Changing Our Development Mindset A Fragment by Michelle Barker www.smashingmagazine.com We simply can no longer design and develop only for “optimal” content or browsing conditions. Instead, we must embrace the inherent flexibility and unpredictability of the web, and build resilient components. Static mockups cannot cater to every scenario, so many design decisions fall to developers at build time. Like it or not, if you’re a UI developer, you are a designer — even if you don’t consider yourself one! ...Sometimes interpreting a design means asking the designer to further elaborate on their ideas (or even re-evaluate them). Other times, it means making design decisions on the fly or making recommendations based on our knowledge and experience. gridless.designWe are the ones who paved the pathEmbracing Asymmetrical Design interfacescssdesign
Conversational drawing A skilled draughtsman guides design conversations by selecting and emphasizing details in a way that computer programmes cannot. Ron Slade, author of Sketching for Engineers and Architects and a structural director at WSP in London, calls it “conversational drawing”. He notes how botany field guides are always based on detailed drawings rather than photographs — as much for what they leave out as for what they show. “Extraneous material that might exist in a photograph is eliminated. It may be important to pick out and illustrate particular areas and leave other parts in sketchy or broad outline.” Nick Jones, Back to the Drawing Board Why Sketch?