Categories: Web Development

Designers are from Venus, developers from Mars

Every good web team should have at least one designer and one developer. I think we can all agree this is out of the question. Of course, you will need to have other “titles” to keep everything going, but today we will focus on these two because we think we can help you make them more efficient without hacking their comfort zone.

We know that because we are a team of designers and developers and we are using the same approach. It helps us work better together, be more efficient and have fun at the same time.

What is the problem anyway?

If you are running an agency or a web project team you probably heard conversations like this one:

I am sure you have similar misunderstandings in your own team. The problem is that the designer is approaching the problem differently compared to the programmer.

For him/her moving a layer 3 pixels left is 11 milliseconds, but for example, this can be 30 min of work for a developer and usually, he/she will use the same words – “move this layer 3 px left, please”. There is no such thing like layer for the programmer.

On one hand, you’ve got the designer’s creativity and thinking about the details and on the other hand is the way how the programmer thinks about a problem and what is his/her approach to finding a solution.

Let’s not go deeper but this is a problem and we know how to easily solve it.

The Solution

I’ll keep telling you how we actually solve issues like that in our team and in our clients’ teams.

Please read carefully because this is how you can solve your communication issues, make your team more efficient and ultimately have 8 man-hours more per week. That’s a whole day!

We are using something called “visual annotated screenshots” in order to help designers and developers to be on the same page.

Instead of “Can you move this (pointing at your monitor) 3 pixels to the left?” how about this?

The designer can show what exactly he/she needs, using the tools that any designer is familiar with.

The developer will get a bug report in the project management system you are using with all the necessary details, plus:

browser version
operating system
screen size

and more data automatically collected to help them work better and to understand what the designer needs exactly.

The staging server

Most of the successful web projects are using a server where they can deploy the current snapshots of the projects so developers, designers and the rest of the team, we will not mention in this article, can work together.

Usersnap can be installed on this server with just few lines of code and will bridge the communication gap between programmers and developers. Now they are on the same planet (remember the title).

They live on the “Completed on time”-continent.

Do you have the same problem?

Probably if you are reading this and if you are here, you do. So let’s get started? Oh, if you don’t have a staging server, don’t worry, you can use Usersnap on any server and website.

(Also feel free to forward the instruction to someone who is responsible for setting up things like that)

Sign-up for an account with us by clicking here. It’s free for 15 days and we will not take your credit card now.
Log in and configure your first project:
Hit Save and use the code that will appear to embed Usersnap to your web project.
While there, take a look at the right side of your browser – here you can set up where the feedback will be delivered – you can use bug tracking system, project management system, helpdesk software or even your own internal solution