I've generally only worked with designers in a mobile app context. A few of the things I do as a dev which has improved my relationship with the design side (Al

I've generally only worked with designers in a mobile app context. A few of the things I do as a dev which has improved my relationship with the design side (Although the designers I've worked with have changed over time and that definitely is a part of the better dynamic. The initial designers I worked with came from print media and had no mobile app experience): - Work in a Storybook-like sandbox for components. This is the single best change and a lot of other stuff comes from this in terms of standardization and common language. By working on components in isolation, its a lot easier to both flesh out edge cases as well as argue that certain edge cases need to be handled ("theres no guarantee about how this component will be used so we need to make sure we have some answer for X"). It also _massively_ speeds up iteration speed - Put in generators/utilities that do things like generate your buttons/labels/colors. This lets you standardize on a smaller palette and also give you a choke-point to flag "illegal" values (e.g. trying to set a label font size to 8pt, or a button tap target to 36x36). - Learn some UI/UX! Reading the material design docs gave me a much better understanding of grid layout and color design systems. - Coach the designers on the platform expectations especially around tap targets, font sizes, and navigation patterns. You should usually stick to your guns on this stuff. - Understand that your job as a dev is to _try your best_ to implement the design as presented. This means you should at least make an attempt to bring their creation to reality, after you adjust it to fit within the confines as described above.