In a team where user experience is the main goal, designers and developers can easily bump heads. However, if collaboration is done successfully, it can lead to some successful software products.
Some may wonder what successful collaboration has anything to do with software development. However, the UX/UI design of software can make or break the program’s success once it’s on the market. So, you want to ensure you’re doing everything you can to bridge the collaboration and communication gap between UX/UI designers and developers.
Plus, the high usability expectations of consumers today make the collaboration among UX/UI designers and developers that much more important. Here’s how collaboration can lead to better UX/UI design decisions.
Access to a Wealth of Knowledge, Experience, and Skill
One of the ways collaboration can lead to better UX/UI design decisions is through the distribution of knowledge between different members on your design and development teams with varied experiences and skills. Making UX/UI decisions in a collaborative environment leads to creative ideas and solutions that result in products that better suit the needs and wants of users.
When your design and development teams attend collaboration sessions, they can practice techniques like design-thinking as a group. By following the five stages of design-thinking, they’ll consider usability from multiple perspectives and develop a human-centric user experience.
Collaboration can also help ensure that every part of the UX/UI design process has skilled leaders at the forefront.
Ensure Every Part of the Process Is Mastered
When working in a collaborative environment, people are better at some tasks and worse than others. This can be an advantage for optimizing the many moving parts in the UX design and UI development processes.
When designers and developers collaborate effectively, they can even inspire each other to grow their skillsets. For example, some development team members might consider taking a simple UX design course to keep up with experienced designers. In that same token, members of the design team might consider brushing up on crucial development skills to enable long-term collaboration between the two departments.
When your designers and developers collaborate effectively, they can create a more user-friendly product as well.
Create a More User-Friendly Product
Everyone will use your final product differently. You can mirror that diverse customer base with collaboration among UX/UI designers and developers. The more diverse your teams are, the better. You’ll be able to see your product from multiple perspectives.
In the end, when there’s collaboration across teams, you create a more user-friendly and accessible product.
Collaboration among your development and design teams also enables you to make UX/UI decisions that keep you ahead of your competitors.
Stay Ahead of the Competition
As more and more people implement daily use of technology, the UX/UI design space becomes more competitive. Companies worldwide are constantly looking for ways to exceed the user experience expectations of their customers. With solid collaboration among your designers and developers, you can stay ahead of the pack.
As stated above, when your UX/UI design and development teams collaborate effectively, there’s a wealth of knowledge, experience, and skill shared that leads to some of the most creative, on-point decisions and solutions for product design and development. Those decisions and solutions could be the difference between your customers choosing your product over the competition.
More Efficient Use of Tools
UX design and UI development teams use a whole host of tech tools to carry out various procedures and processes. When there’s effective collaboration in play, designers and developers can use tools more efficiently to create better product functions and features.
Designers can learn about the tools developers are using and vice versa to understand better how to work together. For example, a designer can shadow a developer and learn that a particular part of the process takes longer because of a specific tool the developer has to use. Or a developer can show a designer why a particular element of design isn’t possible because of the tools necessary to create it.
Improve the Process After Project Completion
Although it would be nice if the work were done once a project is complete, it seems like that’s when the real work starts. There are quite a few decisions made after a product launch, including updates and other adjustments to function and design.
Ultimately, some crucial UX/UI design decisions happen after a product launch. So, you want your designers and developers to grow their collaboration and communication so that they can continue making design decisions that will make the user experience better.
Conclusion
Collaboration can lead to better UX/UI design decisions. Some best practices regarding team collaboration that your team can implement today are:
- ● Create collaboration guidelines — outline exactly what collaboration means and looks like for your unique teams
- ● Set communication expectations — everyone should know who to reach out to, how to best get a hold of them, when it’s appropriate to contact them, what communication channel to use, and why.
- ● Honor each member’s skills and interests — find out what each person’s skillset and interests are on your design and development teams and see how you can leverage this knowledge to make collaboration more seamless.
- ● Make sure there’s a team hierarchy in place — Good collaboration starts from the top down. Be sure you’re leading by example and that each person on each team knows who’s overseeing everything.
Ultimately, better UX/UI design decisions rely on how well your designers and developers work together.
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