collaboration
It passes by the river
Business people and developers
Engineering, design, and product management
The problem with CAD
We want you to work with an artist
The power of One
picnic.lectoro.me
Designer + Developer Workflow
An Article by Dan MallThe way designers and developers work together today is broken. Itâs too siloed and separate; âcollaborationâ is a fantasy that few enjoy.
The state of advertising in the 1940s was similar. All of that changed when copywriter Bill Bernbach met art director Paul Rand. Their collaborative working style led to the birth of the idea of âthe creative team,â the mutual respect and partnership between art director and copywriter that tended to yield unique results. Bob Gage, an art director that worked for DDB, the agency Bernbach co-founded, described it like this:
âTwo people who respect each other sit in the same room for a length of time and arrive at a state of free association, where the mention of one idea will lead to another idea, then to another. The art director might suggest a headline, the writer a visual. The entire ad is conceived as a whole, in a kind of ping pong between disciplines.â
Isnât that what we all strive for in our jobs? True collaboration with equals and partners? Ideas that build off one another? Why does this seem so far away for some of us?
The Hot Potato Process
An Article by Dan MallThe big misconception Iâve seen designers and developers often fall victim to is believing that handoff goes one way. Designers hand off comps to developers and think their work is done. That puts a lot of pressure on the designer to get everything perfect in one pass.
Instead, great collaboration follows what Brad Frost and I call âThe Hot Potato Process,â where ideas are passed quickly back and forth from designer to developer and back to designer then back to developer for the entirety of a product creation cycle.
Nobody gives a hoot about groupthink
An Article by Baldur BjarnasonTwo relatively common âfashionsâ today are real-time collaboration and shared data repositories of one kind or another.
Both increase productivity in the naive sense. We work more; everybody is more active; the group feels more cohesive.
The downside is that they also both tend to reduce the quality of the work and increase busywork.
Pair Design: Better Together
Pair design is the counterintuitive practice of getting more and better UX design done by putting two designers together as thought partners to solve design problems. Itâs counterintuitive because you might expect that you could split them up to work in parallel to get double the design done, but for many situations, youâd be wrong. This document will help explain what pair design is, how it works, and tour through the practicalities of implementing it in your practice.
Asynchronous Design Critique: Getting Feedback
An Article by Erin CasaliGetting feedback can be thought of as a form of design research. In the same way that we wouldnât do any research without the right questions to get the insights that we need, the best way to ask for feedback is also to craft sharp questions.
When we were all together in-person
AÂ QuoteâWe believe that in-person collaboration is essential to our culture and our future,â said Deirdre OâBrien, senior vice president of retail and people, in a video recording viewed by The Verge. âIf we take a moment to reflect on our unbelievable product launches this past year, the products and the launch execution were built upon the base of years of work that we did when we were all together in-person.â
Building Momentum
An Article by Dan MallFight the Waterfall
Start all of the pieces of work a little bit earlier. The key to starting work early is not succumbing to the pressure of having to finish the work. Donât worry about finishing. If youâre a developer, you can start doing things while your design or information architect are working because a lot of your work actually isnât dependent on their work. Some of it is, so you probably wonât be able to finish, but that shouldnât stop you from starting.
Share Work-in-Progress Early and Often
When you share work-in-progress, share it with the caveat that no feedback is needed at this point. Youâre simply sharing it to let people know where you are. For example, if you have to make 12 wireframes, share it when you finish 2 or 3. Rather than spending a whole week to drop 12 wireframes, share 2 â 3 wireframes every 2 days. The more often you do this, you start to build rhythm, and rhythm builds momentum.
The Small Group
An Article by James MulhollandLying somewhere between a club and a loosely defined set of friends, the SMALL GROUP is a repeated theme in the lives of the successful. Benjamin Franklin had the Junto Club, Tolkien and C.S. Lewis had The Inklings, Jobs and Wozniak had Homebrew.
Around a dozen members is the sweet spot of social motivation: small enough to know everyone, yet large enough that the group wonât collapse if one or two membersâ enthusiasm wanes; small enough that you are not daunted by competing with the whole world, yet large enough that you still need to be on your toes to keep up.
Scenius
Scenius stands for the intelligence and the intuition of a whole cultural scene. It is the communal form of the concept of the genius.
Mutual appreciation
AÂ Fragment by Matt WebbTo use slightly different terms, mutual appreciation is a healthy jealousy without envy â a drive to achieve the same but without wanting to take it from the other.
- ââThe Small Groupââ
- ââSceniusââ
What 80% Comprehension Feels Like
One of the major principles of extensive reading is that if a learner can comprehend material at 98% comprehension, she will acquire new words in context, in a painless, enjoyable way. But what is 98% comprehension?
- ââ98% comprehensionââ
- ââ95% comprehensionââ
- ââ80% comprehensionââ
98% comprehension
You live and work in Tokyo. Tokyo is a big city. More than 13 million people live around you. You are never borgle, but you are always lonely. Every morning, you get up and take the train to work. Every night, you take the train again to go home. The train is always crowded. When people ask about your work, you tell them, âI move papers around.â Itâs a joke, but itâs also true. You donât like your work. Tonight you are returning home. Itâs late at night. No one is shnooling. Sometimes you donât see a shnool all day. You are tired. You are so tiredâŚ
95% comprehension
In the morning, you start again. You shower, get dressed, and walk pocklent. You move slowly, half- awake. Then, suddenly, you stop. Something is different. The streets are fossit. Really fossit. There are no people. No cars. Nothing. âWhere is dowargle?â you ask yourself. Suddenly, there is a loud quapenâa police car. It speeds by and almost hits you. It crashes into a store across the street! Then, another police car farfoofles. The police officer sees you. âOff the street!â he shouts. âGo home, lock your door!â âWhat? Why?â you shout back. But itâs too late. He is gone.
80% comprehension
âBingle for help!â you shout. âThis loopity is dying!â You put your fingers on her neck. Nothing. Her flid is not weafling. You take out your joople and bingle 119, the emergency number in Japan. Thereâs no answer! Then you muchy that you have a new befourn assengle. Itâs from your gutring, Evie. She hunwres at Tokyo University. You play the assengle. ââŚif you get thisâŚâ Evie says. ââŚI canât vickarn now⌠the important passit isâŚâ Suddenly, she looks around, dingle. âOh no, theyâre here! Cripett⌠the frib! Wasple them ON THE FRIB!âŚâ BEEP! the assengle parantles. Then you gratoon something behind youâŚ