DrupalCon Review - Designers Vs Developers

Drupal so far has been a coders baby. Design was something people worried about but not too much. The main aim was to have an elegant engine that enabled you to change and modify the site to your heart's content. The design problem was reduced to: "if you can change it means we did our job".

Now, that is all fine if who you are trying to win over are just people that are able to recognize the underlying elegance of the engine and are willing to dedicate some time in order to climb that learning curve and exploit the power for themsleves. But what of the fickle masses that decide mostly on first impressions, of which looks are a big part. More importantly, is Drupal only a solution for people willing to code or should it be a realistic alternative for those that don't do programming?

The debate got off to a rocky start because the developers felt rather taken aback by the sudden invasion of designers who explained in no uncertain terms that they were not impressed by the user experience of Drupal.

After some uncomfortable moments, several blog posts and twitter exchanges those initial problems seem to have been overcome and by the end of the Drupalcon there was an understanding that one needs the other. Designers promised to provide concrete input and guidelines and developers promised to keep an open mind so that the code produced what was required and made it easier to get started.

Through this debate I got to hear the opinions and know more about people like Earls (of views fame), Mark (of amazing design fame), John (of Drupal theming fame) and Morten (of just plain fame). Just shows the range of great people involved with Drupal and provides further confirmation that Drupal has a great community.

This post is part of a series of DrupalCon posts - Part 1, Part 3.