Amy Hoy, of slash7 fame, gave a talk titled, “
Rubber, Meet Road: Getting Designers Running with
Rails”:http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs/rails2007/view/e_sess/11632,
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"
```text
- Template languages create extra barriers to training designers.
```text
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!
```text
- Teach your designers how to use subversion... let them break it
```text
first and then help them... they'll love you for it
```text
- When meeting clients with a designer and a developer... don't let
```text
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.
