‘Teamwork makes the dream work’ isn’t just a slogan for the office wall, nor a catchy way for Joe Wicks to motivate you and your workout partner into ten more jumping jacks. Sure, with overuse the saying has become somewhat of a cliche, but the sentiment remains - especially when it comes to the design and development of a digital product.
In fact, a strong cohesion between design and development teams, and a seamless integration between their processes, is all but essential in ensuring projects are focused, efficient and fulfil their utmost potential.
After all, collaborative design and development are the fundamental ingredients to a digital product’s success; designers create the user experience by conceptualising the look and feel of a product, and developers bring this vision to life by building it.
It’s Lennon and McCartney to The Beatles, Liam and Noel to Oasis, Chris Martin and…um, does anybody actually know the name of anyone else in Coldplay? Anyway, our point is that design and development are two essential components that must exist harmoniously in order to get the very best out of one another. When this relationship is firing on all cylinders, you get Definitely Maybe. When it’s not, you get Dig Out Your Soul.
Don’t remember that last album? Exactly.
But achieving this harmony is easier said than done, as it can be tough to get everybody on the same page when there’s a whirlwind of ideas flying around your product. It’s one thing to have grand visions about how it will look and function, but ensuring these ideas are not only feasible but complementary to one another is often a whole other kettle of fish.
When building an application, for example, designers will have a flurry of exciting ideas about everything from how the homepage will be laid out to how users will interact with the menu and navigate between pages, all rooted in the look and feel of the app’s UX. But these ideas might significantly contrast the visions that developers had around the application’s back-end and build, like how different elements will function or how features are prioritised and structured.
That’s because assumptions will inevitably happen on both sides. With a focus on aesthetics and experience, design teams often make too many assumptions about how to build the product, which can result in, at best, unnecessary technical complications and, at worst, mockups that aren’t technically feasible. All the while, development teams will interpret these designs based on cost and complexity, creating an avoidable and underwhelming disconnect between the concept and the end result. Keeping everyone aligned and communication lines open through processes like wireframing subsequently becomes key here - something we delve into further in our top tips below!
This misalignment is simply a result of different perspectives, with different team members approaching a problem from different angles and considerations. And that’s not to say this is a bad thing - the more viewpoints and know-how you gain exposure to, the greater potential your product has. But only if you can bring these inputs together and integrate them harmoniously.
Let’s return to our Beatles metaphor for a second. Often it was Lennon’s job to conceive the message, and McCartney’s job to convey this through melody - this collaboration was the secret recipe for creating hit after hit. But remove this seamless integration between the two, and you might have the lyrics of Yellow Submarine to the tune of Let It Be. Yikes.
So how do you avoid a disconnected process between design and development, where teams Come Together effectively and create amazing products focusing on not just design, but functionality too? Assuming there’s no Yoko Ono to get in the way, it’s all about ensuring collaboration and cohesion from the very beginning, and strengthening this bond throughout the process.
Why integrate design and development?
Design processes should be systematic, deliberate, and iterative, from defining the problem and generating ideas right through to testing prototypes and refining the solution. All the while, development methodologies should remain agile and well informed throughout the duration of a project.
And these best practice approaches inherently lend themselves to collaboration. In fact, failing to stay on the same page all but guarantees that you create a number of unnecessary hurdles that not only impact the efficiency of a project, but the success of the end result too.
This is why involving both design and development from the get-go is so important. By enabling a seamless integration between the two teams and processes, you avoid needless faux pas and common pitfalls, while unlocking a wide range of benefits you’d otherwise miss out on.
Perhaps the most obvious of these benefits is increased efficiency. Poorly managed digital projects are notorious for scope creep, go live delays, and overspends, and one of the primary reasons for this is miscommunication and a lack of collaboration between technical teams.
