Comment by pyrale
7 days ago
Completely agree with the author.
> This is contrary to my belief that any digital design process should start with rough sketches, but move quickly into code and iterate from there.
As a dev, this is the point I resonate with the most.
To me, the ideal dev <> designer interaction is collaborative and iterative. But the current state of affairs is one where all the design is done upfront, and little is done in terms of explaining why some choices were made. Mockups are not a good medium to spark discussions in the team, because developers are left in the dark about intent.
Ditto.
To me, one of the dirtiest words in dev <> designer interaction is "handoff". There's always a point in the lifecycle of any design tool where they start talking about it -- even if they quietly disagree with it in principle. My impression is that it normally happens when they're trying to acquire customers who (unfortunately) practice such dysfunctional team dynamics.
As a developer who designs, I've always found myself jumping between code and visual design tools; but rarely based on the current stage of the project and more often based on what kind of thinking I want to do. If I want to engage with the constraints I more often do it in code, if I want to explore tangents, I open up the design tool.
Ive really warmed up to the lowercase-a "agile" way of working in this way. Earlier in my career I just wanted design to have everything fleshed out and ready to go, that was their "job". I’ve now seen that fail multiple times.
It can be hard to communicate it to coworkers sometimes, but a lot of this would be much smoother if we all understood our jobs as making the product we ship. The design isn’t a product and nor is the repo. The designer might hold the pencil, and I might hold the brush but we’re both working on the same canvas.