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23 July 2013

Breaking Development: Prototyping Style

I’m attending the Breaking Development conference in San Diego this week, and will be posting my notes from a few of the talks here.

Ben Callahan did a great talk on design workflows called Prototyping Style. He discussed the problems with linear workflows before giving some great tips on a new way of collaborative working specifically suited for responsive design.

  • We used to have a very linear workflow, which went something like this:
    • Content
    • UX
    • Design
    • Front-end development
    • Back-end development
    • Launch
  • The problem with linear workflows is that decisions are being made in each step, before we have all the data
  • We need to invite others into the process, and work towards a “1 Deliverable” workflow

The “1 Deliverable” workflow looks like this (excuse my quick Paper drawing…):

1 Deliverable

The benefits of a “1 Deliverable” workflow:

  • It’s centered on iteration
  • It requires collaboration
  • It results in natural decisions (waiting for the last responsible moment to make decisions, once all the right data is available)
  • Watch out, it sometimes conflicts with organizational structure
  • It requires the right team — no room for superstar egos

So how do we advance the Design phase through a “1 Deliverable” workflow? 3 stages of design:

  • Establish the aesthetic
  • Solve the problem
  • Refine the solution

Establish the aesthetic

  • Do style comparisons with clients, to get a sense of what they’re looking for
    • Light vs. Dark
    • Flat vs. Textures
    • Illustration vs. Photography
  • Move from Style Tiles to Style Prototypes:
    • It shows more accurately what it will look like in the browser
    • It sparks conversations about browser support
    • It’s very easy to make quick changes with CSS
  • Use tools you are comfortable with to establish the aesthetic

Solve the problem

Refine the solution

  • Don’t use static design tools to refine the solution
  • Instead of static design handoffs, consider Design Pairing
  • Continuously get feedback and input on design direction
    • Set office up to create collaborative conversations
    • TVs with Apple TV connections so that anyone can throw up their designs onto any of the screens to discuss
  • Important: you need to be conscious of the switching point between solving and refining, so that design doesn’t continue ad in finitum

Ben ended his talk with a story about Miles Davis and the making of the album Kind of Blue, and what the album can teach us about collaboration. I really liked this because it’s something I’ve written about before as well, in A story about Miles Davis and the nature of true genius.

I really appreciated the practical nature of this talk. There were lots of ideas to take back and use in my everyday design work.