stick with what I wrote above, expanding it a bit.
Photoshop is a handy tool but it tends to attract people who are not web designers (there was a thread few days ago that you should hire a web designer for web design; a logo designer for logo etc.); also, it requires some experience with XHTML/CSS to get the fonts right, or realize that grid matters.
On the other hand, current CSS frameworks are rather painful to work with. I saw Blueprint hijacked million times, and the whole reloading concept is a big headache for non tech savvy folks. (unfortunately, the same applies to Compass)
In my experience, designers are slower than programmers. It depends on the product but usually it takes some time to tweak all Internet Explorer issues.
To hijack the thread a bit: designer's tools are horrible. Photoshop misleads you, and designs done from PSD are easy to be poorly implemented. On the other hand, CSS/XHTML slows your creativity down.
I find this is an enormous opportunity for profit.