Derailing Efficiency:

(Bad) Design Destroys Reusability

(Good) Design Enables Reusability

About That "blame" thing

(since my laptop died right after I asked the question)

 

Less about finger pointing, much more about being responsible for the delivery of many decisions made long before implementation.

 

This actually ties into the efficiency discussion and having to own design we may have not been a part of.

If we could save 15% on every project with one change, would we do it?

How valuable would it be to know the solution to the same problem we have on every build?

What if we already had the tools to solve this problem, in house?

Problem

We have to build to designs that are not informed by our process and technology.

Solution

Own the design process.

Client Designs

  • Incomplete

  • Not made for the web
  • INFER FUNCTIONALITY (we lose our shirt here)
    • Can Drupal even do this?
    • Is any of this out of the box?
  • Hard to budge on feedback
    • "If we just made these columns uniform, this could be built much faster."
  • Non-standard, non-best-practice

Phase2 Designs

  • Fully informed by the final medium (Internet)

  • Not just static "pictures" but deliverables like code wireframes, prototypes, sitemaps

  • Fully informed by Phase2 build tools

    • Grids

    • Drupal

    • Pre-existing assets

  • Most of our designers are world-class developers

  • Solve problems early when it's cheap and easy

Design-first As Efficiency

By Christopher Bloom

Design-first As Efficiency

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