Ryan from 37 signals mentions a very important point in his talk ( http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2608-ryans-talk-at-future-of-web-apps-2010-london) about developers creating UI that look like a visual manifestation of the database schemas.

I have also been thinking about this for a while as I juggle both development and UX work. To develop really usable screens, you have to wear the UI/UX hat and think from the user's perspective. May be you need to drop some not so often needed fields from a form or highlight some information on a page.

Typically I have to step away from code once in a while to look at things from a user's perspective. If you are a doing both coding and UI/UX work, how do you make this switch? Do you keep separate days for coding and UI/UX or you have a process that you follow. I would love to know what works well for hackers here.

Thanks, Prateek