Developers, Designers and Teams

Context about Developers and Dev Teams

The typical dev team in an organization is filled with multiple developers and maybe a couple of designers, because UX is quite important, right?

That creates tension inside teams, with designers working on design tools such as Sketch, Figma, XD etc. and throwing pictures of interfaces on the developer with little concern about how the medium actually works.

Developers are not all the same

A large number, I dare to say, the vast majority of developers don't really enjoy working with HTML and CSS. One of the most common reasons I hear is that these are not "real" programming languages and therefore are considered inferior. Indeed, technically speaking, HTML and CSS are not programming languages and should never be. They are specific languages for specific functionalities. And guess what, they are exactly THE medium in which the web exists.

Apart from my little ranting, it is all fine that developers don't really enjoy HTML/CSS. These languages are actually closer to the skillset of a designer. At the very core, the HTML will deal with structure and information architecture while the CSS will add visual treatment like spacing, colours and fonts. This is also why traditional developers don't like them. They don't know what to do with the tools they offer, and that is fine, simply because it is not their job.

The problem is that it is very hard to find these professionals, a rare breed of designers who are no afraid of code and developers who have an eye for design. Really, once at a meeting, the team lead called me "that mythical creature, an Unicorn who designs on the browser." I couldn't help it but feel very flattered on such a compliment. These professionals are rare because it requires an "in-between" skillset that is not common to neither of the professions.

I assume it is a very unique set of skills, that rely heavily on both sides of the brain. The artistic side, with its chaotic and emotion driven process, and the logical with a more methodical and orderly fashion.

The frontend designer or interface developer is a fairly recent niche on software production. These highly specialized professionals have this unique skillset to navigate the technical constraints of the medium to achieve the desired aesthetic.

Enter the design system team

The design system team is composed exactly by these multi-disciplinary professionals. This team will create the HTML and CSS components that your "real" developers will then use in the various applications your organization has, freeing them up to work on what they are really good at, like database performance, business intelligence, etc. They shouldn't be worrying if the buttons are yellow or blue, let alone the exact tone of blue of your brand.