Developers are from Mars, Designers are from Venus with Chad Udell

What is the difference between us?

Let’s start with some generalizations.

• Developers are killjoys, squashing creativity to make a deadline or taking the easy way out to implement features within an application.
• Designers are fun, but reckless, they create great work but aren’t concerned with the bottom line.

A little reality please.

We all want to create really cool stuff that delights our users. We must work together, have a rudimentary understanding of each others disciplines.

Change is needed. Designers need to be more practical and be able to move on when goal is achieved. You must remember the scope of the project. Developers use a mantra of release early, release often. This might be something designers could learn from. Web applications are evolving and things can change post-launch, or in phases. Developers must realize that design does matter. Nothing will ever be completely resolved, Wabi-sabi. If code can be agile, why can’t design be?

Integration Points

Process

Do you have a process? Having a defined process will get you much farther ahead of the game than someone who hasn’t gotten started. “Four D’s,” Define, design, develop and deliver. These four points must communicate throughout every step in the process. It’s the job of each group on the team to define what they need to get their work done effectively.

Workflow

Do developers produce wireframes, do designers? Which is appropriate? If designers are in communication with client and understand their needs, it’s more appropriate to have them do wireframes. If developers keenly understand client expectations and have regular communication with client, they should design or create wireframes. There are times when it’s appropriate for developers to lead a project and others when a designer is appropriate.

Integration Points

File organization and directory structure. We shouldn’t be arguing over how things are named. Directory structure is not a battlefield, but try to make naming make sense and shouldn’t include names, version numbers, dates, etc. Deep Thoughts On File Naming Conventions.

Versioning

You will need to sell the benefits of this to your designers. Maybe it’s not the best idea. Versions is user-friendly SVN for Macintosh. Service called Assembla does hosted versioning, ticketing, hosted workspaces.

Taxonomy

Standardize the way you talk about things. Do we call them wireframes, block diagrams, something else? Do designers know what vectors, arrays, objects, etc. are? Are you using a lot of jargon? Art history language?