DiceOutLoud's video: How to Partner and Work with a Designer

You're an awesome developer, but when it comes to design you'd barely grade higher than a C in nursery school finger painting. You need a designer. Where do you go to find one? How do you know you've got a good one? And how do you work with them? At Silicon Valley Code Camp, Uday Gajendar, Principal Product Designer at Citrix, gave a presentation entitled, "How to partner with designers." Here are some designer tips from Gajendar: Where to find a designer? Gajendar suggests going to sites such as BayCHI, Boxes and Arrows, and UX Matters. They all have communities and job boards. What type of designer should I partner with? Designers come with different backgrounds. Some are more artistic. Some have human computer interaction or usability engineering. Understand that while developers can be instructed to create more or less the same product, each designer has a different point of view. I don't know anything about design, how do I know I've got a good designer? "Look at the quality of work," said Gajendar. "Craftsmanship really matters." If you can't tell from looking at the work, ask the designer to articulate and defend their rationale as to why they made the choices they made. If they say, I felt like it, it was cool, or Facebook did it, you want to avoid them. You want people who have a clear point of view and mastery of craftsmanship, said Gajendar. When you're working with a designer, it's truly a partnership with you as developer and the product manager. That partnership is built on respect, teamwork, and mutual dependency on each other.