How Creativity and Care Power Your Coding Needs

Disclaimer: This branded content is from Xfive.co, originally published on 03/02/2016.

In theory, design teams do the creative work, and expert developers transform their creations into working code. A wall often exists between these two. Requirements and results pass back and forth over this wall, as there is presumably no common ground between the designers and the developers.

It does not have to be this way. There is common ground, and it’s called creativity. Creativity can be shared by both the design team and the developer team, just as creative "sparks" are shared by both sides of the brain.

Let’s explore how developers can follow through on creative agencies’ designs rather than placing limitations on them, and see how one company does precisely that.

Creative agencies prefer to work with concepts, and tools that do not require coding skills. Building a product based on these concepts requires coding and conventional wisdom might lead you to believe that coding involves little more than following orders. Professional programmers however do more than mere coding, they adopt creative coding.

It takes creative designers and design agencies to design awesome layouts, and it takes creative developers to ensure that those designs will benefit the best coding solutions. Both sides are creative, and it is this creativity that glues the two teams together so they can work closely and collaborate with each other.

Aside from creativity though, there is one more crucial ingredient that should be in a team.

"A good developer should be proactive, help clients with hard decisions on a project, never limit its development, but find smarter & better technical solutions. You can call it "creativity", we prefer to call it "care" – Milosz Bazela, Xfive.

Finding the source of creativity

Restrictions could be regarded as the arch-enemy of creativity, and yet creativity flows from restrictions. It is an important part of problem solving, a process directed toward overcoming restrictions.

Innovative designers and developers rely heavily on the concept of structured imagination. While their ideas often appear to come from outside the box, those same ideas are almost always formulated by what lies within the box. Restrictions, limitations, and constraints more often than not give rise to innovative ideas.

Creativity does not come in a single flavor. Arne Dietrich (2004), defined 4 flavors of creativity: Deliberate and Cognitive, Deliberate and Emotional, Spontaneous and Cognitive, and Spontaneous and Emotional. Most of us make use of each of these types at one time or another.

Deliberate and cognitive creativity is what you typically find in software engineers, designers, and programmers. This creativity type arises out of performing steady work in a particular discipline, and having an ability to focus on an issue, a problem, or a solution.

It requires the ability to recognize patterns, or connect and manipulate information stored in various parts of the brain. Coders learn how to follow programming rules. They also learn how to combine and manipulate those rules, and use them to the best advantage.

Developers who care

Deliberate and Emotional creativity is not to be overlooked. This type of creativity can determine how team members will collaborate and work together.

Developers should put their best efforts forward at both the human and the technical level. Caring can and should extend to users and clients. In fact, developers who care are by far the best developers to work with. They want the products they develop for you to do what you want them to do, and do it well. They want to develop products that have only the features you actually need.

But delivering what a client want across to the developer’s team may prove harder than it sounds. In cases like this, somebody else in the team will have to step up.

"When meeting a new client, the ideal situation is that they should provide strict requirements and well written scope of tasks, so that we could rapidly understand their perspective, optimize its cost and deliver the project smoothly.

"However, there are situations when your client (partner) does not have a lot of experience, and that’s where our Project Managers come in and help. Thanks to that, our client will feel extremely safe while working with us – like driving a Volvo." – Milosz Bazela, Xfive.

Such is the importance of having a professional and efficient team, with team members who know where their duties and responsibilities lie in the grand scheme of things. Because when it comes to push and shove, everyone wants the team who can hit the ground running. Take for instance, our collaboration with BrightOutcome.

Case study: Xfive & BrightOutcome

BrightOutcome develops patient-centered healthcare applications designed to enhance lives and improve patient health outcomes. Their web apps and healthcare IT solutions include stand-alone web portals, Web Services (WS) integration with EHR/EMR and legacy health IT systems, and custom implementation projects.

They needed a strong development partner, one that could implement the technical part without missing any details and to deliver within the given deadline.

"The team at Xfive truly went above and beyond the call of duty. I was certain there was no way I could complete my website redesign project in time for a big trade show that my company was exhibiting at, however the team at Xfive did the impossible!

"They worked around the clock for 7 days a week in advance of the show to ensure that my project was completed on time, within budget, and to a very high level of quality. I was a bit nervous working with a remote team on a web project, but after my experience with Xfive, I will continue working with them on every web project I have in the future. A++ they are wonderful" – Adam Wilbur, BrightOutcome Inc.

The Name’s Xfive

Xfive has been around since 2006, but prior to 2016, is known as XHTMLized. XHTMLized was a development team that helped thousands of clients, big and small. That hasn’t changed.

The "X" stands for eXtraordinay, eXperienced, and eXclusive. It has been with the brand from the beginning e.g. XWP, XHTML, X-Team. The "five" is based around the high five’s often associated with great work and many small victories.

Add the two, and you get happy clients. Xfive excels at working as partners, as an extension of your team, whether you are from a startup or an established enterprise. They provide full-service solutions for clients looking to expand their capacity for front-end, PHP and Ruby on Rails or WordPress development.

Xfive is based in Australia, with teams located throughout the world. Top freelancing talent is hired as well, and many of these freelancers have become full-time employees. No matter who among the dedicated team members will be doing your development work, you can expect high quality and fast turnaround.