Someone asked me a question last week that really made me think. They asked, “so where do you sit between design and development?”
It didn’t take me long to answer because I have thought about this a lot over my career. I’ve always gravitated towards doing both design and development. I love both equally. I want to help people and I want to be a translator between those two worlds.
Translation means moving information from one point of view to another and to me the most exciting aspect of this is the feeling I get when both sides understand each other. It might seem niche but really all of us do this every day. We translate our needs to those around us and negotiate through any challenges.
More specifically I like code because when you write it, you can see it in the browser and you can see the result. Also you can change that code to get a different result and it’s instantaneous. It’s not permanent like print design or a marketing email. Once you send it, it’s in the world – you can’t take it back.
Similarly design gives you the chance to try things based on user research (hopefully!) as well as understanding the problem space the market subject matter experts stakeholders, and your managers.
I get a lot of satisfaction putting these two groups together so they work more efficiently. A lot of what we see with design systems these days has to do with creating a framework so these two groups speak the same language and use the same blocks.
As a very specific example, I code HTML, CSS (and some JavaScript) mainly because it’s a different way of thinking than is backend code. CSS depends mainly on the “global cascade” which means you have to be careful to create styles with a minimum of overriding and you can use this to your benefit. You can also assume these rules exist and work with them, but you have to know what the cascade is. When you know that there’s a foundation of styling and through specificity you can add onto that and quickly build, transform, or change a website or application.
Honestly, many developers don’t want to do CSS styling because of its inherent flexibility, and that’s OK. I’ll do it 🙂
I’m grateful for the question as a further solidified my point of view. Have a great week And keep thinking about your own point of view. What drives you daily in your work?