Many application developers have no formal graphic design or multimedia training, yet they produce applications that are experienced visually or aurally. In many cases, programmers primarily concern themselves with the quality of the functionality that they develop in their applications giving little thought to the quality of feedback the program provides the user (the user experience). Aritists who work in development environments seldom concern themselves with anything but layout and design. Many multimedia developers don’t really take to creating the art assets or touching the codebase that utilizes their content, but are comfortable scripting in their own environment.
In the world of today, it is taken for granted that applications will work, that they will be attractive and that they will provide high quality feedback. Working within our “comfort zones”, we can not produce as high a quality of work as what would be possibly if we could “speak each others languages”. In a world where specialization is king, eventually the people who can communicate across occupational boundaries will be the most sought after and the most highly paid folks around.
We are interested in breaking people out of their comfort zones and enabling them to cross occupational boundaries. We are not suggesting that you should give up all your training time to pursue previously undeveloped skills in art, design or programming. We are suggesting that it would be to your benifit to broaden your skills to include things not directly in your area of specialization. How much or how little is up to you.
We can see the benefit to the community of offering seminars covering art, design and programming from the perspective of what would be valuable to practioners of other disciplines. If you’d be interested in learning aspects of someone else’s purview, please leave a comment below. Comments should be targeted to give us an idea of what to cover. An example of a good comment might be:
I am a web programmer that works primarily with part time or freelance designers. Our shop has 3-5 programmers, and we are all extremely busy working on a large scale project. Whenever we are presenting a work in progress to the client, we like to make on the spot layout/style changes if possible to respond to the client, but our designers aren’t always available. I believe it would be helpful to know how to do a minimum of things in CSS to perform these changes when our designers are out of the office.
Let us know what types of skills you think you would benefit from learning about to help you out in your daily development life. Being an effective member of a multi-disciplinary team can often mean crossing those occupational boundaries to get the job done. Let us help you to do so.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
As a web designer and artist, I try to make the most robust designs that still look nice when all kinds of input are entered in the site. Working with a content management system has brought to light the numerous ways that people with absolutely no background in web design can try to format things their own way and end up breaking the site, or their changes simply don’t work. I’d like to explain a few of the quirks of HTML/CSS layout and how that is different from normal word processing methods (though… that’s assuming my target audience would listen and be present…though, explaining it to one group makes it all the easier to explain to another). I’d also like to get ideas on how to make it more similar to word processing, so that it’s easier on the user to grasp.
As an artist that works with programmers, I always like to find the best and least intrusive way to design the UI or art required in the program. Modularity is always good, but you have to know what the plugs on their black box look like before you can build your own. I’d also really like to learn more about how Flash content can integrate with HTML. I don’t know very much about that right now.
I am a graphic designer that works very closely with multiple programmers/web developers/web designers. It is very true that miscommunication takes place quite a bit. To me, the biggest issue with any project where 2 somewhat separate industries combine is the use of jargon. The more I learn about web design and see my designs being programmed to work online, the more I see what did and did not work during my design process. It is up to those working to share problems or even benefits to certain design, UI or IA solutions. What has worked best for me is research, education, and just downright experience. On that note, I am completely up for a session that brings all parties together and discusses ways to better work collectively. Let’s tell people about how CSS works (containers, etc.) and how certain fonts just don’t work on the web, and how it’s important for something to work AND look beautiful. Great suggestion Robert and great feedback Megan.
I’m a dabbler of sorts. I do print design, web development, media relations, photography, writing–you name it. I take a comprehensive approach, but I’d definitely like to fine tune some of these skills. Lately, I’ve been wanting to delve into the programming side of web, especially designing tricky forms, ensuring cross-platform/browser translation of look and functionality, and integrating tools that would make my job easier and more streamlined. I’d also appreciate a rundown of design trade secrets–since I got my degree in general communications and didn’t specialize in graphic design, it’d be helpful to confirm some of the “rules” I think I know like with typography, white space, color schemes, etc. Continuing ed of all kinds would be welcome as would more networking opportunities with other Refreshers. Maybe a round table of sorts–a place to critique and make suggestions on projects in the works? Is that what the Creative Space is intended to be?
I think its a very good idea for web developers to know CSS and HTML and browser quirks, however on the flip side (and probably for another, different round table discussion), I think designers out there need to be better educated in the inner workings of HTTP (namely headers and post/get data), and generally make sure they have a full and complete grasp of client-server setups.
While all web designers know the basics, through personal experience I have found that I have had to, on more than one occasion, have to stop a designer and explain why something their trying to do won’t work the way they want to (without far more work than necessary on the back end), and oddly enough, I’ve had to verbally abuse designers for piss-poor form designs (yes, they look pretty, but why do I have to go through and add name=”" attributes to each field and fix the label tags so that they work properly?).
Actually, on a side not, I discovered not to long ago that you don’t need to use for=”" and id=”" for labels, just nest the text and the field inside the label tag like so: This is a label for this checkbox. Works perfectly!
I think it would be nice on some future date to bring in a professor or any other expert in the field of HCI and introduce designers to the scientific/psychological side of interface design (something sadly 90% of everyone, developer and designer, knows very little-to-nothing about, I’ll admit I only know the basics).