left brain developing

When I finished my MBA in the late 90s I immediately took a class in drawing from the left side of the brain. I needed to rebalance things.  While the left brain - right brain theory can be criticised for its simplicity, it is a useful framework for appreciating that people do approach tasks from very different angles and with very different cognitive functions.  Right is about rationality: logic, detail, facts, words, math and science, order/pattern. Left is about feeling: perception, imagination, spatial perception and possibility. This may go some way to explain why most business documents are content driven and only superficially consider look and feel. It also suggests why visually oriented design tasks favour some people while others excel at pain-staking rules based tasks.

Web application development is one activity where both sides come together. It is rare to find a software developer who can create a visually appealing and intuitively good design. It is also rare to find a creative designer who can build robust and elegant functional code. How well the two marry is what makes or breaks a good application.

However, applications are like icebergs - most of the work is under the surface, hidden beneath the user interface. Changes to the interface can be relatively simple compared to functional changes to the underlying code. This is useful to bear in mind when selecting skill-sets for a build. After all, form does follow function.