Trade publication eWeek ran a story on Friday about Google promoting it's App Engine as a workflow tool to bring web designers and developers together.  The most interesting part of the story was a collection of remarks by Lindsey Simon, a UX software engineer, and John Skidgel, a web designer, both who work at Google.

Both Simon and Skidgel articulated the need for a close working relationship between engineer and designers.  So close, in fact, that Simon said it should be almost spousal.  Both roles needed to have a respect for each other's strengths and enough knowledge about the other's job to communicate effectively.

Taking the spousal analogy a step further, Skidgel and Simon described what  hypothetical personal ads might say.  Simon's designer ad read:
"Seeking an unpretentious, scrappy, well-rounded interaction and visual designer." The qualities listed as being sought after were, "Takes criticism without a hissy fit, willing to entertain rants about back-end/front-end code, knows Photoshop kung fu and not afraid of code."
Skidgel's ad for a UX engineer read:
"Takes suggestions without going ballistic, appreciates aesthetics, deep and broad understanding of front-end and back-end technology, and not afraid to express himself visually—he can draw [or] chicken-scratch flows."
At the heart of this humorous exercise was a serious message.  Quoting Simon's words:
"You can't really have a meaningful design for these kinds of applications anymore if you really want to separate strict visual design and interaction design from the act of engineering it. That's not really a productive workflow." As a developer, "you want to work with your designer, and from the beginning."
Developing highly advanced blogging software has put this issue front and center with the engineering team at Compendium.  Although the overall appearance of our application is drawn up by a professional design team, many of us have to don the designer hat every once in a while as we develop rich user interfaces for things like blog web page customization and content authoring.  Soon our team will be growing to include a developer who will be focused on developing more powerful blogging features, the kinds of things that our current and future customers say they want from an Enterprise 2.0 blog. 

On a related note, If you know of someone who might be thinking about starting a business blog, you might be interested in taking advantage of Compendium's friend referral promotion, which offers a $50 Starbucks card for each valid referral, up to 10 referrals.  Details and disclaimers can be found at Compendium's website.