For example, a designer might create a mockup that incorporates bleeding edge ideas that are super exciting from a UX perspective, but when it comes to the build, these ideas might prove particularly laborious, over-complicated, unachievable, or expensive. At this point it would be back to the drawing board, wasting valuable time, money, and resources through avoidable and unnecessary back and forth.
On the other hand, involving both design and development from the very start not only minimises mishaps throughout the ideation stages, but also promotes a shared focus on the mission and goals of any given project. Not only does this ensure everyone’s on the same page regarding what you’re working towards, but by fostering a united understanding between your tech teams, you also reduce the number of diversions you take along the way.
Your design and development teams are in two separate cars, and it’s your job to ensure they reach the same destination. The fewer detours and pit stops each team makes along the way, the more efficient the journey - so let them map out the route together from the get go!
Elsewhere, a seamless integration of design and development can also create a more efficient handover. If designers and developers have been working alongside one another during discovery, planning, and ideation, there’s significantly less back and forth required between the two teams when it comes to handing over the reins.
Of course, that’s not to say communication should end here; direct lines of communication should always be kept open between the two teams throughout every step of the project. But if developers already have a solid understanding of the task and the reasoning behind it, designers can be consulted as and when needed, rather than having both teams sit through painstaking briefing meetings and catch ups. You’ll also likely find that developers are better equipped to get the ball rolling sooner, armed with the right assets and resources they need from the off.
But of course, efficiency is only one half of the puzzle. The other (and arguably even better) benefit of integrating design and development at the beginning of a project is effectiveness. Two brains are always better than one, and by merging creative and technical minds, you drive more collaborative and purposeful ideation. The result? A significantly improved user experience and a significantly more effective digital product.
This works in a number of ways. First and foremost, involving developers early in the process can offer designers a better understanding of what’s possible. No matter how much of an expert you are, nobody knows everything - even Dr House gets a diagnosis wrong every once in a while. So when it comes to your design team, you can’t expect them to have a limitless technical understanding. By collaborating with developers from the beginning of a project, designers will have a better comprehension of what is and isn’t possible, with developers flagging ideas that will prove particularly problematic later on in the process.
But developers aren’t just there to block unfeasible ideas - after all, nobody likes being the spoilsport. Developers can also leverage their technical knowledge to help designers take their ideas further, contributing to more creative brainstorming and development by expanding on features and functions that would have otherwise been limited or dismissed because of a lack of confidence and know-how.
This collaboration works both ways, too. Often developers can end up making design decisions themselves at some point in the project, with certain choices needing to be made when building or refining the product. After all, it’s unrealistic to expect a design team to have comprehensively covered all the nuances of a digital product in the initial stages. By integrating design and development early, not only can designers help to fill in the blanks at the start of the project, but developers are also better placed to consult with design, or make better-informed decisions themselves, as and when these design compromises are needed.
This all amounts to an enhanced user experience in which every element of the digital product has been considered and constructed in a unified and purposeful manner. You’ll create a more cohesive solution in which features and functions seamlessly complement the aesthetic and user journey, and as a result, your digital product will be better placed to drive objectives successfully, whatever your business goals.
Merging development with design: our top tips
Alright, so we’ve established that integrating design and development can make for the best pairing since Ben and Jerry, but how do you do it successfully? It’s all about empowering both sides to collaborate seamlessly by encouraging openness and establishing the proper processes, frameworks and operational systems.
Involve everyone from the get go
Merging development with design proves more successful the earlier this integration is established. In an ideal world, both teams are directly involved from the start of a project, creating a wave of benefits we’ve already covered in detail - don’t tell us you’ve forgotten them already?!
To do this, adopt the mentality of ‘working in the open’. This iterative approach enables both design and development to share responsibility for a project by being able to access all the information they need to stay involved and up to date from kick off right through to launch. Collaboration tools like Asana and Notion can prove particularly useful here, ensuring all teams have access to all project documents so they can see what’s been working on and the progress being made across each stage.
