Design collaboration tools have become increasingly popular in the last years. Designers have greatly benefited from tools such as Figma to complete their work in an increasingly intuitive, organized, easy, and quicker manner.
Collaboration with other functions in the business like marketing or engineering has also dramatically improved. As a developer though, there is one thing I am still bitter about – Implementing Pixel Perfect Designs.
I have extensive experience in software development and trust me, there are not many things that make me as frustrated as endless iterations of pixel-perfect design implementation. I am outlining my reasons below:
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Autonomy – Everybody likes to have some degree of self-government when it comes to work. When I spend so much time implementing small design changes in web/mobile apps I feel like I have been stripped out of my professional freedom. This just gets multiplied when as a team we are not using cross-platform frameworks.
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Understanding – I strongly believe in the massive value add of designers’ work, however, I need to admit that I sometimes do not understand certain iterations I get asked for. I do not demand to be explained exactly all the reasons for every change, but as many people in the workplace, us developers also appreciate being involved in the process and being able to contribute in a timely manner.
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Professional Development – Have you ever wondered why more experienced developers generally shy away from front-end development? Yes, I am generalizing, but the continuous development of skills and education it takes to be a successful back-end developer are greater than what it takes to be a front-end developer. Back-end provides you with a longer steep learning curve, something that definitely does not come with implementing pixel-perfect designs.
These are my experiences and would love to hear what are your thoughts.
I, in the meanwhile, am working on a solution to convert my Figma designs into Flutter widgets at https://codis.io/ . Wish me luck!