IT hearts GRAPHICS

You already know: we work hard. Did I mention? Maybe you are also interested in what we do? How the work is structured. Who is responsible for which task that comes up? From time to time, there will be interviews with the guys involved in the redesign of the spreadshirt-webside called MrPropper. To keep clean of copyright violations: our MrPropper is spelled with double p and makes everything better, useable and fine. The guy with the solitary p simply helps you doing the housework.

For today - lets say…start with the IT:

Maybe first describe yourself? What´s your job? What is your part in the relaunch of the spreadshirt-website?
My name is Alex, I’m head of the frontend developement departement. My job is to take care of the new user area and the improvements of the shop administration. That means managing the people working on these projects and doing a lot of developing myself.

Tell us about the connection between IT and graphics department? Who causes the problem and who has the solution?
Normally we say: Hey, these are the features we want to integrate, please make them look good! And then we work together since our code and the design fit.

Describe the most challenging issue you had to deal with so far? What future tasks leave you sleepless at night?
The implementation of the commission accounts were pretty challenging, because the transition from the old commissioning system to the new one had to be seamless, since when it comes to real money, people are not very forgiving when it comes to bugs ;)
There are no future tasks that make me sleepless, but the structural changes that involve with the relaunch project are pretty challenging, since they include a big amount of refacturing :)

What you are working on at the moment?
I’m working on the framework for the new user area. That includes a new programming model to make our sourcecode more flexible and reuseable.

Is there a feature you like best? Something you do with an extra effort of sweat and time?
I like AJAX User-Interfaces. Unfortunately developing those is still very time consuming and it’s hard to make them work on each browser. So we are currently using these not as often as we could.

Do you get inspired by other sites? How do you manage to be up-to-date?
Yes, there are a bunch of sites that impress me. When it comes to Web 2.0 Usability, netvibes.com is very impressing. Concerning the Webservices and the general invention and use of new features (like the cool geotagging function) flickr is always ahead of the game. My favourite application is last.fm since it collects user generated content without requiring the user doing actually something (only installing a plugin) and it supplies very high benefit for the user, since you can discover new music, express yourself by posting your personal charts to forums and blogs and it provides extensive community features.

How far is it possible to match user requests?
It is always possible to match user requests. But since our capabilities are limited, we have to priorize all requests, so it differs how long it takes to fulfill all user requests. But we do our best! :)

How do you test the new site? Some features working already?
Smaller changes are tested extensively by the developers, for bigger changes we use testservers, where all spreadshirt employees may test things. Sometimes, we invite customers to have a look at our beta product, as we did with LaFraise. And yes, there are some features that work already, but these are only smaller things, that we could easily deploy immediately. The important strucure changes need some time and preparatory work to produce something presentable.