The ZURBlog is where we discuss interaction design and strategy.

It's been three weeks for me here at ZURB and people keep asking me.

Matt, what's it like being a software engineer at a design company?

To fully answer that question I need to take you back to elementary school. Now everyone has a least favorite subject from school, and for me that subject was art. Every Friday I knew the art teacher was coming and I was going to suck it up at some basic skill that seemed to come naturally to everyone else. But they would get what was coming to them at math time.

As I grew older math turned into software, and I associated with other software type people. We had some good times, but at the end of the day no matter how cool our apps were, they still looked like crap. And were mostly useless. But damn cool.

I went looking for an environment where applications were designed to be useful, and have visual appeal. I found ZURB.

It works like this. Our designers look at problems from angles I didn't even know existed. They capture their intentions in a concise manner using tools and techniques I believe to be derived from the ones that eluded me in 4th grade. They then hand them over for implementation and everything comes together.

Awesome design powered by math. Rather then treating design as a task better left to cheap contractors it is the spark that ignites the whole process. Inspired design is exponentially more fun to implement then functional requirements written by a quorum of middle management. I'm also finding it better defined.

What it's like being a software engineer at ZURB? It's bad ass. What does that have to do with 4th grade art class? Now I get to use my math to produce something visually stunning without ever picking up a crayon.