adversarial to harmonious: building the developer / ux connection

#UXPA2016www.uxpa2016.org

Adversarial to Harmonious

Building the Developer / UX Connection

Nick Tucker@ncktckr

Laura Faulkner, PhD@ laurafaulkner

Ever worked on a project where Design and

Development blended like oil and water?

Being stuck in a storming phase isn’t good for you, your product, and ultimately your

users.

Differing goals, work styles, personalities, and pressures

lead to messy results, slow deliveries, and frustration

Bringing harmony to your team is important to your success and your sanity.

Bridging the gap from adversarial to harmonious is possible...

+ Teamwork technique

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Personalconnection

Think about your best or most positive experience working

with one or more developers.What made it positive?

What made it productive or enjoyable, or both?

Why do you think it worked well?

Specialized skillsets and cross-team cultures can put up walls

between designers and developers.

Teams in the wildUnicorn. One person team that does it all—and pretty well.

Horse. Jack-of-all-trades, master of none or one—the results show it.

Over-the-wall. Design + Dev working as an assembly line.

Integrators. Design + Dev collaborate, but it’s back-and-forth and everyone stays in their corner.

Partnership. Design + Dev are in it together, from the beginning.

Designer personasVisual only. Master of Illustrator, meticulous aesthetic detail, no or limited exposure to implementation.

Tech savvy. Understands how designs will “translate” to code, foresees constraints, .

Prototyper. Knows their way around markup, builds prototypes, speaks “code” to developers.

Developer personasBackend. Works on underlying functionality of product, no or limited UI exposure.

Frontend frameworker. Great at Legos, builds UI with frameworks, limited ability to make custom controls and experiences.

Frontend master. Solid grasp on UX, can bring a new and unique UI to life from the ground up.

Full stack. Hybrid backend and frontend skills, in the unique position to make end-to-end UX shine.

Deconstruct adversarial relationships from

experiences.

What causes friction?

Differing priorities for

Design and Dev teams.

Timelines and budget constraints.

Miscommunications and terminology.

Opposing philosophies.

Divergent goals.

In moments of stress, we all become 5-year-olds.

What does everyone want?

Make customers happy so

they love our product.

Build something cool, interesting, innovative—something we can be proud of.

How can we begin?

Build relationships, handle differences of opinion, and learn to speak geek to be

heard!

Keep a running list of terms.Terms buy you respect.

“Fun” references buy you rapport.

Ask, “What is a…” at least

everyother day.Support your geeks to share their "beautiful information” and "beautiful code."

Diffuse ourselves.Try this:

Picture your inner 5-year-old

Take the time to understand constraints.

Defend development needs

and goals.

What do designers and developers bring to the table?

What do UXers see that devs may not?

What do devs see that UXers may not?

What do you bring to the table?

What do we need todo as teams?

Learn how to convince, collaborate, and co-create.

Get connected. Talk early

and often.

Listen. Understand

everyone’s goals.

Play the accordion. Define

your expand / contract phases.

Explore together. Pair up and prototype.

Bring developers in at the beginning.

Seek constant feedback to

get later buy-in.

Be prepared to describe

impact.

Use data and metrics.

Practice a graceful

acceptance of give and take.

Tools and techniques to stay efficient and deliver the best

experience as partners.

Timebox prototypingDon’t get paralyzed looking for perfection.

Set your boundaries ahead of time.

Tie-break in the wildUse A/B testing to choose the best experience.

Works when engineering is cheap and UR is the long-

pole.

Test UX with real codePartner w/ dev to “stress test” designs.

Helps cover more variations, keeping everyone

aligned.

Easy to repeat tests as design evolves.

Co-present to peers and

leadershipWin together.

Quickly cuts to “what’s important”.

Everyone wants to look good.

Frontend code reviewSide-by-side look at what’s been built.

Praise and polish together.

E2E walkthru sessionsFinishing touches before customers see it.

What will you do comeMonday morning?

1. Pick a few techniques we talked about today that you want to try.

2. Describe the project or people you’ll try them with.

3. What actions will you take and when?

Make your plan of action

#UXPA2016www.uxpa2016.org

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nick tucker@ncktckr

laura faulkner phd@laurafaulkner

Enjoy the session? We’d love your feedback!