Should Coding and Design Go Hand-in-Hand?

Rather than hitting a tennis ball back and forth across the net at major milestones, Kenny Glenn, UX designer at Gaslight and Michael Guterl, his developer colleague, are playing doubles on the same team.

This is according to Glenn, who says that his company’s focus on interdepartmental collaboration is their driving philosophy.

At Gaslight, developers and designers sit side-by-side to collaborate on all projects.

“You’ll become a better designer if you’re open to working closely with developers. Learning to appreciate the value of other disciplines makes your work better, too,” Glenn says.

Of course, coders and designers don’t need to completely immerse themselves in each other’s fields. Amy Harp, head of Global Digital Brand for Illy coffee, says it’s crucial for the worlds to merge at the early phase of the project.

In all of her experience managing end-to-end websites, e-shops and e-learning modules, she finds that design should take the first step. They should “share the desired functionality with the coders before the first line is written,” she says. “This way, the feasibility will be assured along with any pros and cons.”

“The collaboration should continue during the coding, with check-points aligned with milestones so that the inevitable bumps in the road can be dealt with quickly and with minimal disruption,” Harp says.

It’s so much better to lay it out in the beginning than find surprise puddles along the way.

Here’s what this close collaboration results in:

1. Clearer Vision

“When designers and developers collaborate from the beginning of a project, there’s a clearer understanding of the problem they’re trying to solve,” says Kenny Glenn, designer at Gaslight, custom software design and development.

Learning each other’s language, methods and capabilities can bridge the paths toward achieving a unified vision. It’s easy to get demotivated when, for instance, designers simply don’t understand why a developer is having a hard time implementing his proposed interactive UI.

Same goes for developers. If developers don’t understand the principles behind the design, there’s more room for error and missteps while turning a design into a successful piece of code.

2. Efficiency

Harp mentioned she’s seen plenty of projects that were either delayed or poorly implemented when coders were brought in after client sign-off.

Guterl would agree with Harp. “I sit right next to a designer when I'm working on a project. There's a constant back and forth as we figure out the best way to design and build any given feature -- from user registration to a user dashboard,” Guterl says.

Plus, allotting a collaboration early on simply speeds up the process.

“Rather than passing on micro-tasks and waiting for them to be finished, by learning the basics we can minimize hold-ups,” says Suzanne Yates of Bring Digital, a design development company.

3. Happier Users, Clients and Teams

“A close designer and developer collaboration builds better features faster and solves problems before they turn into a crisis,” Glenn says.

Not to mention better team building.

“I've worked places where developers have had slightly adversarial relationships with the design team,” Guterl says. “At Gaslight, I feel like we're all on the same team. It's a true partnership -- there's no pissing matches between design and development.” Developers, for instance, can propose a brand new functionality to enhance the proposed design that designers may not have realized. Harp finds that “coders are able to suggest alternative, better functionality that improves the UX, is easier or quicker to implement or better for SEO.”

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