How can I improve the relationship between the designer and developers? [closed]

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My team is faced with a big challenge. We are building a greenfield app against a legacy codebase. The legacy code contains .NET controls with a certain look and feel. Our front end is ReactJS. We are tasked with reproducing the look and feel of these legacy controls. The designer is tasked with creating Mockups, which are essentially controls that look and feel like the legacy system. Sometimes she will point us to the legacy system itself, other times mockups. In either case, we have to reverse engineer the CSS and JS to try and get close enough to the look and feel that the end user can't tell the difference between the ReactJS control and the .NET control.

The designers and developers are at an impasse. The developers want CSS from the designer. The designer insists that the developers do not need the CSS and the designer simply doesn't have time to provide it. Reverse engineering should be sufficient. The developers, including myself, miss key details, like column alignment, spacing around text boxes and other things that developers, at least my team and me, just don't notice. The designer is getting irritated that developers do not notice key design details.

The team is feeling demoralized. The designer has been negative in her comments and attitude. She talked down to the developers and took no responsibility for the issues at hand. She is trying to place a strict and severe process onto the developer workflow that I fear will seriously inhibit progress and possibly cause developer turnover. The development team feels this is a case of GIGO.

Surely the developers can find better ways to build the UI. However, there are also problems with the acceptance criteria, mockups are sometimes just a wireframe with no style detail and the legacy system we reference is inconsistent. UX is playing hard ball and discounts all these issues.

In summary, is it asking too much from the designer to get CSS specs? Is it pretty standard in the community to reverse engineer controls in this fashion? Do you have any suggestions to help this team work together and get along?

Answer 1

The core problem is communication. Some key developers are located in another state and their input has been difficult to come by. I decided to bring on one of these remote developers to the UI work. Immediately we began to discover holes in the information such as there is a legacy convention to use bootstrap classes to achieve a flow layout (row-fluid). I also plan to take advantage of the fact the remote developer sits right next to the designer so they can coordinate together.

My mistake with the designer was trying to communicate an emotional problem over Slack as opposed to video chat (in person when possible). I made a similar mistake when I again posted a text message on this forum when the issue covers feelings. Again, I failed to get my point across. I also plan to have a personal phone call with the designer and explain to her how I feel. I will explain how the response made me feel personally. I will explain how calling a developer blind or implying they are stupid is not necessary in order to get her point across. I do empathize with her in that we have some challenges to overcome and let's work together to find out how we can best address them.

Answer 2

This is classic "push the work around" behavior.

You've already tipped your hand in the title where you label the designer as not being a team player.

I'll do to you what I do when my friends complain to me about their marriage. I'll ask you to see it from the other side.

The designers job is to provide mockups that ensure CONSISTENCY of look and feel. It's not to tell you how the CSS should look.

The designer would be perfectly justified in shooting down anything you create that isn't a pixel perfect reproduction of the mock up. There actually are visual regression testing tools that can turn that requirement into an automated test.

That said if I was talking to the designer I wouldn't point any of this out. I'd encourage finding the most effective and least painful way to ensure CONSISTENCY. If tossing out some CSS that you aren't required to create helps that happen faster than fine.

The problem here isn't that someone is right and someone is wrong. It's that selfishness has set in on both sides. A marriage isn't a 50-50 thing. You each have to give more than your fair half or something always comes up short.

This includes the one whose job it is to get all these people to work together. ;)