A future friendly workflow | Opinion | .net magazine

Why I Like Designing in the Browser – Cloud Four

This describes how I like to work too.

The New CSS · Matthias Ott – User Experience Designer

CSS is now the most powerful design tool for the Web.

I think this is now true. It’ll be interesting to see how this will affect tools and processes:

What I expect to see overall is that the perception and thus the role of CSS in the design process will change from being mainly a presentational styling tool at the end of the waterfall to a tool that is being used at the heart of making design decisions early on.

When your design system fails — HeyDesigner

You could create components that strike the perfect balance between reuse and context sensitivity. But defining the components of your design system is just the first step. It has to make its way into the product. If it doesn’t, a design system is like a language with no extant literature or seminal texts.

Marissa Christy outlines the reasons why your design system might struggle:

1. The redesign isn’t prioritized
2. The tech stack is changing
3. Maintenance takes discipline

But she also offers advice for counteracting these forces:

1. Get buy-in from the whole team
2. Prioritize a lightweight re-skin on older parts of the product
3. Treat a design system like any other product project: start small
4. Don’t wait for others. Lead by example.
5. Finally, don’t compare yourself to others on the internet

“Designer + Developer Workflow,” an article by Dan Mall

Dan compares the relationship between a designer and developer in the web world to the relationship between an art director and a copywriter in the ad world. He and Brad made a video to demonstrate how they collaborate.

Accessibility for Teams

I really, really like the way that this straightforward accessibility guide is subdivided by discipline. As Maya wrote in the blog post announcing its launch:

Each person on a team, whether you’re a manager, designer, or developer, has a role to play. Your responsibilities are different depending on your role. So that’s how we structured the guide, with a separate section for each of five roles:

• Product management
• Content design
• UX design
• Visual design
• Front-end development