By ‘working in the open’, design and development will work together on a shared project plan and scope, which not only ensures everyone is on the same page at all times, but also helps to bridge knowledge gaps by defining a clear vision and shared comprehension of what’s being built. In short, it’s not just understanding the what, but the why.
It also encourages collaborative conversations around technologies, platforms, and plugins as early as possible - essential elements that can inform design decisions and significantly influence the direction your design team takes. Again, the earlier in a project’s cycle that these conversations and inputs occur, the fewer hurdles you face further down the line. There’s nothing worse than coming up with a great idea too late, or coming to the realisation that can now only be implemented with significant amendments. Avoid the shoulda, woulda, coulda by getting the ideas flowing from day one.
On the flip side of the coin, this early collaboration also helps to establish comprehensive style guides, guidelines, and component libraries (more on those later) that keep things on track from a development perspective, too. The focus should be on establishing as much information as you can early in a project, and ensuring this information is accessible and compressible to everyone involved, whatever the stage - the more effectively this is implemented, the more cohesive the end result of each project.
Encourage over communication
Collaboration requires communication…obviously. And despite common misconceptions about those working in the digital space, we actually love to socialise with other living, breathing humans. Honest.
However, communication between development and design isn’t quite as simple as sparking up some chat with a trusted conversation starter. Have you seen any good movies recently, anyway? Instead, it’s about focusing on granular feedback and explanations, and ensuring that this is as clear and direct as it can be. In fact, this is perhaps the most crucial aspect of collaboration between the two teams.
Let’s start with the explanations. Remember what we said at the beginning of this post: designers and developers typically approach problems from different perspectives. This means that they have different ways of thinking and, as a result, what’s obvious to one isn’t inherently obvious to the other. For example, the creative mind of a designer is, at points, quite subjective - they prefer to apply their own judgements to ideas rather than granularly test each concept.
This makes it essential for designers to be able to explain their thinking with technical reasoning. A developer might be inclined to pivot from a design feature if they’re under the impression that it only serves an aesthetic purpose, but if this choice is clearly justified from a UX perspective, then the developer gains a better understanding of the why. And in the same breath, developers can offer valuable inputs from a technical perspective that can greatly influence design choices. Encouraging this open communication ensures the project gets the utmost benefits from the expertise you have at your disposal.
Be sure to consider how this communication is facilitated too. Sure, documentation processes, email chains, and Slack or Teams channels serve a purpose here, but they’re not always the most effective or efficient ways to communicate clearly. Instead, try to get into the habit of jumping on calls - it’s often a lot easier to explain reasoning this way.
Of course, when it comes to explaining creative and technical concepts, it can also be useful to adopt a visualisation tool - especially when one person lacks the understanding of another. Prototyping with tools like Figma can prove particularly useful here, enabling designers to preview design elements like buttons, navigation, and interactions through a visual, clickable prototype. This can help turn ideas and concepts into tangible and contextualised features, aiding comprehension and offering a systematic, structural frame to spark new ideas.
Taking steps like this to improve the clarity of your communication is also integral to the other main element: feedback. If design and development can establish a mutual understanding where both understand each other’s perspective, feedback can become more granular and, as a result, more effective.
This should be facilitated through the encouragement of open and constructive critique. The best way to do this? To the tune of 80s Journey’s legendary hit: don’t stop QAing. What do you mean you thought that was Glee?!
An ongoing QA process throughout a project between design and development not only offers consistent opportunities for both sides to offer input, but also helps to maintain a cohesive approach that keeps both sides on the same path towards a shared vision. Look to establish a structured QA process to ensure this remains strategic and effective.
However, it’s also important to establish trust and respect here. Remember that this granular feedback shouldn’t just be based on your own opinions, but instead come from a place of well informed reasoning - both sides should display respect for each other’s expertise, and demonstrate trust in their knowledge and reasoning.
