I believe we need to continually put more thought into how the design affects the front-end development (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, etc), how the front-end development affects the CMS (Content Management System), how the CMS affects the design and UI and what this does for users.

This is how I see UX (User Experience) from the design, development and CMS stages and how they are related:

As designers and developers, we affect each other's production work on projects, but don't always give it as much thought as we should. If we have problems and issues associated with the production side, that we don't clear up, the end user is going to suffer.

Coming from a graphic design/layout and print background, I've been fortunate enough to learn and be able to work from start to finish on websites. This included the design, the HTML and CSS and the development and integration of the CMS.

Now, when I've been hired to work on less than all three production areas there can sometimes be more work involved as I've had to ask for constant clarifications related to features and functionality to avoid problems that would drag the project out much longer than anyone expected. If those items weren't addressed we wound up having to go back and redo a lot of work later because end users were frustrated and/or confused when using the end product.

I'll be outlining more thoughts and some examples of these issues in later posts.

What are your thoughts on website production and how it affects the user experience?