Working with developers as a designer
Designing Huddle, a student club discovery application, as a solo designer
I took working in a team with designers for granted until I started working as a solo designer with four developers. However, I learn a lot of things about working with developers and how to work collaboratively
UBC Launch Pad
In May of this year I joined a student club at my university called Launch Pad, which is a software engineering club on campus focusing on creating software products. At that time, I had only been working on projects with other designers.
Joining Launch Pad, I was put on a team as the only designer paired with 4 to 6 developers. Including me, there were two designers in the whole club working on separate applications that summer. As a new designer, I was excited for the challenge and the ownership of taking on a new project. However, I did not anticipate the challenges that were ahead of me.
First meeting
Our first meeting consisted of a brainstorming session. Our team came together to think of potential applications we could build to solve a specific problem. We thought of everything from food recommendations, to healthcare and IOT. I also suggested a club finding app for university students. The idea came from my friend’s complaint on our bus trip home about not being able to know which clubs to join on campus as a first year student. After thinking about it, I realized that it is rather difficult for students to know which clubs were good because I only started finding clubs I enjoy in my third or fourth year. After discussing the ideas, our team agreed that a clubs application would be a feasible project for our team to tackle. Our application would later become known as — Huddle.
Starting to work — What I learned
Working with developers is very different from working with designers
The developers started building right away. In the second meeting, they were talking about the infrastructure of the back end while I was still trying to figure out who our users were. I was caught off guard because in the projects I worked with previously started off with ideation, then gathering data, and finally building. While for this project, building the project seemed to come first and I felt like I was lost in the process.
Learning how to lead
Our team lead was a developer. The other developers were new to coding, so the team lead spent a lot of time showing the other developers how to set up their Github and explaining other things. During this time, I was on the side thinking about how Huddle would work.
After observing everything that was happening — teams that were getting to work, and discussions happening about development. I realized that there was no one there to take the lead for design.
As the only designer, I realized that in order to make a truly user centred product, I had to take the lead for design. Not only lead the design but also advocate for the users in a team of developers who have never been exposed to the UX process.
At this point, everyone on my team was already focused on building and writing code for the application. Although, I had some idea of how the application could look like, the the user’s experience was very unclear to me.
Remembering my training as a UX designer, I started to unpack all of the things I needed to do. I realized that I had to stay true to the design process and follow the UX process step by step to figure out where the team and the project were needed to go.
And the best leaders, ask questions all the time, always wondering what their teams can do better and how they can unlock the potential in their people. -Tim Brown
Staying true to the UX process
Without getting carried away, I went back to the drawing board. I started with the first step: Research.
I went through all the processes to understanding the user: interviews and surveys, creating a user persona and a user journey map. These tools helped me tremendously as they helped me validate my assumptions about the user’s experience.
Furthermore, creating these visuals allowed me to help the developers understand the user’s experience.
Sharing
I remember during one of our weekly meetings, I brought all of the data and charts I had created and walked our team through the user’s experience. Showing the developers my research helped them understand what I was doing and why I was doing it. Through this, I learned how to advocate for the users and establish better communication between designers and developers.
Lean UX
A book that helped me during this project was reading Lean UX . This book was intended for small agile teams. The greatest takeaway from this book was learning how to work efficiently between developers and designers. As I was reading the book, I started applying these practices into my project.
Rapid Prototyping with Developers
An exercise I did with my team was getting everyone to sketch out what they think the user interface should look like. By doing this, I was able to understand the developers perspective better. Not only so, the developers were also better able to understand the design process better. Each prototyping session took two minutes only and we presented our ideas to each other after each round. Doing this exercise helped us understand the product better as a whole.
I also learned a lot from the developers as they were able to offer design ideas that I haven’t thought about implementing. They also mentioned things that took into account the development constraints. This exercise helped our team come to an alignment on our vision for the product.
Main takeaways from working with developers:
Apply the Design process to your communication
I remember I would have really long Slack conversations with developers because we had different vision of what our product should be. Here’s what I took away from the process.
- As with any project, start with asking good questions. Ask a lot of questions to your teammates because this is how you will understand their perspective.
- From your questions, you will start to be able to define the problem. I was able to find where our perspectives diverged from asking questions that showed me how my teammates viewed the product.
- Unpack the assumptions behind your perceptions, whether it would be your own or those of others. By asking questions, the developers and I both realized that we had some assumptions that did not make sense and we were able to work those out. My teammates helped me with a lot of things such as figuring out the technical details about how a feature should be implemented. Staying humble and listening to everyone is key in this step.
- Work together to create a common vision. After realizing that our assumptions are not necessarily correct, we worked together to come up with goals we had for our project collectively.
Visual Design
On the visual design side, I had a lot of freedom to create establish the visual identity. I appreciated being the only designer because I had more freedom to express what I felt like Huddle should embody. However, throughout the design process I constantly showed the developers my work to ask them how they felt about the visual identity. My teammates appreciated seeing the design come into place and it helped the team run smoother as a whole.
Reflection
Huddle is also the first project where I worked as the sole designer with a group of developers. The experience has allowed me to take the lead for design for the first time on an application. I learned the importance of standing up for the design process even when no one in my team understood it.
I also felt the importance for designers to have other designers to talk to in a new project. However, I really appreciated this unique experience because I learned how to implement lean UX principles and lead a team of developers through the design process.
In this project, books and other developers became the design team that I never had.
You’re not alone as a solo designer on a team, but you have to learn to reach out and still stay true to the design process.
Learned something new?
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