How to effectively communicate with a developer

An interesting post from Junaid Bhura. And a very vaild one too.

I’ve worked in a branding and design firm and was surrounded by designers. In fact, I was the only technical person there. Apart from all the attention I got there was of course, a clear-cut separation between our different schools of thought.

Developers like to be organized and categorize and re categorize their work… and thought! They even communicate in a very step-by-step way.

Designers don’t like to be organized. They like to work how they want and wait for a “creative spark” to hit them and “let the creativity flow”. It’s hard to describe what creativity really is, and this is a highly debated topic.

What designers must understand is that a good developer is a highly creative person. Imagine what it would be like if you had to write a line of code and picture what that might do to something in connection with another thing in connection with another thing in connection with another thing… So on and so forth. It requires foresight, experience and the ability to come up with something extremely… Poetic.

“Code is poetry” – WordPress

Having understood this, a designer has to communicate with a developer; as sad as it is to admit, like a machine. It is important to understand the limit to a developers understanding. Myself, having worked with several designers and clients understand what they want because I understand their language. For a developer who doesn’t get out much, this could be a problem and could lead to many iterations and going back-and-forth on a project.

Smashing Magazine had this really interesting post which specifies just that.