Hi Billie, In the project I'm working on now, I made a special effort to document the important parts of our design and leave many details out of the specifications. I added a disclaimer in all the documents that the specs were like a jazz chart, that some improvisation was expected and encouraged, and the specs would not be updated afterwards. No time (this is the 10th day of my current work week, which I think may end sometime in October).
The other important part of this jazz performance thing is that I'm one of the improvisers. I'm in every team meeting. I'm actively in the code styling and setting dim timers on indicator lights. I drew all the production art, and redraw a good deal of it once I see it in action. I refactor control templates and debug events. We're a small tight dev team and our boundaries are pretty fuzzy. And we're all ok with that. This sort of arrangement obviously wouldn't work in a large formal organization, or when you need to send work overseas, or when the team is inexperienced, or or or... But it's working for us. I think of it as the sort of structure you want to get to when three or four really good people who work well together are all turned loose to do great stuff. Hope this helps, Michael Micheletti On Mon, Aug 31, 2009 at 5:54 AM, Billie Mandel <[email protected] > wrote: > Hey folks - > > What's your company's process/pipeline/set of tools for delivering > and communicating designs (and associated visual design assets) to > your dev team? > > *[Addressed particularly to "innies" in software development orgs > though anyone's insights much appreciated]* > > TO be clear: I'm NOT asking the "Visio vs Illustrator vs Fireworks > etc" conversation. I'm asking what happens *after* the design team > has determined (at least a first cut of) both how the app should > work, and how it should look. Do you have a tool or process that > tells the developers which UI patterns/controls to use, where to > place the art, how much velocity/decay there should be on animated > transitions or gestural effects? Are they coding these things > manually based on design team deliverables (wireframes/animated > sequences)? Do you have a tool that you use in which designers can > actually create the apps' front ends? > > I ask because I'm doing a bit of an audit of our processes, trying > to streamline things and get more efficient. I'm trying to get a > feel for the "state of the art" in UI development processes -- need > to assess how behind/ahead my company is so I can decide how hard I > need to push my "process innovation" agenda. > > Cheers > - Billie > > PS - [waving hello] Haven't posted in ages - been a bit 'heads > down' over here. Hope everyone's having a fab summer! > > ******* > Billie Mandel > Director, User Experience > Myriad Group AG > www.myriadgroup.com > ________________________________________________________________ > Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! > To post to this list ....... [email protected] > Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe > List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines > List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help > -- Michael Micheletti [email protected] ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [email protected] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
