DX momentum
Thought experiments on inspiration, motivation, and perspective
Continuous design overcomes the hand-off, continuously
Continuous design goes hand to hand with continuous development. In fact, both serve the same goal, to speed up product improvement and its quality. This new approach to design does not include the hand-off from Sketch, Illustrator, InVision, etc., is based on designers and developers implementing interfaces together, and requires a brand new set of tools.
Stay curious, everyone else does
To some of us, designers, learning new skills and tools doesn’t come easy. We like to stick to what we know. We feel creative pushing pixels around the artboard. I know I do, especially, since there are no obvious alternatives. That’s when being curious helped me. There is a shift coming to the way we design software. It’s called engineering, and it’s inevitable.
Celebrate successes of people around you more than your own
Little victories are more valuable than big wins. Appreciating others work is a tricky move because you don’t want to praise too much and everyone has different boundaries. It’s worth trying thou! When you celebrate other people successes, you motivate them in the most positive way possible. They will also feel like they owe you, so when the time comes to celebrate your success, you will have more people on your side.
Design is how things work
Did you ask yourself today, why is this product working like this? Is there a better way to achieve the same goal? In UX we often wonder, how many clicks can we remove from any given flow? One click less is a big win. In fact, the harder it is to rule out a click the better the experience, but the design is more than experience, more than an interface. Repeating after Steve Jobs, “Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”
Don’t waste any pixel
Take a second here and think about all the wire-frames, hi-fidelity Sketch layouts, mockups, InVision click-throughs, interaction prototypes we have to make every day, and what for? Only to show how we imagine things to work? What if, we could use all that time and energy, and make the real product right from the start? Is that future worth imagining?
Building hero products is a team effort
Today we say we work together, as a team, but in reality, everyone is still doing “their own thing” in separate environments, the others have no access to, or interest using. We develop bridges and plugins, like Zeplin or InVision, to give a mirage of collaboration. Although it’s great, truly is, how often do we end up with endless back and forth, pushing back or tweaking the same layouts over and over again? Happened to us, did it happen to you too? DX is here to start the real change towards working closer together, giving everyone their seat at the table and bringing designers and developers to the same creative, implementation optimized environment.
Ask people around you “how can I help?”
It was probably the biggest lesson I had learned from one of my managers some time ago, the most powerful question you can ask anyone you work with. It’s also one of the ways for designers and developers to get the most of the DX. This simple question has the power to elevate you to leadership positions and make you look trustworthy in your teammates eyes.
Design is engineering
Would you say engineering can be creative? Coming up with algorithms, making things work, bending browsers rules, would you consider any of those as “fruitless” and “geeky” activities? We see the product implementation as innovative as its design. We experienced first hand, how much further can we get when we break the silos and make products together as… Well, we don’t know what to call yet the designer/developer hybrid professional. Maybe you can suggest something?
