The earthquake that struck Haiti was (and remains) a heart-wrenching catastrophe by any measure. When the news first broke, the outpouring of aid — in mass or by individual text message — was an illustration of human compassion. But help is still needed. As a designer, I wanted to lend my talents to the cause.

Thread & Water is a group of designers working with The Water Project, a non-profit dedicated to bringing relief to communities around the world who suffer needlessly from lack of access to clean water.  On the Thread & Water site, you can purchase T-shirts and prints created by designers. I contributed a design to the site. All of the proceeds go toward providing clean drinking water for Haitians affected by the earthquake. You can follow Thread & Water on Facebook and Twitter.

It's a worthy cause. Every donation helps, as the rebuilding process is likely to take years.

Toward the end of last year, the Springbox Rich Media team was tasked with building an interactive 3D view of the interior of Honda’s CrossTour model. The client wanted a Flash application that was flexible enough to handle additional vehicle models moving forward. This presented an interesting challenge because the 3D had to be interchangeable as well.

After reviewing all of their requirements, I decided to build an XML-driven Flash application that utilized the Away3D open source Flash library. The creation of the application went a lot smoother than I had expected. I had used Papervision (an alternative 3D Flash library) in the past, but I wanted to explore something different. I have to say that, after building this application, I’m a huge fan of Away3D.

The 3D engine performance is great, the documentation is very clear and the implementation of the code is very logical. The toughest part of the entire project was finding a way to plot points inside of the 3D view of the interior. After that was sorted out, it was smooth sailing. Check out the live app for yourself.

For those looking to explore other options in the 3D world of Flash, I highly recommend Away3D. 

You may have noticed something new the last time you googled. Perhaps you were looking for a review of this weekend’s blockbuster, the score of yesterday’s playoff game or  when that new restaurant down the street starts serving dinner, and there it was … a real-time search result.

In case you still don’t know what I’m talking about, here’s a screen shot:

Whether it’s breaking news, an eyewitness tweet, a new blog post or a fresh status update, real-time search is every search engine’s hope to make all of their results both relevant and instant. Partnering with the big names in social media -- Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, et al — Google, Bing and the rest of the search giants hope to bring an always-changing, always-popular, always-relevant aspect to their results pages. But what does that mean if you want your company or brand to be included in the results?

Social networks are more important than ever. If you’re not currently on social networks, you’re missing one of the best ways to have conversations with your customers. On top of that, now you’re also missing opportunities to connect with potential customers who look for you on popular search engines. The social networks presented in real-time search results have been given greater importance and staying power, and this should be reflected in your marketing plan.

SEO everywhere. People/companies who use social networking outlets should now become more concerned about their word choice. Having the right phrase in your last tweet or Facebook status could launch you directly onto the first page of Google. Not to mention, having posts about topics that aren’t directly related to your field will now help you reach an entirely new audience.

Stay relevant. Keeping current and relevant with your messages and messaging will be crucial. According to Google Fellow Amit Singhal, the characteristics that Google looks for in relevant real-time searches are author quality, probability of relevance and query hotness. Providing frequent, quality posts to all of your social networking outlets allows you to hit all three of these points.

Real-time search is just getting its sea legs, and users are just starting to understand what it is and how to use it. But if you position your company correctly and learn to use real-time search in your favor, you could be on the ground floor of the next boom in search.

Last week, Developer Josh Kemmerling wrote about his perspective on collaborating with designers. As Josh mentioned, he and I recently collaborated on the AMD Collateral Generator project and integrated a solution he proposed early into the project. Hearing each other's expertise at the conceptual phase of the project no doubt contributed to a stronger product for the client. I'm thankful that Josh felt the freedom to speak up and offer his point of view on the project.

It's a shame that in our industry designers and developers are timid to freely express ideas to each other's camps. I believe this timidity results from the overall flow of a project, which generally begins with a discovery phase, then proceeds to brainstorming, then to creative, development, testing and finally deployment. Because the creative portion occurs before the development stage, developers sometimes are not as involved in the project until comps are completed and ready for production. This usually means that the project (up until that point) has been seen by account service, creatives and possibly one developer who may have been involved at the discovery phase of the project, which hardly ever delves into the nuts and bolts of execution methods.



What I believe should occur, whether dictated by a company’s processes or not, is full-on, two-way communication between the creative(s) and developer(s) assigned to that project during the brainstorming and creative phases. While I believe strongly that a creative needs to have a firm understanding of web technologies, they must be willing to hear the expertise of their development team and facilitate in creating an environment of freely expressing ideas. 



Developers and creatives must continue to hone their skill-sets and work on building trust in each other's expertise. Beyond this, I believe it's the responsibility of both parties to have their finger on the pulse of the latest web technologies and trends. This means there might be times when a creative will have learned of a new technology, process or technique that the developer hasn't learned yet — and the creative should feel free to pass on that knowledge. In such a situation, it's imperative for the developer to be open to hearing this from a creative and not feel like the designer is stepping onto their own turf (and vice versa). 



Communication is vital and one of the most important ingredients to the success of any project, especially between a developer and a designer. A free exchange of ideas must take place at the onset of a project. We can't afford to work in silos. Our clients are counting on the best we can produce and that comes from collaboration and freedom of expression.

Everyone knows that developers aren’t as creative as designers. Not even close. Which is why developers find it hard to work with designers … we’re afraid of having our ideas shot down. Instead of volunteering our ideas, we wait until the designer asks for a suggestion. (Actually, from what I‘ve learned, designers like to have our input. Who knew?) How do we break this cycle of fear? How do we get to a point where we can give designers suggestions that we feel are useful? If designers don’t know what developers are capable of, many potential features could be left out of a project.

The hard part about giving designers suggestions or ideas is trying to give a technical suggestion without making it a design suggestion. This can be hard to do because we don’t always know what the designer is looking for. As developers, we should strive to make suggestions that enhance the way a site functions, without directly impacting the site’s aesthetics.

I recently collaborated with a designer on a microsite, where I recognized an opportunity to streamline the user experience. I wasn’t trying to change the user flow or the way the site looked, I was trying to make the user experience faster. While working with Springbox Art Director Phil Coffman on the AMD Collateral Generator project, I offered suggestions on different technologies that would streamline performance. My idea was to make the site AJAX-based. This would keep the whole page from constantly refreshing, making the user experience a little faster. Much faster, actually. Without taking a chance and sharing my idea, I doubt Phil would have known that we could successfully use that technology.

So, as developers, we have to make sure we don’t cross the line into a designer’s territory. We want to give technical suggestions that aren’t design suggestions but rather complement the overall experience.

This post is first in a two-part series. Look for the second stanza, the Designer's perspective, next week.