Coding the design success!
Karthi Subbaraman
Design Leadership @ Salesforce | Building #pifo, a not-for-profit fostering betterment and belonging.
In all careers there is a factor of ROI. Design career is not an exception. If you closely look into a designer's job, it is our duty to imagine, ideate, give form and shape to the idea, add color and type to it and repeat (iterate) all the above till the design gets to a shape where it can be shipped to the customer. That is a lot of hard work. It doesn't end here. Now for the customer to really see what the designer envisioned, there is a big bridge in between called the code.
This piece of code is written by our developer friends so that the design can be pushed into a tangible application or a website or wrapper etc. If this app has some bugs or missing details still it can work but it is not a success because what we want to give to customers has not reached them in the form it was imagined. If the design needs to be successful, the code also is a big factor to consider. So how can we increase this probability of success? The simple and humble answer is to work closely with the developer on the details.
The design goes for a toss when the developer is not aware of the details or is not paying much attention to the details.
Here are a few tips to work closely with developers.
- As designers we need to communicate our designs better so that developers are clear before they start writing the first line of code.
- It is important to maintain a healthy relationship with our developer friends. We need to educate them about the design tools, components, and brand guidelines so that they also maintain the consistency.
- In my years of working with developers I have noticed that they do not pay attention to spacings, line heights, color shades as it is not in their objective thought process. For a developer functionality comes first and they are focused on pushing out a working app.
- Once the development is complete, as a designer it is our duty to conduct a UXQA and point out the gaps between the specifications and the delivered app.
- We need to have more coffee meetings with developers and evangelise design with ample documentation and examples even though apps like Zeplin, Invision, Adobe XD are working as a mediator between us.
Just by doing the above our probability of success increases by at least 60%. What are you waiting for?