Designer Developer Communications
In this respect, a pre-commencement meeting between the designer and developer to discuss the specifics of responsibilities can be very helpful. Each party can enumerate areas of conflict or problems in earlier projects and suggestions on how to avoid them. Particularly if the plan is to use a developer-first approach, the designer could create a rough sketch or in some other simplified fashion describe his vision of the UI as a rough input to the developer. Since everyone's strengths and weaknesses vary, each party can identify areas which he would prefer the other party to avoid or conversely areas in which he would welcome the assistance of the other party.

After the project begins, the extensive use of comments in both the XAML and the code can facilitate designer / developer communications. One way to facilitate this is to have the designers and developers work on the same time schedule—or at least be contactable so that any issues which arise can promptly be resolved. To the extent that this is not possible, carefully constructed comments can represent a useful substitute.

An even better strategy would be to include the designer(s) in the daily or other periodic development team meetings. As previously indicated, the new technology (XAML) and the integrated tools (Blend and Visual Studio) permit the designer to become an integral part of the development team. While obviously this is easier if the designers and developers both work for the same firm and are not geographically separated, where this is not the case, improved conferencing technology can contribute to a greater degree of integration.

Conclusion
By comparison to the old methodology where designers created their vision of the UI using Photoshop or some other static view, Silverlight's XAML-based approach using Expression Blend and Visual Studio represents an enormous improvement. Moreover, Silverlight's highly flexible UI model makes it possible to build almost any design which even the most talented designer can imagine.

By following some of the guidance principles set forth above, it should be possible for designers and developers to work together in a highly efficient fashion, resulting in both a better final result and a faster time to completion than previously was possible.

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