The document discusses building connections between UX designers and developers. It notes that differing goals and work styles can lead to friction but that bringing harmony is important for success. It explores various "teams in the wild" and personas for designers and developers. Techniques are presented for deconstructing adversarial relationships such as understanding constraints, listening, and collaborating throughout the design process. The document advocates for techniques like timeboxing prototyping, co-presenting to leadership, and code reviews to facilitate partnership between the roles.
6. Bridging the gap from adversarial to
harmonious is possible...
+ Teamwork
techniques
Personal
connection
7. Think about your best or most
positive experience working with
one or more developers.
What made it positive?
What made it productive or
enjoyable, or both?
Why do you think it
worked well?
9. Teams in the wild
Unicorn. One person team that does it all—and pretty well.
Horse. Jack-of-all-trades, master of none or one—the results show it.
Over-the-wall. Design + Dev working as an assembly line.
Integrators. Design + Dev collaborate, but it’s back-and-forth and
everyone stays in their corner.
Partnership. Design + Dev are in it together, from the beginning.
10. Designer personas
Visual only. Master of Illustrator, meticulous aesthetic detail, no or
limited exposure to implementation.
Tech savvy. Understands how designs will “translate” to code, foresees
constraints, .
Prototyper. Knows their way around markup, builds prototypes, speaks
“code” to developers.
11. Developer personas
Backend. Works on underlying functionality of product, no or limited UI
exposure.
Frontend frameworker. Great at Legos, builds UI with frameworks,
limited ability to make custom controls and experiences.
Frontend master. Solid grasp on UX, can bring a new and unique UI
to life from the ground up.
Full stack. Hybrid backend and frontend skills, in the unique position to
make end-to-end UX shine.
28. What do designers and
developers bring to the table?
What do UXers see that
devs may not?
What do devs see that
UXers may not?
What do you bring to the table?
42. Tie-break in the wild
Use A/B testing to choose the best experience.
Works when engineering is cheap and UR is the long-pole.
43. Test UX with real code
Partner w/ dev to “stress test” designs.
Helps cover more variations, keeping everyone aligned.
Easy to repeat tests as design evolves.
44. Co-present to peers and leadership
Win together.
Quickly cuts to “what’s important”.
Everyone wants to look good.
48. 1. Pick a few techniques we talked about
today that you want to try.
2. Describe the project or people you’ll try
them with.
3. What actions will you take and when?
Make your plan of action