Comment by everlost | Hacker News Reader

Comment by everlost | Hacker News Reader

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I've been working 15+ years as a UX developer, with varying results. From my experience, the best way to get developers and designers to work well together is to have frequent short demos/reviews (ideally weekly). That has helped solve random problems like:

1. This user flow does not match backend reality, let me explain why.

2. How does this screen design handle XYZ usage?

3. I cannot export this asset from figma, please share.

4. Would you mind verifying that the fonts/colors/spacing look okay?

5. Are you sure about not reusing an existing icon from our library?

6. How should we handle error and loading states?

7. How important is this design feature? It'll take me a while to build it.

8. Did you expect this desktop layout to be full width or 1600px?

9. Can you give me an overview of what changed since the last design version?

10. This is how I implemented the design. Is that correct?

> How should we handle error and loading states?

This should be the title of every designer/developer interaction meeting.

LOL. True..

Thanks for these insights. I think this is a great approach. The question is, how to best facilitate these short/demo reviews without creating too many context-switches and interruptions for everyone. We're actually working on a platform that tries to solve this (https://livecycle.io/) by generating instant, collaborative PR preview environments. So the kinds of reviews you describe can happen async and in context. Do you think this approach would work to facilitate the reviews you outline here?

This. Your process also highlights that developers and designers working together is a process that is interlinked and takes time.

Another comment highlights that designers work often without the full picture. I'd add to this they are responsible for bringing solutions to the table as the catalyst to collaboration, exploring compromise and iteration. The best engineers bring solutions to the table too. The worst is when the developers and the designer are bullshitting each other on why things aren't possible with reason from their own domain that the others don't understand or can't reason about.

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