Collaboration for the Good of Mankind

Ways designers and developers can better work as a team.

When building applications and websites at Helpful Human, the most important aspect is to provide our clients with an end product that efficiently meets project requirements and client expectations.

Sometimes, that’s easier said than done.

Running into snags throughout the course of a project isn’t uncommon, adding more pain and hassle than necessary. More often than not, these complications bog down production speed and, if not resolved appropriately, can also affect the overall integrity of the work.

While each project may differ when it comes down to its purpose and the challenges associated, the team responsible for building it should do everything in their power to reduce errors and the amount of time needed to complete. The designers and developers in charge of piecing the assignment together can have a great impact when cooperating effectively.

The chances of completing a task without any problems are low, but there are ways designers and developers can better collaborate to iron out many of these potential dilemmas and deliver a superior product to the client.

We’re in this together.

Design and development go hand in hand. The two are symbiotic; development needs a design, so we know what to build, while design needs the development capabilities to realize their designs and work.

A project starts with an idea and gets worked out piece by piece until it becomes a fully fleshed-out concept.

Designers are in charge of taking that concept and supplying the blueprints for the ascetic, interactivity, and overall flow of the product.

Developers then take these blueprints and use them to build a functioning and tangible application.

Throughout the process, it’s likely that, at some point, someone may make a mistake or a complication may arise. When this occurs, designers and developers need to avoid immediately pointing fingers and passing the blame on each other. It’s important to realize that both dev and design are vital to the completion and success of the experience. Rather than chastise, we need to work together to find the solution.

Please build this right!

When creating the appearance and flow of a project design, the designer will have a certain vision in mind for how the end results should be perceived by the user. Understanding the designer’s vision for how the experience should look and function is significant. A developer needs to know what each element does and which tools are necessary to accomplish the task at hand.

The concept is simple: the easier time a developer has with understanding the intent, the easier time they’ll have building it. Here are some tricks to help designers help developers:

• Hand over design files made with programs such as Sketch, Zeppelin, or Photoshop (rather than a plain image)
• Provide details such as spacing, element sizing, color palette, and various font properties (i.e. size, family, line height, etc.)
• Outline the steps of UI flow in your initial design file to greatly improve comprehension of an element’s purpose

As far as information and the small details in designs go: the more, the better.

I’m afraid I can’t do that.

Having a full understanding of what the designer is aiming for also helps the developer provide the design team with important feedback on what aspects of the design may or may not be realistic. A designer could pass the dev team a set of designs with what seems like near impossible requests and have little to no knowledge of what it is they’re asking for.

Most designers aren’t developers — and vice versa. (That’s not to say that there aren’t people who do both.) Designers don’t necessarily know the ins and outs of the specific frameworks or packages being used and their limitations.

By giving feedback on potential challenges in the design, the developer helps catch project risks early on. But, more importantly, it betters the designer’s grasp of what’s possible within the development.

Helping the designer to understand the concerns associated with their design decisions is half the battle. The developer must also make a point of working with design to find the best solutions or alternatives to these challenges. Bringing attention to the problem tells the designer that they need to fix it, but doesn’t offer how it can be fixed. Including a solution can mitigate potentially troublesome design choices.

When it comes down to it…

Providing the client with the best possible product in a timely manner is the most important part of a project. To be truly successful in achieving this, the team will need to perform like a well-oiled machine.

Design and development have the capability to greatly increase their productivity and quality of work by learning to collaborate more efficiently and provide each other with a better understanding of what needs to be done in order to achieve the greatest possible product.

Perhaps the team at Helpful Human can collaborate with you — get in touch if you’d like to learn more about our projects and methodology.