From Design To Development

Seamlessly Go From Design to Development

Ever have a beautiful design created and when you received your product back, your product looks nothing like your design? Usually the delivery team chalks it up to your design wasn’t technically feasible. This could be avoided if the design and development team did one thing: COMMUNICATED EARLY ON. Keep reading to learn how to go from design to development seamlessly.

Traditional work cultures separate designers and developers into silos with very little communication between the design and development team. Once the designs are complete, designers hand off the files for design integration without any form of communication. There aren’t any daily discussions, no brainstorming across silos or exchanging off ideas while the designs are being created. Many times developers are left to guess what the designer means or have to reach out to the designer several times after the design has already been agreed upon. Engaging the developer into the design discussion as early as possible is key to having your final delivery look like your design.

When you involve your developer as early as possible they will be able to let you know if what you requested is possible from a technical standpoint. They can provide feedback as to whether your design fits the developer design guidelines, i.e Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines, Google’s  User Interface Guidelines, etc

Ways to Bridge that Gap

 

Involve Developers Early On

Even if you’re using design tools such as Sketch, Photoshop, Illustrator, etc you can add developers to your client calls. They don’t have to join every call but by having them on the initial design and functionality calls helps. They can provide their insight into how things will translate into an application

 

Designer Hand Off

Your designer should label every single layer in their design file. One of the most important assets for developers is a style guide. This should contain fonts, font size, colors, transparencies, and any style details that will be used in your project. You want to hand off designs that are as detailed as possible.

 

Involving developers early on, creating a design asset and keeping open and clear communication is the sure way to have your website, app, product, etc look exactly as you expected without any unexpected surprises at the end