Thinking In Web Apps is a short list of design principles for Chrome Web apps, published a couple of weeks ago by several of us in Chrome Developer Relations.
Many people think Developer Relations means blogging and speaking. That’s part of it, but it’s also important to be spending time with developers and understanding the challenges they face, as well as supporting them. In the case of Chrome Web Store, I’ve been working with several partners who are building apps in time for the store’s launch. Explaining how certain technologies work and taking questions back to the core Chrome development team. One of the things I’ve discovered in Developer Relations is the way patterns/principles emerge:
- A new capability is announced, e.g. a new programming language, an upgrade to a hosting service, a new API. In this case, it’s the Chrome Web Store and the concept of installable web apps.
- We make some guesses about how to use it and share them with developers. You have to see it as educated guesses; it’s the law of unanticipated consequences that says you can never be sure how people will use a capability, even if you’re the one who designed it.
- Developers start to build use the new capability.
- By aggregating across all of the pioneering developers, and talking to other developer relations people working with other pioneering developers, we gain a new appreciation of what works and what doesn’t.
- We have more general info to share with partners. Wash, rinse, repeat.
The important thing is to be documenting what we’re learning as we go along, hence you can expect to see more articles like Thinking in Web Apps. Whether you want to call them patterns, principles, or whatever.
See also Task-Artifact Cycle.
