Ponytails and Propellerheads, A Designer’s Survival Guide
It’s a dichotomy older than the web itself: right brains and left brains, creatives and geeks, ponytails and propellerheads. However you label the two camps of web development, it is undeniable that there is often a mutual misunderstanding between them.
As Lijit’s first and only designer I am learning just how different a creative’s processes are from those of an engineer. We prioritize differently, put emphasis on different aspects of the product, and use different language (I can’t express clearly enough the terror I feel when a “design meeting” is called to discuss php classes and database integration). But those differences are what make us a great team. We are all experts in our respective disciplines and together we can make the web a better place. But it’s not always easy, there are a few things a designer should remember should they find themselves in an engineering-centric environment.
Be the Designer
Stick by your warm and fuzzy guns and make good design decisions. Engineers will often not see the benefit of hours spent scrutinizing over a page layout but it is your duty to make everything you touch both beautiful and useful.
Walk a Mile in a Geek’s Shoes
I have spent more time in a command line during the past month than I ever would have liked to. And you know what? I enjoy it. Use your nerd exposure as a learning experience. Starting Apache via terminal is a useful skill after all.
Work as One
Having access to people who are much smarter than yourself is a wonderful thing. Use the skilled programmers around you to implement functionality that you couldn’t on your own. The nature of web design has always been somewhat constraining. It’s the challenge of designing in a box that makes it fun. Developers make the box bigger.
Be Flexible
Probably the most important advice I could ever give. Be willing to sacrifice some for the good of the product. Not all your ideas can work. Use criticism to become a better designer.
I have generalized a huge spectrum of disciplines here and in no way think that there is an easy solution to group dynamics. But I do believe that recognizing and understanding our differences will ultimately make us better at what we do.
This guest post was brought to you by Mike Bucks, one of our newest employees at Lijit and a wonderful addition to the team. Besides bringing his design sensibilities to the table, he’s also good for music recommendations and spur-of-the-moment badges.
May 7th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
I’d like to add a suggestion from a developers perspective: Think WAY outside the box when it comes to functionality. Developers love to design and implement ideas that have never been done before. Use that to your advantage and say to them ‘I’ve never seen an application do this before, but it would be incredible if you could figure out a way to implement it’. They’ll take it as a challenge and you’ll be surprised at what they’ll hand back to you.