I come from a guerilla-style, one-man-army type of mindset where web development is concerned, and collaborating on building a web site, what is essentially a creative endeavor, is still growing on me as The Way to Do It. RD2 employs a strategy that recognizes the fact that people are more right-brained, or more left-brained, and very seldom will you find someone who is perfectly balanced. While it’s true that a person can handle both design tasks and information architecture tasks, we realize that a person is likely to be good at one and not so much at the other.
I wanted to be good at drawing, but I had to face the fact roundabout 7th grade that it simply wasn’t going to happen: the pen would refuse to translate my thoughts onto paper. Soon after, my father and I would have fun by programming in BASIC our own choose-your-own-adventure games. Organizing abstract rules came easily. Fast-forward a couple of decades, and I’m learning Information Architecture here at RD2. Given a copy of Visio, and 10 minutes watching another IA do the job, I produced dozens of wire frames in one weekend. It’s the kind of work one might even find relaxing.
A lot of companies, when wanting to hire a web developer, try to find someone who can design and program. Such people do exist, but, at the risk of offending any gentle readers, those people are either producing mediocre design or mediocre code. Trust me. As a mediocre designer, I know. RD2 is different, and while I’m glad to see cool heads prevailing in the world of the web, it’s still a little weird for me to “hand off” the design duty to others, and not work on it at all. The industry wants one person who can do it all, and so I spent a lot of time trying to become that person. One person can’t do it all. It’s a tough lesson, but look at the often ugly, inaccessible, hard-to-use Internet that face us all every day. It can be solved with the right employment strategy: hire a designer to design, and a coder to code. If your company can’t afford more than one full-time person, consider hiring a design & development team to tackle it for you in a short period of time.
I know a good firm I could recommend.
chris ronan said:
Nice post Bryan. What is interesting though is that while there is a distinction between designers and coders, especially here at RD2, the lines between are becoming more blurred. I see design everywhere I look. We continue to push the envelope and design with more intelligence. Take for example the approach taken with standards based front end coding. Those who really get it, are in fact building a bridge between the “left side” and the “right side.” It is my belief that great design can be found in the whole enchilada. Those who complete a meaningful online brand strategy that accomplishes the business goals through well planned creative and technical execution are accomplishing intelligent design.
Bryan - keep working on the Information Architecture and standards based coding practices. As the technologies continue to shrink the gap between what web designers think of as “right brain” vs. “left brain,” you may wake up one day and realize that you really are a designer.
Chris
:: 21 Oct 2004 at 4:26 pm ::