Wow, it has been too long my friends, June 22nd. I have decided to share a short rant involving the interaction of designers and developers in the work flow.
I recently read an article on smashing magazine, How to Effectively Communicate with Developers, and I can’t help but feel as the view is heavily skewed. I have worked with many great designers, but I have worked with equally amount of bad designers. I’ve also worked with, seen, many bad developers who really do not posses the skills to take a design to production properly, so I feel your pain designers. If you want a fullproof tactic to attack the problem, the solution is simple, get the developer inolved earlier. When I worked in the advertising world here is the common scenario:
- Countless design revisions have now pushed the 3 needed weeks to 1 week for development
- Developer has no clue what the design looks like until it is 100% approved by client
- The design has many aspects which will force the developer to make executive decisions
The majority of good developers have a good understanding how web sites/applications should work, but lack the creative eye that most designers bring to the table. We, developer and designers, need to stop the condecending views and understand we both bring valuable information to the design/site flow.
The Solution
Get the developer involved with the client call or the first internal brainstorming meeting. That way the developer can shoot down things that won’t work well or are just not possible (especially with the timeline), but the developer needs to be responsible and not say “no” just because it will be difficult. Both the developer and designer want an amazing product to deliver to the client in the hopes of awards and portfolio build up. Developers also need to keep the designer involved when the site is being developed. Make sure the UI that is being developed fits with their design scheme or what their personal opinion is, most likely the designer will not comp out every page….that’s just wasteful. Get the designer and developer involved early, and stay involved all the way to the end. Simple, right?
