Career Services in Coda! [Katie Rivard]

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Career Services in Coda! [Katie Rivard]

Cross-Functional Teamwork

Lesson: Working With a Developer

10 minute read

Depending on your team or company's structure, you've likely had or will have the opportunity to work with a developer to implement your designs into fully functioning sites and applications. While your roles both focus on two different ends of the spectrum in terms of the project, working together effectively can increase the likelihood of success and lead to better collaborations in the future.

Communication

With any project, communication is the core of completing it successfully. This is no different when working with a developer. It's actually the most important component of being collaborative and professional.

As a designer, it's easy to silo your conversations within your own team and focus only on your tasks. However, if you're not the one building what you design, it's essential for you to build relationships with those who will be.

While you may not have the technical chops to develop the site, it's important for you to at least understand the technology stack you're designing for. By increasing your knowledge of development frameworks and languages, you can help drive conversations and understand any constraints the development team may speak of as you progress in the project.

This means for you to talk with the development team, gain a better comprehension of how they plan to architect the system, and how you fit into the equation. This also means learning the same language, or jargon, as the developers. This can bring tremendous value to you as a designer and help move the project along without confusion or lack of clarity as you collaborate.

On the flip side, it's important for developers to understand your design language as well. As a designer on a team, it's your duty to help educate them as much as possible on what your responsibilities are and how you plan to effectively work alongside them. By working together and understanding each others' roles, it can help drive the project forward without many complications. And speaking similar languages will help conversations go further.

Collaboration

Often times, you and the developers won't be on the same team. Depending on the company structure, design and development may be split into separate teams, reporting to different managers with separate priorities. This can lead to conflict at times, but shouldn't be a roadblock in making sure you collaborate with your programming counterparts.

Collaboration can help a project excel and exceed expectations when done properly. By working together, even if side-by-side, you as the designer can understand the complexity of the development team, while helping them quickly understand any of the proposed designs you've handed off.

Working collaboratively with developers can also help you as a designer see issues you may have not thought of. While you typically try to assess and plan for all edge cases, developers may pose some risks you didn't account for. By being able to work directly with the development team, you can solve these issues quickly and move the project along.

Part of working collaboratively is being a part of the meetings that happen to plan out projects. Whether these include sprint planning meetings in an Agile environment or short brainstorming sessions to determine functionality, you as the designer should make sure to be a part of it so everyone is on the same page going forward.

Also knowing what developers need to make the project come to life is important to help speed up the "pass-off", or the process where it shifts from design to development. Be certain to know the process for providing assets to the development team, whether or not you have to export those assets, or if you can use a system like

Zeplin⁠

InVision Inspect⁠

, or Figma's built-in asset sharing system.

Challenges

Design has come to the forefront as a key factor in the success of companies, but it hasn't always been that way. And while it's more prevalent now, some companies still operate with design as an afterthought.

Because of this, it might be difficult to work with the development team to get changes or updates made based on your research. If the company has been primarily led by developers, bringing a new sibling into the fold to mix things up (such as a designer) may hinder their typical way of getting things done.

If you come to discover that decisions are being made and handed down by product or development, it's important for you to seek a seat at the table. Design should be something that works in tandem with the rest of the team versus coming in at the end to make things look better.

Some times, working with developers can also pose the problem of the "this can't be done" mentality. If you propose a design that may be difficult to develop or not possible at all, don't feel the need to cave in and do whatever the developers say is possible. Work with them on other solutions based on the constraints and timeline, and create something that is usable, functional, and beautiful.

Remember that you are working as a team. Conflicts may arise, but knowing how to communicate together to solve those can help make projects successful.

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