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Ask HN: How to get developers and UI designers to work well together
11–20 of 141 posts
Re: Ask HN: How to get developers and UI designers to work well together
#12Have you read this article https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2022/07/resolving-conflicts... ?
"For example, a corporate culture that is collaborative and open can have teams that are hyper-focused on metrics and productivity that misconstrue the intent of the culture to meet productivity metrics."
What planet do they live on? I've never been in a corporate culture that was like this, usually the opposite. Upper management is completely detached from reality, relies solely on metrics, and cuts costs as much as possible, which leads to dramatic churn. Engineers are too overwhelmed with doing the jobs of 3 people to do proper collaboration. That's the norm in Corporate America.
Re: Ask HN: How to get developers and UI designers to work well together
#13Don't just let your designers hand over the results. Make them pair on work with the engineers. This way, they will
- get to know each other
- get a better understanding of each other's work: what is important in the design and what is not, why is the design like it is, what is difficult to implement, how much effort certain tasks are, etc.
Another trick is to ask engineers for design input, e.g. in sketching sessions or design reviews.
As an engineer, I think Figma is a great tool. I can see exactly how the UI should look like, including all the details like colors, fonts and margins.
Re: Ask HN: How to get developers and UI designers to work well together
#14It really depends on your company processes and culture. I've seen most trouble when SaaS companies expect frequent/incremental delivery of features from engineers, but UX is not part of team but some thing apart that hands over pixel perfect mockups worked on in isolation from the dev team, and that doesn't consider incremental delivery.
Re: Ask HN: How to get developers and UI designers to work well together
#15I played both roles in different companies. One thing I found wasting a lot of time on in past companies was the back-and-forth around minor changes like UX copy. Every time I would want a different text in the app I would have to ask the dev to do so and vice versa, I had designers sending me minor changes they need me to fix in the production app. (Shameless plug: this is why I joined working on FlyCode[1] S22)
[1]: https://flycode.com
Re: Ask HN: How to get developers and UI designers to work well together
#16I find a few sources of tension
- designers who want things to be "pixel perfect" while devs may cut corners to ship it quickly
- devs who unilaterally alter the design without discussing it with the designer, because they think it's better
- designers who design overly elaborate, customized UI solutions when simple, existing ones do the trick, and then are frustrated when devs push back
- designers with little technical understanding of things like react designing things that seem simple to them, but are complicated to implement, and then are frustrated when devs push back
- designers who feel like they have the final say over UI, while devs view it as more of a suggestion
I don't think I've really solved these super well in larger companies, but where I've observed it not be an issue is when people are closely connected to the product being built, and understand it (even better if they are users), and are working together directly (without product managers as a go between). Not to be like a Marxist, but I think it might actually be caused by alienation from one's labor. Designers design a thing in a vacuum, not fully understanding it, hand it off to devs. Devs code it, not really participating in the creative process. When they are an integrated team solving a problem they understand, collaboratively, it works better.
Re: Ask HN: How to get developers and UI designers to work well together
#17As a mobile developer, the main pain point with collaborating with a designers over the years has been their complete lack of knowledge when it comes to norms on Android. All have been exclusively iOS users, with no feel for how the two platforms differ, and I have had to take it up on my self to translate and adjust the designs given to me so that they follow norms and practices on Android.
Are you in the US? I seem to be having the same problem, but in reverse - Android-isms in iOS; I am in central EU, designers/client are from Ireland.
It appears to me that they also do not differentiate between screens and modals and just pick at random which flow will be which. I am not faulting them for that, as Apple has gone pretty wild with modals lately too, but still, at least some consistency would be nice.
Re: Ask HN: How to get developers and UI designers to work well together
#18I come from a different industry before moving into this one, but there’s a chaotic and abysmal lack of teamwork between departments in this industry that I’ve seen this far.
Have those two teams work together.
Also, foster a culture of continuous self-improvement. I’ve now seen a bunch of “it’s good enough to ship, go for it” and now whatever work arounds and bandaids are permanent. Don’t be so fast, don’t try to iterate so quickly, and focus on quality over quick ROI.
Imagine if Boeing behaved like a SaaS operator. The first version of 737 would be glued together, and in turbulence the wings would snap off “oh, I guess we should use more glue in the next version - alright guys, iterate!”
Slow down, do a good job, and the product will come.
Re: Ask HN: How to get developers and UI designers to work well together
#19I come from a different industry before moving into this one, but there’s a chaotic and abysmal lack of teamwork between departments in this industry that I’ve seen this far. Have those two teams work together. Also, foster a culture of continuous self-improvement. I’ve now seen a bunch of “it’s good enough to ship, go for it” and now whatever work arounds and bandaids are permanent. Don’t be so fast, don’t try to it…
I don't have to imagine https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/boeing-charged-737-max-fraud-...
Re: Ask HN: How to get developers and UI designers to work well together
#20I played both roles in different companies. One thing I found wasting a lot of time on in past companies was the back-and-forth around minor changes like UX copy. Every time I would want a different text in the app I would have to ask the dev to do so and vice versa, I had designers sending me minor changes they need me to fix in the production app. (Shameless plug: this is why I joined working on FlyCode[1] S22) [1]…
I really wish there a setting in browsers to disable animations. I think it’s a ux anti pattern.