Web developer Brad Frost:
It’s time for us to treat performance as an essential design feature, not just as a technical best practice.
Some may interpret Brad’s post as a shot against a traditional web design workflow. It is, and rightfully so. Too often, both in my own career and in talking with other developers, designers run off the Photoshop deep end without a lot of developer collaboration. They create something that is gorgeous, groundbreaking but in the end really slow. Or a team’s focus is just on shipping new web functionality without considering the performance impact.
Successful teams consider and optimize for performance. As Brad emphasizes, get into prototype form earl and if it’s too slow revise immediately.