Bridging the gap between designers and developers
Despite what we may have been taught in design school, the purpose of a successful website is not to win design awards, push design boundaries, or impress our design colleagues. Great websites always do one thing first and foremost: solve a problem and produce results for the person, business, or organization for which it was built. Designers and developers are both expert problem solvers, so why is it that there is so much animosity between to two groups, if we both seem to have a common goal?
Image courtesy of Smashing Magazine
Despite what we may have been taught in design school, the purpose of a successful website is not to win design awards, push design boundaries, or impress our design colleagues. Great websites always do one thing first and foremost: solve a problem and produce results for the person, business, or organization for which it was built. Designers and developers are both expert problem solvers, so why is it that there is so much animosity between to two groups, if we both seem to have a common goal?
This is a problem I’ve seen played out over and over again, with complaints on both sides of the aisle. There are plenty of articles all over the internet addressing this very thing, so I won’t rehash all of the details, but it seems like many problems the issue comes down to that of miscommunication. Designers and developers are trained to speak different languages, even when they are really talking about the exact same things. And, like any language barrier, this can create obstacles in the way of forging an effective collaborative relationship. As a professional communicator and aspiring Golden Unicorn, it’s one of my goals to help designers and developers learn to understand each others’ languages, and bring our focus back to what we are really here for: creating a “win” for our clients!
In fact, I’ll be giving a talk on this subject at WordCamp Milwaukee (taking place June 7th, 8th, and 9th at Bucketworks). This is a great WordCamp, probably the second-best WordCamp in the Midwest 😉 and I highly recommend if you are in the area that you come check it out. If you need a little more incentive, mention my name for a great deal (use “Schulp” as a coupon code for $5 off for the first ten people that use it to register)
If you want to hear both designers and developers weigh in on this issue, we’re planning a great panel for WordCamp Chicago (June 28th, 29th, and 30th) with some of the region’s best designers and devs debating all this and more. Get your tickets now, they are selling fast!
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