camerondaigle

This gives the user the impression that their phone is reading their text messages, which feels invasive.

Cameron here, designer for The Informant. We've just launched as a Heroku addon and are looking for feedback, insights & whatever you can throw at us.

What it is: The Informant is usability testing in the form of error tracking. It simply watches ActiveRecord validations and tracks when errors are triggered. It's a great way to learn where users are making mistakes, so you can improve the usability of those areas.

For example, maybe you're getting abandonment rates on account creation or checkout. The Informant will tell you if users are simply mistyping their phone number a lot, and the fix might be as simple as a copy edit or more forgiving backend logic.

tl;dr your users make mistakes all the time. Now you can learn where and why, and fix it. :)

Fair enough. This seems like CSS Positioning 201 to me, but I've been dealing with this stuff for a long time now, so my perspective is probably pretty skewed.

I completely agree with your point re: cognitive processing: good CSS communicates intent to the reader, so if this kind of stuff is unclear to people and the Smashing Mag post helps the concept click in readers' minds, then it's a win :)

Designer here. The specific downsides addressed in the article, IMHO, can be a problem of process, not tools. On my projects (I work at Hashrocket, RoR shop) we put clients through an initial look & feel phase to nail down general palette & styles, and move forward with PSDs that are approved prior to HAML/SASS slicing and actual implementation.

However, we always (always always) treat the PSD step not as Final Design, but as a high-fidelity communication tool - the next step after our wireframes (which are as un-designed as possible) and story cards. When requirements change, we loop back as far as necessary; for small changes, new stories and in-view UI adjustments suffice; for more fundamental changes we'll go back to the PSD.

Don't get me wrong - being able to maintain design quality in the face of change is one of the most difficult aspects of being a designer on an agile team (and getting design involved in the entire delivery process is absolutely essential) but the tool you use to build initial design isn't necessarily going to solve that challenge for you.

Personally I find it healthy to be able to concept layout & UI without making stylesheet & DOM structure assumptions. Designing via code, for me, blurs my focus - when I'm making decisions in Photoshop, I'm aware of the CSS that will be required to replicate it, but I'm not having to actively execute on them. Designing and coding take very different parts of the brain for me, if that makes any sense. Try drawing a picture while listening to a podcast vs. reading a book while listening to a podcast.

> “When it comes to products, user experience trumps pretty pictures. It’s not easy for most designers to do, because you have to rebel against everything you’ve been taught as a designer: fight the pretty pictures, fight the urge to tweak your drop shadows or find the perfect border-radius.”

This is more than a little patronizing. Delivering a polished, professional design and being flexible to changing requirements aren't mutually exclusive goals.