Designing Across Multiple Platforms
Designing a product for multiple platforms poses a variety of nuanced challenges. iOS, Android, Web, or any other platform, contain their own unique guidelines, users, and devices. It’s ideal to work on more than one platform in a staggered or sequential manner, but the need to work concurrently often arises. In this post, I’ll share a process that has worked well for us when we have needed to juggle platforms.
Avoid a Three-Legged Race
Our first attempt at working concurrently across multiple platforms was to…well…work concurrently. Two designers each took the same feature and worked on it at the same time on their respective platforms. We promptly began stepping on each other’s toes and soon realized this workflow was flawed.
As we worked in unison we often stumbled when it came to consistency. Ensuring that the colors, typography, and call to actions were consistent among all the platforms was a challenge. Different platforms have different technical constraints and call for different conventions. Both designers would stop their work, brainstorm, and usually reevaluate the design and ditch whatever wasn’t working. We began to liken this constant starting and stopping to a three-legged race, in that neither designer could move forward until the other moved forward as well. Not very agile, as you can imagine.
To compound the issue, we found that minute differences between platforms (e.g. hamburger menu vs. tab bar) would distract from the real problem we were trying to solve (navigation) and cause confusion during design reviews.
Enter: The Shake n’ Bake
In the classic Will Ferrell film, Talladega Nights, the two main characters implement a NASCAR technique they coined “The Shake n’ Bake.” The technique required one car to drive in front of the other, effectively working to reduce the wind resistance of the second car. The second car would then slingshot out from behind their teammate and win the race.
Using this as inspiration, we applied a similar strategy to our workflow. Instead of each designer working concurrently on the same feature on their respective platform, we would diverge and work on different features independently. Eventually, each designer would swap respective features and translate the design to their platform. This allowed each designer the freedom to creatively solve any technical constraints along the way. Frequent whiteboard sessions kept everyone on the same page during the process. Increased independence led to clear ownership, faster pace, and room for exploration. Below is a graphic that more clearly elaborates on this workflow:
Having designers dedicated to solving problems on one platform at a time enabled us to work efficiently across multiple platforms. It’s important to stress that this process doesn’t mean working in a vacuum. Collaboration is still free-flowing, and by assigning designers specific responsibilities, they feel creatively satisfied while also able to work fluidly.
Fortunately, this technique can be adapted to meet the various needs of your project. If multiple designers each tackle a different platform, as was the case for us, you can follow what we’ve outlined above. If multiple designers work on the same project, the process is roughly analogous and can be used to distribute features among designers.
