Developers and designers are in a constant battle when working together on an application or Web site project; a presentation at Microsoft's ReMIX conference in Melbourne last month described the issues perfectly -- with an egg.
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During the opening session of ReMIX, which was the first Australian conference organised by Microsoft aimed at both the developer and designer communities, user design evangelist Shane Morris described a common problem.
First he explained that, as a designer, his job is to understand who the application will be used by, how they will use it, where they will use it and which technology they will use to access it.
"I produce a design vision that includes the behaviour of a product as well as the look and feel. Then I describe that vision in some sort of specification -- I produce wire-frames, site maps, story boards and scenarios.
"We accompany that specification with mock ups ... that illustrate the user interface and how it will appear on screen. Sometimes we go one step further and build a click-through prototype, maybe in some clunky HTML that we are going to throw away," said Morris.
As he spoke, attendees watched the big screen as a perfectly formed egg started to evolve from a simple line drawing into a sophisticated 3D picture.
"We put together that design vision and hand it over to the development team for production," said Morris, as the picture on the screen changed into that of a hand holding a smashed egg.
"Then, through a process we call compromise, we eventually come up with the final product," he said, as the "final product" turns out to be a broken egg that seems to have been put back together with glue.
This was obviously a presentation designed to sell the crowd into the benefits of using Silverlight and Microsoft's other design-oriented tools, but for anyone that has ever wondered why applications or Web sites never seem to look the way they were supposed to, this is an excellent explanation.
Do the developers or designers out there agree with the message? Can Microsoft fix the problem?
Please let us know by using the talkback below or e-mail: edit@zdnet.com.au
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Bill Lane - 19/07/07
I laughed when I saw this presentation and it may be true in most cases. But it doesn't fit my experience. I have been lucky enough to have had the opportunity with a number of terrific designers and we have always been able to develop what they design. I suspect that this is because we collaborate through the design process. The developer isn't seen as the final step but as important as the designer at the first step.
As to whether Microsoft can fix the problem. It was very clear from ReMIX that they were well behind the ball and just starting to catch a glimpse of which direction they should be kicking. Expression Web 2 is thinking about adding features that Dreamweaver added back in 2000 and most presenters agreed that the Expression design application was best avoided. Further how can they hope to engage designers when they mostly use Mac's and neither the Expression or Silverlight tools work on the Mac.
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