How to improve collaboration between designers and developers
Oftentimes, there’s a cold war brewing up between designers and developers. The reasons might vary from time to time. In the new era of product development, it might seem obvious that designers and developers must work together. However, things aren’t always that easy.
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Let me share one incident with you.
Creative vs Creative
A team of developers and designers were working on a project together. After a few days, the senior designer came and stood right behind the senior developer’s screen and as soon as he turned around, he asked him, “There are no gradients and drop-shadows in the product.” The developer on the other hand was thinking how to better it by enabling it to scroll faster sideways and said, “He’ll add them later.” The designer seemed to be a little disappointed and went back. On the other hand, the developer was wondering about the need to add them to the final product.
Now, if we carefully look into the above scenario, we would analyze that both the teams were working on designing and developing as per what they wanted in the product instead of paying attention if what they are doing is in accordance with the other team or not.
This is just one of the many incidents that happen when two creative teams are involved in a project. It’s no surprise that when two creatives work, there are bound to be differences — some due to their approach towards the project and some might be due to ineffective communication. There are other issues as well that end up slowing up or ruining the collaboration between developers and designers. Let’s take a look at them first before we talk about the ways to improve the collaboration amongst designers and developers.
Lack of alignment
The first and the mother of all problems is when both the teams are not on the same page. Each team is working with its preconceived notions and assumptions and don’t even bother to clarify. This asynchronization in terms of thinking leads to muddled information, teams working ‘their’ way, projects taking longer time than expected, and the final product not meeting the expectations of the clients.
No central hub
It can be difficult and chaotic to track changes in design and code over multiple channels. Team members might find it hard to manage and track the progress of the project if the team is not using any project management or collaboration software. Searching and locating for project related documents can be tiresome if there isn’t a central hub where all the relevant information is kept securely. This absence of a central system can cost team members their time and productivity.
To overcome this sort of mismanagement, it’s advisable that the both the teams sit together for a meeting and decide how to go about it — together. However, it might or might not be possible considering the number of workers choosing to work remotely and designing and development team might be scattered at different geographical locations across different time zones.
You need not to worry, we have made a list of things that enable creatives teams like that of designing and engineering teams to collaborate better and work in complete harmony.
#1. Keep the user in mind
The whole process of creating a product always starts with focusing on the user in mind. If you are working on a new product or introducing new feature updates in the product, think like someone who is using a product for quite some time. What do you think needs to be added or introduced that could increase the overall functionality of the product? Have you faced any issues or small bugs that need to be resolved? If yes, align your efforts with the business goals. Otherwise, there is no point of designing or building anything that’s not doing any good to the user.
#2. Establish a clear and shared understanding
Developers and designers need to work together from the starting to make sure there no knowledge or communication gaps. At times, development teams aren’t much aware of how things are shaping up in the designing department. They are either completely unaware or have a vague idea. If you involve both the parties early on, you might reduce the number of redesigns, delays, and frustration caused to the designing team members. Besides, lower chances of poor designs, this would also contribute to higher levels of satisfaction from the user’s end and would create a room for exchange of ideas before the water crosses the meter.
#3. Communicate early and often
Do you know how much poor communication can cost to your organization? A survey recently cited that an average loss per company of $62.4 million per year is due to inadequate communication amongst team members. This doesn’t end here, 86% of employees and executives cite lack of collaboration or ineffective communication for major workplace failures. Our designing and development at ProofHub teams are always on the same page when they are working on a shared goal. It gives them a platform to communication in context to the project and find a logical solution to any issue or problem.
#4. Find tools your whole team can agree on (proofing tool)
It’s essential to have a designing system in place for a designing team to deliver high-quality designs. It helps them to store all the related elements such as buttons, fonts, UI components to store at a single place accessible to all. It can have many short term and long term results. From being a central place to contributing in the scalability, it can do it all for designers. There are other tools that can help teams manage work and collaborate effectively such as ProofHub and Slack.
ProofHub is an all-in-one project management software that acts as a great online proofing tool. It brings together teams, clients, and stakeholders under one roof that saves a lot of time during the review and feedback sharing process. Moreover, you can chat and converse in real time for better collaboration with ProofHub.
#5. Involve stakeholders in meetings
Meetings do play an important role in the life of a product. Because they play such a pivotal part, it makes sense to give some thought to decide who should be called depending upon the value they bring to it. Make sure you involve active stakeholders and other key players in the first meeting to set a solid foundation for the project. At ProofHub, we make cross-functional or interdepartmental teams of maximum 4–5 individuals. The purpose is to include a developer and a designer or two developers and a designer and other key decision makers. It helps in faster feedback loops that leads to quicker action. Make sure to keep the meetings short and specific.
If you don’t have an in-house team of designers and developers, there’s a myriad of collaboration tools that enable audio and video collaboration.
Conclusion
The time has come when we start thinking about designing development. In reality, development is design and design is web development. Both go hand in hand and both work towards a singular goal: to create a phenomenal website so it is important to understand the duties of one another and work in complete harmony.
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