Design is Development, and Development is design.

The amazing thing about being a “creative” is that you can literally craft anything with a little elbow grease, hard work, dedication, and caffeine (yes, that’s a requirement). As a data-centric UI/UX Designer/Developer and Technologist and CTO it’s inspiring to see some of the incredible visualizations, dashboards, etc. that folks create to present what is often mind-numbingly complex information in ways that can be easily digested and acted upon. Remember, design is development, and development is design.

Often times, the journey from conceptualization to completion can be a rocky one especially when there are multiple multiple’s involved: multiple stakeholders, multiple iterations, multiple frameworks, and even multiple personalities (ahhhhhhhhh!).

Typically after I’ve conducted user interviews and talked strategy with stakeholders, I get to sketchin’ and fine tuning the idea(s) that will be rapidly iterated upon until we reach the final outcome. If I ever get in a rut, I always have my wife (who’s one of the Top 3% of designers in the world!) to fall back on.

I’ve worked with many a Designer/Developer in the past that had some really interesting out of the box ideas that were definitely innovative thought-provoking, but often times these folks screwed up the development process and frustrated the other creatives on the team that would actually have to execute these outlandish ideas - the developers.

I say that to say this: never forget that the goal of every project is to work collectively (yes, as in together, as in on a team) to try to ease the transition between the Discovery, Design, and Development phases. This is one of the keys to our Ideal User Behavior Methodology.

One extremely effective way that I’ve found to do this is to consider a front-end development framework when you’re working on your sketches and fine tuning the user interface in the Discovery phase.

Not only will you become even more of an asset to the team, you’ll also get to smile more and frown less because those crucial “how tf are we supposed to do this in development” must-have nuances are actually on the development site and haven’t been left by the wayside.

Oh yeah, you also won’t piss the developers off quite as much! (if you do, just buy them cupcakes or something, and they’ll be fine.)

[ Connect with me, shoot me a message, or just stay tuned for more useful tips! ]
Chris Brooks / CTO