Conchango Creative Director Matthew Bagwell on rethinking workflow and collaboration in the studio
Last week at the Microsoft Professional Developer Conference in LA, Conchango’s Paul Dawson and Tesco’s Nick Lansley presented a touchscreen WPF application prototype we’ve been working on for a little more than a month. It provided a glimpse into how ‘touch’ could revolutionise the way we all think and act about what we eat at home. More, it demonstrated what can be achieved in very short timeframes with new approaches to workflow, enabled by collaborative software like Expression Blend.
We’ve had all kinds of positive feedback about it so far. Comments like:
‘The Tesco demo just blew my Dad away.’
‘I heard gasps from the audience.’
‘Great, thought-leading stuff.’
You can watch the presentation here (it comes on at about the 95:00 mark and runs for 5 minutes): http://channel9.msdn.com/pdc2008/KYN02
As I say, the entire project, from conception to presentation, came together in about 4 weeks. Making it happen required a very nimble approach to collaboration and workflow that would facilitate interaction between team members throughout...
Most importantly, our developers and designers needed to work literally side by side from day one. The traditional ‘hand-off’ simply wouldn’t do.
And that’s increasingly true. Which is why we’ve been honing a new take on integrated workflow – from concept to final delivery – over the past 24 months here at Conchango.
Some of the key questions driving our investigation:
Are traditional ‘studio’ principles and structures still appropriate for the creative development of ‘digital interfaces’?
Or are the scope of the briefs we’re getting, the potential richness of the interfaces, end user technologies and creative software all combining to force change?
Are we returning to a type of studio environment more akin to film-making, animation and post-production – where creatives work dynamically with producers and often clients; hours spent together, working ‘on the fly’?
I’ve often bemoaned the ‘waterfall’ method of production – where ‘graphic’ designers respond first to briefs, cascading their design solution ‘down’ to developers who have to ‘make it work’. Fortunately, this is happening less than it used to, particularly where integrated business analysts and user experience architects are working in parallel with designers – and when methodologies like Agile are deployed, where creative work is developed in sprints aligned to technical development. But it still happens.
Ideally, interfaces are created in unison, such that what’s designed can be developed and vice versa. And combined thinking is surely better than over-emphasizing one particular skill. If you have a hammer, you’ll create nail-like problems. Put different tools in the box and you’ll solve problems differently.
Certainly, at Conchango, we’ve realised the benefits of reconsidering the relationship between developer and designer, combining their skills to develop rich interface applications for touch screen kiosks, IPTV players, financial simulators, desktop apps, telemetric data and deep zoom microsites.
Historically, the dev/designer relationship has been ‘authored’ in Abobe Flash. However, latterly we’ve enjoyed the pleasure of working with the Expression suite, and specifically Blend. For me, the obvious clue to the advantages that this software offers is in the name itself. The environment affords us a practical way to develop creative interfaces, almost on the fly, in a way that doesn’t compromise the work of ‘designer’ or the ‘developer’. Work can be produced at speed, in synchronicity – and tailored, tweaked and fiddled with in quick iteration.
Real or perceived divisions are being eroded. Devs and designers are starting to think and create more ‘sympathetically’ together, driven by a common ambition and contributing complementary skills.
Richard Griffin is one of our interactive developers, a self-described ‘code geek’. He’s one of the people here who’s passionately charting this new territory and speaking about it at conferences worldwide, alongside our interactive designer Felix Corke. Rich has this to say:
“Developers have to come to terms with the fact that our world has changed. In this new world you’re part of a duo. Without the designer, you’re not going to be able to create compelling user experiences that take advantage of powerful APIs like WPF. So make friends with a designer and start to understand how they work. This will really help you further down the line.”
Felix adds: “Making it work is rather personal. The most important thing is to build a relationship so that you understand each other’s considerations. Developers are concerned with efficiency and logic, so they may not initially understand why the designer is concerned with perfecting the layout of the control and the type face.”
Any studio beginning to adapt its collaborative workflows in this way needs to ask a few basic questions and then begin to sort out the answers: How will the art director, experience architect and copywriter combine with the interface designer and developer? Do we need each of these roles to be handled by a separate individual, or might we begin to see the emergence of ‘uber-creatives’ capable of spanning several roles simultaneously? How will these new relationships affect the collateral that clients have come to expect (functional specification documents, wireframes, personas)? Indeed, how do we begin to re-set clients expectations around both process and documentation?
Advances in interface hardware – I’m referring to multi-touch and Surface specifically – mean these changes in studio make-up and dynamics are set to accelerate as the ‘tactility’ of digital experiences becomes increasingly important. Understanding how to engineer these experiences requires us to rethink the creative process. It’s something we’ve been doing at Conchango for some time, and for which we’re now seeing the rewards.