Hug Your Designer Day 4
Amy Hoy, of slash7 fame, gave a talk titled, Rubber, Meet Road: Getting Designers Running with Rails, which provided a good overview of some of the problems that designers and developers face when working together. This was one of my favorite talks, because she essentially explained several of the problems that our team has faced in the past and in many ways, still encounter from time to time. A few things that I was surprised to hear, was that several companies leave their developers to implement HTML/CSS in the Rails applications, rather than let their designers into the area. Some teams, provide a directory in public/ for their designers to write their HTML/CSS. Amy said that she preferred to work in the standard view directories (as a designer), which is exactly how our team works.
In fact, I agreed with Amy on several points.
- Developers say, “We can’t do that” too often, when really… we mean, “We won’t/don’t want to) do that”
- Template languages create extra barriers to training designers. Stick with RHTML… designers won’t be afraid of ERb syntax if you sit down with them and explain some of it. Move the ugly stuff to helpers… like you should be anyways!
- Teach your designers how to use subversion… let them break it first and then help them… they’ll love you for it
- When meeting clients with a designer and a developer… don’t let the developer speak too much about implementation when it hasn’t been designed yet. Interaction Design should dictate architecture not vice-versa.
“Stop, Collaborate, and Listen”—Vanilla Ice
I’d like to personally thank Amy for being a diplomatic designer and telling the hundreds of developers that showed up for her talk to remember that designers and developers… think differently… and that’s a good thing for the application and ultimately… the user experience.
Having said that, I’d like to request that tomorrow, May 23rd, be… Hug Your Designer Day.
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I think it’s amazing that there are still designers out there that don’t do anything beyond photoshop comps, and I would go far as saying that if a “designer” doesn’t know HTML and CSS then he/she isn’t a Web Designer. One should know the limitations of the web before they can design for the web, and really the only way to know one of the biggest limitations of the web (Browsers) is to know how to use markup and how to style that markup.
I think at Planet Argon we have a good balance of this, and each person respects what the other person’s role is. I’m glad developers are finally getting past the pre-conceived thoughts of designer is to “make things look pretty.” which is really only a small part of our job.
Just got done writing a similar article about CSS being included in the designers responsibility.
As a designer who can code CSS/XHTML, and insists on it, my interactions with developers is pretty smooth. Since I also know a good amount of PHP and JavaScript it gives me the opportunity to work more efficiently with my development brethren. It helps that I can speak their language and understand the functionality of the programming. In return I allow them to see a tangible representation of the site they are developing, causing us both to deliver a more usable dynamic app.
The advantages are limitless, I just hope more designers learn that design of a website includes much more than a pretty Photoshop file, and includes CSS.
Wow..your designers know html? Sounds like a dream world. got any Rails developer positions open?
Nice Designers!