I’ll say it. Design comes first. In agile development, you’d be surprised how often design gets overlooked. Instead design is cloaked in minimalism and lack of attention to detail. Agile (web) development is seemingly more about release schedules and cool features than creating good software.

Designing for the Final Release

We all know as software developers and designers that our jobs are never done. In my own experience, design never ends for me. There is no point where I can say that a design is final. However, I can still have that “final release” attitude with everything I design.

Designing as if you’re preparing for a final release is a good approach. You design what matters most with attention to only the critical details. That means debugging browsers actively throughout the design process, not just at the end of a release. When you add a new (designed) feature, debug it in IE6/7 right way. Don’t ever let a new feature (and it’s design) go untested in questionable platforms. Doing it any other way will leave bugs undiscovered and developers/designers very frustrated (in addition to users).

Building Software for the Web

Building software for the web is no joke. You have multiple platform and rendering situations not to mention the demands of users and clients to deal with. The limitations set before software development for the web is tremendous. Its important to design with stability in mind from the start.

Web 2.0 showed us how fast software development can be. But now we need to get to a point where that software doesn’t just function, but that it looks great and its of “final release” quality.