Why do engineers and designers conflict with each other? The reason and solution
Engineers and designers argue many times and such accidents are happening now in a lot of tech companies. Why do they conflict? How should we solve it?
Reason
Let’s cut to the chase. It is because engineers clearly understand the cost of codes, while they don’t know the benefits of the design. For instance, imagine this situation. Engineers are asked not to default design libraries such as Bootstrap because new design can’t be created with Bootstrap default codes. Bootstrap’s default primary colour is blue but people in a business department want to change the colour into other colour. Moreover, they think that Bootstrap’s h1 and h2 tags are little bit big for their software, so they want to alter it as well. In that case, engineers can’t use Bootstrap’s easy tags. Of course, engineers would object to it and ask for the reason. If business department says “Just because”, “somehow”, or “No reason, we don’t like the colour and size”, engineers would quit the job right away.
Solution
What designers are supposed to do
Designers have to explain the reason to do so. Why blue, not sky-blue? Why 8.5px, not 10px? Why this image is used? Yes, everything. All designs must have the reason why the design is the best. No “No reason”.
What business departments are supposed to do
People in business departments have to announce the outcome of changing designs. For example, they can inform engineers and designers that new design is contributing to our sales in a channel in a chat app(If your company don’t have such channel, you should make it immediately!). That is like “We managed to get a contract with a new customer because he likes our software’s design!”.
What engineers are supposed to do
Of course, there is a thing that engineers have to do. It is trying to understand what designers and business department says. If you are working in an organization, you are obliged to do so.
Result
Actually, when I entered a start-up company as a software engineer, similar quarrels occurred countlessly. However, the rules above changed our company’s behaviour to designs. Engineer came to contribute to developing designs. I would like you to use this hack from tomorrow.