Use every tool in your shed
When it comes to the handover, it’s important that both sides have gone above and beyond to equip each other with everything they need to do the job to the best of their ability. You wouldn’t attempt some home renovations without getting all the tools you need out of the shed (although if your DIY skills are anything like ours, you wouldn’t be getting the tools out full stop…).
So what do design and development teams need to do the job right? Don’t worry, it’s just a metaphor - put the toolbox down, Nick Knowles. Swap out the hammer and chisel for a UI kit and component library, and now you’re in business.
These design systems are intended to help both design and development teams work in cohesive collaboration by establishing style guidelines around the use of assets, functions, and features. Documentation processes are key here. Look to determine clear frameworks and document them somewhere that’s easily accessible, ensuring everyone knows how and where to find them.
Don’t overcomplicate things here just for the sake of sounding fancy either - who are you trying to impress, after all? The focus should be on usability and understanding, so agree on a standardised approach that adopts consistent and logical organisation and naming conventions.
These tools are intended to ensure both design and development work within predetermined boundaries, ensuring everyone stays on the same track towards a cohesive solution. For example, UI kits act as style guides, establishing rules around elements like colours, fonts, and other assets to help developers create global styles. Meanwhile, component libraries can either be created specifically for the product at hand, or you can utilise a premade library like Google’s Material AI or Ant Design. These typically include things like margins, layouts, buttons, input fields, cards, and the likes - basically every element that makes up the user interface (UI).
The idea is that by documenting these elements, you can ensure they’ve been properly tested and are suitable for considerations such as accessibility, subsequently minimising roadblocks throughout the build.
Don’t be fooled into thinking restricting creative freedom is a bad thing. On the contrary, designers operating without restraint can often fall victim to being too creative, leading to too many iterations and an inconsistent solution. Not only does this create difficulty for developers who have to understand these styles, but it can also create difficulty for end users.
For example, let’s say your designer builds a fancy looking triangular button that acts as a navigation tool between pages on your website because, well, it just looks cool. But as users we’re subconsciously accustomed to specific visual languages and cues, meaning this super cool triangular button would be problematic: would users inherently recognise that this feature was a button and understand what it does? And depending on the colour and font choices, would it pass accessibility tests? Just imagine if someone suddenly changed how zebra crossings looked one day. At best, nobody would know where to safely cross the road. At worst, the Abbey Road cover wouldn’t look anywhere near as iconic…
So, by establishing these guidelines and frameworks early in the project, you create a smoother handover process and a more efficient build by reducing the amount of back and forth between development and design, and ensuring all decisions are being made within a set of parameters that guarantee a cohesive and functional solution.
TL;DR
We get it, you’re in a rush. Phone battery about to die, places to be, a new episode of I’m A Celebrity to catch up on. No offence taken! Here are the main takeaways you need to know:
- Design and development are two essential components that must exist harmoniously to get the very best out of one another
- You get a disconnected process when there are too many assumptions made by both sides. Design teams will make too many assumptions about how to build the product while development teams will interpret the designs based on cost and complexity
- Involving both design and development from the very start not only minimises mishaps throughout the ideation stages, but also promotes a shared focus on the mission and goals of any given project
- If designers and developers have been working alongside one another during discovery, planning, and ideation, there’s significantly less back and forth required between the two teams when it comes to handing over the reins
- Merging creative and technical minds drives more collaborative and purposeful ideation, resulting in a significantly improved user experience and a significantly more effective digital product
- Merging development with design proves more successful the earlier this integration is established
- Adopt ‘working in the open’ to bridge knowledge gaps and ensure everyone is on the same page at all times
- Encourage over communication through granular explanation and feedback between design and development teams
- Utilise design systems like UI kits and component libraries to provide a framework for consistencies
Merging design and development is all about empowering both sides to collaborate and communicate seamlessly towards a unified vision. Provide them with the tools and resources they need to work together successfully, and you’ll create a digital product that’s not only cohesive, but significantly more effective at driving your business objectives, whatever they may be. After all, teamwork makes the dream work.