Designer-Developer Dissonance

Although both UI/UX Designers and Developers are invested in project success, they have
fundamentally different priorities. Designers advocate for user needs – easy to understand,
frictionless user experiences - while developers advocate for the technology - robust,
updateable, maintainable code. Not everyone in an organization will necessarily have the same
commitment level to UX quality. How do the teams collaborate effectively, keep conflicts to a
minimum and go on to complete successful projects?

Even little events can trigger dissonance and that can then grow and persist and eat away at
effective collaboration. There are always inevitable changes to a project plan and schedule that
will derail ongoing work. Designing is such labor-intensive work, that designer seek ways to be
more efficient, keeping specs light and not articulating designs to the last detail. Developers
feel it’s ok or even feel obligated to step into the domain of UX given gaps in specs and short
deadlines, taking away the authority of the designer over the UX.

Designers are ultimately responsible for the quality of a final UX and need commonsense
strategies for working together with developers. By following a handful of best practices,
effective collaboration between designers and developers is not so difficult.

What You'll Learn:

• How to recognize and analyze collaboration conflicts
• Strategies for productive collaboration between the conflicting priorities of designers and
  developers

This talk is for you if...

• Your UX team struggles to get designs implemented successfully
• Your UX team has frustration and conflicts with developers
• Your team is involved in projects with a high rate of missed deadlines and even failures

Topics Covered:

• The Symptoms of Conflicts
  • Team members feel the discord
  • Designers aren’t happy with the implementation of their designs and feel stonewalled on designer feedback
  • Developers feel annoyed, nit-picked, confused, ignored, run around in circles
  • Missed deadlines
  • Misunderstandings
  • Mediocre outcomes on projects
• The Causes of Conflicts
  • Designers and developers don’t respect each other’s domain skills and responsibilities
  • Professional priorities conflict
  • Uneven levels of commitment to UX quality
  • Incomplete specs or spec expectations not set at the outset
  • Nature of a project
  • Communication styles
  • Work processes employed
  • Organizational support of UX quality
• The Importance of Your Organization’s Mission
  • Awareness of user empathy
  • Commitment to UX quality
• Strategies and Practices
  • Setting expectations
  • Completion level and style of specs
  • How and when communication occurs
  • Process of review, comment, and iteration
  • Discipline enforcement
  • Acknowledgement of mistakes