5 tips on better designer-developer hand-off and collaboration

Project consultant, Figma branches, project documentation, and more from a designer with 10+ yrs. experience.

No design is useful unless it’s implemented as intended — this an uncomfortable truth all designers need to let sink in. Being able to collaborate fluidly with developers is an essential skill to being a good product designer. Developers are also “users” of our design work, which we need to account for and give them a good experience.

It’s not really a hand-off

The first step is to shift the frame of mind of what the relationship should be. The designer isn’t supposed to simply pass down a list of instructions to the developers. We are not all-knowing. The best designers are great information aggregators. They understand the value of involving team members with different skills and points of view — developers, marketing, sales, etc. Of all the departments in a company, in most cases, product designers collaborate the most with developers, so working well with them is crucial for the success of a product. Emphasis on “collaboration”. It’s a dance, not a hand-off. This is not to be confused with a chaotic lack of process. A dance is always led by one party while the other one follows along. Roles can change for different phases of the production process, but there should always be a clear decision-maker and constant input between them.

Have a dedicated development consultant for each project

The product design process is often a balancing act of business requirements, technical constraints, user needs, and principles of good design, which is why involving other departments early in the design process is essential to avoid unnecessary rework. However, people are busy with their work. Simply throwing up a design for review by anyone on the team will at best yield a lot of superficial feedback, or at worst, be ignored. One way to solve this issue is to group people in squads (i.e. small teams that work together closely on a project), however, not all companies work this way. Regardless of how the company is organized, it’s important to find a developer that will commit to providing careful…