_____________
{cealis
taking
5

Orlando Website Design

I didn’t do so much for now in Django, but I did a little work and this is something I would appreciate for any other project: split the development and the design section. Django does this very gracefully and I’m keen for the next thing where I can concentrate on my job as a designer and where a developer can concentrate on his power serving excellent code.

In the webprogramming world everything else is more or less unstable and insustainable, I guess.

Actually – I now will pour some oil into this discussion – why is Apple so damn sexy for so many people – could it be there is a designer with a vision?
Obviously – and this is a great point in this article – is the fact, that design is led by one who knows to communicate by color, elements, typo and so on. Developers are the poeple to get the function, bringing life into the vision of the design. So everybody can see his own part if there are guidelines. This is something Apple did very succesfully in the last years. Every App feels like it is part of the whole system and so you can persuade people more easily using it.

I think there will be more to come on this process, but there is sure a light for both sides togehter. And in the end we all are people who work on INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY. This means we all are dependent on HOW to communicate, right?
We’re all humans behind screens, but we are still humans ;)

Experience taught me long ago that when there are stereotypes in software development the end product can’t be great. It can be lame or mediocre at best. Since Drupal’s is such a passionate community I guess it’s safe to say that the end goal here is a great product, so trying to break the illusions those stereotypes bring is a good way of moving forward.

The stereotypes I’m talking about in this case are “the programmer”, “the designer”, “the contributor”, “the open source way”, “designers need programmers because designers can’t code” and many more…

It’s been mentioned that code/functionality is a necessity but design (and all the other things that get thrown into the same bag like UI etc) not so much. This approach gets applied in some companies and in the development of particular applications but you can bet those aren’t high quality products.

When you do a bit of a research about how to make a software product that’s going to be successful you often hear that customers value usability greatly, and don’t care much about how clean the code is or how many features it has. This is not to say that code and features aren’t important, it just states that if something isn’t easy to use the users won’t be inclined to start using it even if it has the features they need, I’ve witnessed this many times with general desktop applications as well as websites. This particular stereotype about sanctity of code is commonly found in developers minds.

Designers also play mind tricks on themselves when forming opinions about programmers. It seems they aren’t too open to learn about that other part of production process. They don’t need to learn to code, but they do need to learn about it, enough to enable them to do their (design for CMS) jobs effectively.

As far as I can see this gap isn’t from within the Drupal community, it’s a general left brain vs right brain type issue.

I have only seen one strategy that can help in these situations, and that is for each “side” to learn a bit about the “other”, so they can work *together* on parts of projects that need that kind of collaboration.

How do you do that, and can it be done in the first place?
The point is to have people work for the same end goal. I guess most contributors are scratching their itch, as open source development is often described, but they are kind enough to release their work back to the community so more people can benefit from it. Here the community benefit is kinda like a byproduct, the end goal is to scratch an itch. And that is all ok, but it’s not enough to make an overall great product. There must exist a critical mass of those who’s goal is the end product, this motivates them to open their mind towards collaboration with all the different niches needed to make a great product.

Drupal community seems to be on that track already. There’s no need to impose the same rules on everybody, it’s enough to have a dedicated team to take care of the issues that involve both worlds and let the others “choose sides” where they feel they can contribute the most.

The dedicated team must have great communicational and organizational skills, and understand and respect both worlds.

I’ve talked to some developers about this and they said that the reason why they don’t like the “furniture being totally rearranged during the coffee break” is because it often causes unnecessary extra work, that can be avoided by having the room arranged right from the beginning. This means having good guides, specs etc. They already exist, maybe all is needed is to add software and data structure guides, UI guide etc. All developers I’ve come in contact with hate when project specs change in the middle of development, this is their pet peeve. They are happy to work according to whatever guides you require them to follow as long as they are clear and don’t change, and they usually like having guides for areas they are not expert in. It makes their jobs easier and less stressful, there’s more certainty about the whole feel of the project.

The thing to understand about designers is the importance of their work, how greatly it influences the value of the product and it’s overall success. Design is not art, it’s craft. Art’s purpose is self-fulfilling and the artist sends a message to the crowd in whatever form he feels the urge to send it. Design is functional, it also needs to send a message but it is important to know what message to send (you aren’t expressing yourself, but the client you’re working for) and find the most effective form for that particular message. Designers shouldn’t be marked as non-contributors for not having coding skills, writing code isn’t one of the requirements to do great design.

Everyone who spends their time and expertize deserves the title of a contributor, they are doing exactly what they should be doing. Making up different labels (contributor/participator) for basically the same thing (using your expertize to work on community projects) is the wrong way to go about organizing any community. All the pieces of the puzzle have their purpose and must come together, one isn’t more important than the other.

I hope this helps someone, warn me to duck before throwing something at me I’m a slow moving target :D

If the community can change its processes to accommodate designers in the overall vision, the whole project will be ten times more successful.

I don’t know what the answer is, but please don’t give up anybody.