

How to Work with Designers: A Cheat Sheet for Engineers and PMs - cjdulberger
https://medium.com/the-year-of-the-looking-glass/6c975dede146

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hyperplane
Nice opinions, but the primary feeling I get from this is "Designers are
closed-minded prima donnas, and the only way to work with them is to talk
their language and care about the same things they do."

As far as I am concerned, the primary job of a designer is communicating a
message. If anything, designers should probably be given _less_ slack over
time for their personality flaws, because their whole job revolves around
communication and empathy toward a user.

Why not reflect that same empathy inward toward the company? If your design
team is the center of your empathy toward your users, your design team should
equally be trying to lead positive communication efforts with engineers and
PMs to find a common ground, build a common vocabulary, and understand
everyone's stake in the game from the onset in a diplomatic and friendly
fashion, especially so as the designer becomes senior. After all, what problem
is more abstract than the meta-problem of intergroup communication?

I don't think posts like this help construct meaningful dialogue between
departments and only serve to reinforce existing clique-oriented behavior.
Interdepartmental/inter-role communication is "us vs. them" only if these
types of attitudes are allowed to foster in the corporate culture.

