Do you remember when teams creating products were led by developers and developers only? Those guys were able to work with code and databases – things nobody else understood – so they must have been the right guys to get the job done. Developers were in charge since they seemed to understand the technology. Later it turned out that those technology driven products seemed to be hardly usable by anybody else than those developers. Bummer.

Then the designers emerged and claimed control. They were able to make beautiful things people liked, so they certainly were the right guys for the job. Interface designers, interaction architects and user experience creators with crazy acronyms worked out beautiful products everybody enjoyed using and playing around with all day. But after a while people got tired of all these overly beautified applications, that - while looking nice - didn't seem to do anything else properly.

Eventually, the marketing guys entered the stage. They were OK with mediocre software and rubbish design, as long as there was an audience they could sell the product to. Social strategies and complex focus groups were created, numbers crunched and at the end of they day it was all about the money, where the marketing guys scored. But this didn't last forever as well.

Turns out that a good product had to reach people, appeal to them, and be usable and stable as well.

Meet the hybrids. Developers with a sense for user experience. Designers, able to code up their own layouts. Marketing guys with great visual skills. Now put two or more of these together, flavor everything with a little character and emotion, and if you're very lucky, eventually they might be able to create a product, people really, really care about.

Here's a joke: A developer, a designer and a marketing guy are sitting at a table. A squirrel walks by and says ...