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Designer / Developer Collaborative Workflow

Dan Mall Brad Frost
Your instructor
Dan Mall
Your instructor
Brad Frost
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Workshop includes:

  • Snacks and drinks
  • Tea and Coffee
  • Lunch
  • Paper and pen/pencil

Full-day workshop • Monday, October 14
Are you tired of throwing comps over the metaphorical wall and seeing the details lost in the actual build? Do you hate receiving unrealistic designs and having no time to build them or even ask questions about them?


There are better ways to make digital products. Join Brad Frost and Dan Mall to learn how to really collaborate with your co-workers and colleagues.

In this workshop for mid-level to senior web designers and developers, you’ll learn how to drastically reduce the time to ship while improving the quality of your work—and the health of your team.

In this hands-on workshop, you’ll:

  • Practice true designer/developer collaboration—attendees will learn how to kill the waterfall process and solve problems together with their designer/developer counterparts in real time
  • Learn how to get out of the artifacts game—this workshop will cover how to get into real product environments faster, allowing teams to create work that is truer to the medium while bypassing many unnecessary design artifacts
  • Drastically cut down on product design time by introducing a more efficient design/dev process that saves time and money while simultaneously improving product quality
  • Learn how to work better together—Creating great digital work is truly a team effort where each discipline brings their respective strengths to the process. This workshop will help enable designers to get closer to the code and enable developers to be critical participants in the design process.

The way this workshop works is pairing designers and developers, so it’s crucial there are equal numbers of designers and developers in the room. So attend if you are:

  • A designer + developer pair that work on the same team
  • A designer and a developer that work on different teams within the same company
  • An agency designer that works with many developers
  • A product designer that works with many developers
  • An agency developer that works with many different designers
  • A developer at a product company that works with many different designers
  • A design or development lead who can help evangelize this process with other teams

Make sure you select the right ticket, as we have different tickets for designers and developers.

What hardware/software do you need?

Bringing a laptop is not required, as work will be done on paper and in groups.

About Dan Mall

Dan Mall is a designer from Philadelphia, an enthralled husband and dad, Founder & Design Director at SuperFriendly. He is the co-founder of Typedia, The Businessology Show, and swfIR. He was formerly Design Director at Big Spaceship, Interactive Director at Happy Cog and a technical editor for A List Apart.

Having worked with clients like Google, Lucasfilm, Microsoft, GE, Wrigley, The Mozilla Foundation, Thomson Reuters, and The Sherwin-Williams Company, he has a passion for playing matchmaker between surprising art direction and intuitive interaction design.

About Brad Frost

Brad Frost is a web designer, speaker, writer, and consultant located in beautiful Pittsburgh, PA. He is the author of the book Atomic Design, which introduces a methodology to create and maintain effective design systems. In addition to co-hosting the Style Guides Podcast, he has also helped create several tools and resources for web designers, including Pattern Lab, Styleguides.io, Style Guide Guide, and This Is Responsive.

Time & Location

This full-day workshop will be hosted at the Microsoft Technology Center and will take place the day before SmashingConf. The workshop will be running from 9:30 AM to 5:30 PM on Monday, October 14.

Schedule for Monday, October 14

9:00 AM – Doors open, Registration
9:30 AM – Introduction & Kick-off
11:00 AM – Coffee Break
1:00 PM – Lunch
2:00 PM – Afternoon Session
3:30 PM – Coffee Break
5:30 PM – The End

Save 100 USD when signing up for the conference and a workshop!