UXify 2017 | Glue: Tools That Integrate Development and Design

In this third installment of the UXify 2017 conference blog series, sponsored by Infragistics, Brian McElaney, Senior Software Engineer Elixir Developer at Revzilla Motorsports in Philadelphia, described the tools that integrate development and design.

[KR] Brian, you're a developer with a lot of experience working with designers. How do you see the relationship between Dev and Design?

[Brian] Designers, tasked with better understanding problems, tend to value flexibility and experimentation. Developers, tasked with pushing features into production, tend to value rigidity and repetition. Ideally, both teams have the same goal - to improve experience for users. However, even the most well-intentioned teams experience friction caused by the differences in approach between the disciplines.

In the middle are the tools, processes, and artifacts we use to communicate. It's important to include the ones which help us stick together - reducing the friction without reducing the value we each bring to the table.

Brian McElaney

For almost 20 years, Brian McElaney has lead user-focused software teams building anything from customized content management and ecommerce systems to medical device monitoring and foreign exchange trading platforms. He currently works as a senior software engineer Elixir developer at RevZilla Motorsports in Philadelphia, working on their proprietary in-house enterprise systems.

Mac (as his friends and coworkers know him) cooks competitively, pretends to like parades, and feels that brunch should be protected by law.

UXify 2017

If you thought this talk was good, why not take a look the previous installment of the UXify 2017 blog series or even the entire UXify conference recap?