Level of Effort by Brad Frost

REQUIREMENTS. What an absolutely terrible word. “As per the requirements…” It sounds so authoritative. So final. But at the end of the day it’s just some designers or BAs making some calls (maybe informed by plenty of research, maybe not) and rolling with them.

A really great piece from Brad arguing for the inclusion of front-end developers as equal partners in the design process.

A more collaborative process saves an absurd amount of time, money, and anguish. Frontend developers can not only help better determine level of effort of any design solution, but offer suggestions, alternatives, and solutions that better follow the grain of the web. “If we move this from here to here, we can build it out in 2 hours. But if it stays the way it is, it will take about 2 weeks to implement.” Repeat that a couple dozen times and you just saved yourselves months worth of unnecessary work.

I think this observation is spot-on.