Drupal for Designers: Speaking Each Other’s Language

Phase2 Senior UX Strategist, Mayeda Khan, explains that though designers and developers play crucial roles in the lifecycle of Drupal projects, there is often a sense of mystery surrounding each other’s work. 

Why is it important for digital designers to have an understanding of Drupal?

Designers should have a basic understanding of Drupal in order to have effective communication with the development team, ensure that the designs are created around Drupal frameworks, and for basic time and cost-effectiveness. 

Website editors and managers are also end users of any Drupal project, and we must understand the CMS experience to create a more seamless experience for them. This means understanding the client’s editing workflows and their level of Drupal expertise to conceive a backend experience that is intuitive. 

Designers should always be thinking about the end product and the backend experience that makes it work.       

Similarly, why should developers understand design work?

Developers with a knowledge of design can provide input on initial concepts and direction early on. This in turn, helps developers with their initial planning—and makes the entire project much more collaborative.

When designers and developers aren’t effectively communicating, we risk the overall feasibility of aspects of the project, jeopardize timelines, face scope and budget creep, and potentially frustrate the client.

The solution is simple—involve all the project teams from the very beginning. By removing silos early on in the process, every team member has an equal voice and stake in the success of the project. 

How does all of this impact client communication?

Clients and their customers are the end users of everything we build. It’s crucial that we remove any barriers to understanding. This means avoiding technical jargon, breaking down the project into logical chunks, showing bits of functionality early, and identifying and using actual content for content types.

We also need to keep in mind that we should be delivering our product in a way that makes sense to the client. There is no tool or software that solves all of our communication barriers, but we can assist through our process. It is important we provide context around how to provide feedback and provide training to clients on new tools and technology we implement in our design process. 

We must meet each other halfway to create effective communication and understanding. 

Learn more! Watch Mayeda’s presentation on this topic at DrupalCon ‘22, in Portland, OR.