Collaborative Pair Design Process
Pair designing as a creative process of product design.
If you’re a Designer working in Agile product development environment with a design team on your side and you haven’t figured out how to fully use the potential of collaboration, you might find this article handy. I’m going to describe how to reap the benefits of including pair designing in your creative process.
We all know how crucial it is to keep our design work consistent and user-friendly. This is even more challenging while designing complex digital products or improving existing ones with legacy code and design debt. In order to deliver the finest solutions for your product you need to constantly adjust your design process.
You can’t design a good product by working on single elements of the process like perfect visual details. Just because a user interface is beautiful doesn’t make it work easily or be valuable for the users.
Instead imagine what could have happened if you merged your process with another designer … Curious? Let’s go!
Designers’ Process Fusion
You’ve probably heard about pair programming and its benefits for developers. If not — don’t worry, I’ll explain everything in the next paragraph. The important thing is that similar benefits can be achieved by introducing pair designing. Working as one is one option.
In order to provide a seamless experience and the finest quality digital product, multidisciplinary design pairing is a crucial ingredient.
But what happens when you pair up two guys from different design disciplines like Visual Design and User Experience?
Super Slick Designer!
Sounds good, huh? This is what you can achieve by pairing up with a designer who has skills that are complementary to yours.
Frankly speaking I’ve worked on projects where my counterpart was strong in information architecture (IA), strategy and research, complementing my strengths in visual design, interaction design and animation. I admit that I wouldn’t have been able to achieve better results working alone. Collaboration was super effective!
I suppose that at this point many designers would think: Wait a minute! I can handle both UX and UI design… so what’s the point of sharing my design process?
The answer is simple: two heads are always better than one. Especially if you can look at a problem from two different angles. I assume that you want to work smarter rather than harder. If you’re a part of a multidisciplinary design team you should give it a try. Furthermore, there are even more benefits:
- Faster workflow
- Better design quality
- Collective project ownership
- Collaboration by expertise
- Knowledge exchange / Mentoring
- Improved communication skills
- Higher motivation
Cross-disciplinary pair designing enables learning new skills while working on the same problem and brings a better understanding of the product.
How does it work?
Everything seems legit for now? Good! The initial idea of pair design states that: Two people sit side-by-side and design together.
This is just one small step in the whole workflow. That’s why we decided to include the pair designing concept as a core of our creative process.
First things first
Change your mindset. This is the key factor to successful and flawless collaboration. Don’t be selfish and turn down your ego. What’s required to work as a good design pair?
- Say goodbye to your ego.
- Listen with an open mind.
- Be open to constructive criticism.
- Provide feedback early on.
- Solve problems together!
If you’re open to changing your mindset or if that’s the way you already work, then you’re ready to move on!
Cross-disciplinary Collaborative Design Process
First of all I’d like to note that this is not a stiff guide that will work alike for everyone. You and your fellow designer should review and evaluate your skills and think how to combine them into one process to get finest results.
Kick-off & Design Sprint Roadmap
In the beginning of the process we are gathering all the necessary information: personas, usability reports etc. and we try to set the main goals for the project regarding all important factors like user needs and business goals. After that we estimate the time needed for the execution and we come up with a short-term Design Sprint Roadmap (usually up to 2–3 weeks). What are the main actions for this phase?
UX Designer
- Defining user expectations
- Collecting user data
Visual Designer
- Gathering inspiration
- Creating moodboards
Together
- Exchanging collected information
- Brainstorming the ideas
- Setting goals for the project
- Creating a Design Sprint Roadmap
Research
When we’re done with preparation and the goals are clear, we move to the research phase where we confront collected information with potential solutions and the product design system.
In short we create information architecture and we review our UI kit to check whether we can reuse existing components or we need to design something from scratch. At HolidayCheck our priority is to reuse components to speed up the process, but if it comes to more complex interactions we always think out of the box to deliver tailor-made solutions for our users. So what’s going on in this phase?
UX Designer
- Preparing the information architecture
- Processing data into possible solutions
Visual Designer
- Reviewing UI kit components
- Thinking of innovative solutions and new components
Together
- Feedback rounds
- Catch-up with progress
- Conducting workshops (if needed)
Sketching
When we’re clear on the design structure and reusable elements we start sketching user interface. Basically we don’t use any specific model for this part, like driver and navigator, but we are focused on ideas generation.
While sketching we focus on producing as many solutions for a problem as we can. We are challenging them on the fly constantly iterating and improving ideas. Afterwards we’re confident that we’ve picked finest solution from the UX and UI perspective.
Together
- Sketching possible solutions
- Discussing and challenging sketches
- Considering final choices
In the end of this phase we are both aware of the decisions made in the process, we know that the solution is approved from different perspectives and we can easily articulate the pros of the chosen solution. Pair design merges two parallel design disciplines into one powerful tool.
Final Designs: Sketch App and InVision
After sketching sessions come final designs. Our workflow is strongly connected to the tools we use: Sketch App for designing and InVision for prototyping and sharing designs with stakeholders.
In this phase there are different approaches depending on two cases:
- We’re designing something from scratch
- We’re extending the existing user interface
For the first case, we usually start with some user flows and low-fidelity wireframes prepared by UX Designer with some early feedback rounds. When wireframes are done Visual Designer jumps on the final design adding grid, typography, colors, spacings and takes care of all important details.
The second case is a more common scenario for designers working in the product development environment. In this approach we skip wireframing and we work mostly on existing files and components. We usually iterate on the same Sketch files stored in a cloud. Afterwards we have feedback rounds and eventually we choose the best possible options. How does it work?
UX Designer
- Iterating on high-fidelity Sketch mockups
- Exploring possible user flows
- Combining wireframes with existing designs
Visual Designer
- Preparing custom components (if needed)
- Exploring possible UI solutions
- Aligning new elements with the Style guide
- Fine-touching the designs
- Creating interactions in Principle
Together
- Preparing InVision prototypes
- Feedback rounds
- Iterating designs
Handover with Zeplin
Usually when designs are ready they are presented to stakeholders and get approved from business perspective. The final step in this process is handover to the developers.
To have better collaboration between designers and developers we use Zeplin to transfer all necessary information precisely to the team. It is extremely handful to export all essential artboards from Sketch directly to the developers.
While development is ongoing we’re consulting engineering teams providing them guidance to get the pixel-perfect UI and seamless experience throughout the product.
Summing up
When you collaborate with other designers you increase the value of your product and your work efficiency at the same time. Not everyone can collaborate effectively in this framework.
In order to succeed at pair designing you must be able to take the criticism as improvement for the design, not as a personal attack.
Pair designing is all about getting someone whose strengths complement your weaknesses and vice versa. I can guarantee you that your collaborator is going to see things you don’t usually see.
What’s next?
If you don’t have a solid solution how to use the potential of your multidisciplinary team I suggest you give it a try and introduce pair designing into your design process. I bet afterwards you will be positively surprised with the overall results.
Did you find this article interesting? Let me know by ❤️ it. If you have any questions you can reach me directly anywhere on social media.
This is my first article so if you have feedback or see a room for improvement, just let me know! 👍
HolidayCheck is looking for a Visual Designer in Bottighofen (Switzerland). Interested? Apply here
