A quick guide to an effective design handoff

A UX-UI Designers job is collaborative in nature. Transforming the design into a usable product requires effective communication between multiple teams. Developers are the strongest pillar out of them.

It is the development team that brings the design to life, adding every interaction component making the design look intuitive.

However, it is quite a challenge to provide the development team with a handover after the final designs have been created. When this transition isn’t seamless, the designers often find themselves solving the questions of the developer. This reduces the focus of the designer of their ongoing projects and the designer has to revisit and re-organise the design assets for a re-transition.

This creates a need for creating and a system that makes the transition from design to development seamless and effective.

Your handover checklist

The job of a UX-UI designer extends than just designing UI. It is a designer’s role to ensure the developer’s job becomes easy. The first stage of the design handover should involve the creation of a handover checklist.

A design checklist typically includes:

• Information architecture
• Mockups
• Interactions
• Copy to be utilized
• Specifications and assets

Checklists ensure that the handover process is organized making it almost impossible to skip tasks in between.

Developers clearly understand the items they are going to receive and this can be visited during the initial stages to match the expectations of both the parties involved.

Handing over your files and assets

Style guides help in forming a consistent design system.

Along with typography additional components like button states, empty states also have to be sent across. Most design software like Adobe XD and Photoshop allow developers to inspect specifications. Softwares like Zeplin and Invision have also proved to be very efficient for prototyping and checking specifications. Using the correct software will reduce the dependency on the designer whereas the developer will always have a reference when a designer is not available.

Last-minute issues

Be ready for additional last-minute adjustments if the design cannot translate to coding.

Animation and micro animations also form a part of design hence it is important to show the designs in motion, however for some reason if that can’t be done then show appropriate references for the developer to understand.

Since coding is more complex than shifting the button a little lower and higher, it is important to speak the developer’s language and effectively communicate to move the button two pixels lower or higher.

Kill the communication breakdown

Communication breakdowns often create iterative feedback loops that involve both parties to devote their crucial time in solving minute problems.

A simple method is to encourage the involvement of the development team in the design process. This helps the designer know if there are any constraints from a development perspective.

For example: For an e-commerce fashion industry app a designer would create a feature to filter clothes based on their design patterns and would organize them into multiple sections. However, it may be possible that the developer cannot develop that feature within the time frame of the project.
This solves multiple problems where designers are well known of the possibilities beforehand, which streamlines communications and reduces problems during a handover.

A designer should also ensure that they work on software that is suitable for both teams. This creates a high level of transparency at every stage, proactively solving the problems that would arise out of this during the handover.

Stay Updated

In this dynamic space in the industry, it is important for designers to learn the basics of coding and developers to have knowledge of design to bridge the gap and deliver great products. With this knowledge, designers can improve developer communication making it easier for teams to deliver projects quickly in a more efficient manner. This helps designers also understand the barriers that are typically faced by the development team in the most likely scenarios. This helps them take a proactive approach during the design phase and reduce the feedback workload due to the barriers.

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