long crazy story to go here later.
instead of presenting designs, let them draw what they want (on paper) before they started the design process. (visual requirements gathering.)
the classic complaint of “decorating”
otoh, designers can be snotty. (one of the things I like where I work now is that there isn’t any of that amongst the design-y types.)
what helps is exposing the process. I think that works on both sides, respect coming from understanding (to paraphrase) — they’re talking designers vs. developers, but that works with knowing the “business process.”
using Basecamp as a way to have the conversations be unobtrusively visible. (is that like the serendipity of overhearing actual conversations?)
having copy happen at the same time as design, IA, etc. have everyone in as early as possible. edge cases of content going into the design. (weird funny accent from Z)
validate work through awards. is this a viable strategy for web peeps?
“maybe in the print world it meant a little more, but….” they’re talking in the context of agency/freelance. it’s interesting; I’ve had the same experience with internal marketing: going out for all the awards.
awards not judging things that were really web design, instead photography, infographics. (some web magazine award?)
okay, now he’s just drifting.
“just by doing good work I’d like to hope stuff gets around” (not Z, but somebody else.) ah, yes, that would be nice. 🙂
“flash is sort of cheating again.” — giving up the requirement of extensibility, portability, etc. (ah, that must be Jason Santa Maria)
Z is asking Bowman some sort of rambly question about being design guy at Google. he came in through the blogger folks, they recommended him to Gcal. Had to start again from scratch, reputation-wise. Sounds like contractors have the status at Google that one hears that they do at Microsoft. hrm.
“were using a proprietary firefox property to emulate IE.” jeebus. altho not surprising.
and it sounds like he’s still struggling trying to get people to pay attention. “an uphill battle”
peers or higher-ups? both. and because it’s a democratic system, even peers can bring in the smackdown.
“how many have…” f’d up situations with getting content from the client. just this junk that we’re waiting for, instead of driving the whole process. a lot of their clients are getting into it earlier because they’ve had such awful experiences before. (I’m thinking that I may end up with some design changes to my recent project as I incorporate more content. Also, I find that I’m doing a lot more work with content than anything else in my work, design doesn’t necessarily happen very often. That’s okay.)
all the style documents have “why” – why is this important, why should you care? huh.
Yeah, this makes me want to go back and finish tackling the remnants of that project.
(Oh, my shoulder hurts. my kingdom for a backpack!)
“Imposing a voice because they may have 7 different authors” yes! Fits with that article I read recently about branding & writing. “no puns on the heart attack page”
“sometimes marketers write stuff that’s too marketing, and not enough web. […] we normalize it.”
IA: “like therapy sessions” becoming open to the process.
(aw, hell. connection is lost.)
having that conversation internally, too, asking what they need. problem is then “getting invited to the meeting.” stuff just gets built.
sometimes it’s nice being both the designer and the developer.
(connection found!)
providing understanding & explanation; sometimes showing things help people (clients) make decisions.
“if that would get my board of directors to listen to what I’ve been saying for 3 months, it’s worth the $25,000.” (for Jakob.) Dale used to call it “bringing in the prophet from the east.”