News

Startup Seeks To Smooth the Dev/Designer Relationship

• By David Ramel
• April 16, 2015

Startup company Sympli today previewed a cloud-based tool to ease the often "tense" relationship between mobile developers and designers that can result from today's fast release cadences.

"Anyone who has worked in mobile application development knows that it can get tense, especially when the expectations for delivery are so rapid," the company said in a statement. "Even small shifts in design have a domino effect on developers as they must find the elements impacted, and do quick changes. Throw into the mix a project manager, a client and other team members, and you have a recipe for intense team dynamics."

Sympli seeks to ease that tenseness by translating design specs into code for developers to work with and automatically notifying them of spec changes made by designers.

For example, if a new design file is uploaded into the system, accompanying dynamic specs, style info and code snippets are automatically generated and team members are notified.

The tool also includes prebuilt assets such as fonts that can be used in development. Photoshop and Sketch plug-ins are available to accommodate changes made in the design stage, and support for Xcode and SketchCode for iOS projects is on tap.

It also features asset synchronization, version tracking and integration with various development environments.

The software, now in private beta for which you can sign up here, is the only such tool that works with Android and iOS, the Washington company said.

"Every time a developer needs a designer to confirm a spec, it likely takes 30 minutes of two people's time," said company founder Maxim Ignatyev. "Multiply that by the hundreds of changes that can occur in a project, plus the potential for human error and confusion, the timeline to project completion keeps getting set back. Sympli lets teams focus on quickly delivering the most creative product with the least frustration. It lets designers and developers focus on what they love to do."