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
Planning doesn't make for better software A Fragment by Robin Rendle www.robinrendle.com My own time in a Silicon Valley startup has proved this much to be true; planning doesn’t make for better software. In fact today our design systems team doesn’t have sprints, we don’t have tickets or a daily standup. Each day we come to work, figure out what’s the most important thing that we could be doing, and then we—gasp!—actually do it. Watching so many other teams slowly flail about whilst they plan for quarter 3.2 of subplan A, whilst our team produces more work in a week than they all do combined in a quarter has been shocking to me. After four years of working in a large startup, I know what I always assumed was true: you don’t need a plan to make a beautiful thing. You really don’t. In fact, there’s a point where overplanning can be a signal of inexperience and fear and bullshit. The scrum board and the sprints and the inane meetings each and every day are not how you build another Super Mario 64. Instead all you have to do is hire smart people, trust them to do their best work, and then get the hell out of their way. Why Software is Slow and Shitty planningsoftwareagile