Closing the Designer-Developer Gap

This year, we’ve been trying a little something new at conferences with the Progress booth – we’ve been collecting feedback from developers about their experience with the design to dev handoff. With a jumbo pack of sticky notes, a whiteboard, and a dream, our goal was to capture three different aspects of the design to development workflow: what tools people were using, what they liked about their process, and what they wished was different.

The response was incredible; hundreds of developers shared their opinions and experiences with us. We commiserated over common pain points, celebrated wins, and brainstormed what an ideal dev / design workflow could look like. As you might imagine, developers and designers directly working together was an often-recurring topic across these thousands of sticky notes – it’s almost impossible to talk about the handoff without talking about cross-team collaboration. So let’s take a look at the main things developers wish designers knew when it comes to building websites and applications.

1. Developers want to be involved in the design process

Developers we spoke to expressed a strong desire to be included in all phases of the project creation process. There were a great many responses related to cross-team collaboration and developer involvement – even (and especially) in work that isn’t traditionally considered development work. Developers are eager to participate earlier in the process and work together during the planning and design phases. They want to be able to help catch potential issues early and provide deep technical knowledge that can help shape the product or feature set long before any code is written. That might look like being included in scope definition calls, UX brainstorming, or other product planning meetings. In a wide variety of ways and across all different points in the process, devs want to be (as they said in the sticky notes)  “involved”, “included”, and “collaborating”. 

2. Developers want to share “the same language” with designers

That first wish for developers be more involved did come with a request: that the people they collaborate with also invest the time to understand technical requirements and “speak the same language”. Many responses mentioned the value of non-developers who understood the basics of the development process, as well as the challenges of designs and feature requests that were created without understanding the underlying technical requirements. For those developers already lucky enough to be working with designers, there were several mentions of wishing that those designers understood the development and implementation process more deeply – especially relating to the availability and limitations of components in a component library (when one is being used).

3. Developers want to reduce mid-project changes as much as possible

Lots of teams struggle to define project requirements accurately. There were tons of responses related to the need for clearly defined requirements at the beginning of the project (this included both sticky notes that mentioned liking clearly defined requirements and disliking poorly defined requirements). But it’s not just the kickoff phase of the project that’s challenging; it won’t surprise anyone to hear that scope creep came up quite a bit in the “dislike” category. In fact, 17 responses specifically mention the difficulties of scope / requirements changing mid-project. Whether those changes come from the product team, the design team, the client, or the developers themselves, they inevitably cause significant slowdown and frustration for everyone involved.

4. Developers value designers and want to have more designers on their teams

Many developers are working on under-resourced teams and (rather than focusing on software or other tooling) are wishing primarily for more designers – or any designers at all! Several sticky notes specifically mentioned hoping for some kind of design specialist to be hired (those wished-for roles included UI designers, as well as UX designers and researchers).   

In our opinion, that involvement and cooperation between the teams is what’s really going to move the needle, more than any hot new library or fancy new process. The end product can truly shine when there’s a shared space for designers and developers to create together. That also means that both parties have put in the work to learn and respect the other's expertise, process, and workflow.  

Building a culture of respect and shared responsibility won’t happen overnight – especially if the design and development departments at a company have historically been isolated. It takes a lot to change the status quo from throwing a design file over a metaphorical wall and hoping for the best, to true synchronicity and collaboration at all stages of the process.

One of the best ways we can start to shift that is by learning more and gaining a more thorough understanding of what all parties are looking for. By identifying those communication gaps, knowledge gaps, and expectation gaps, we can begin to bridge them together.

Want to help with that process and learn more about the current state of the industry? Share your experience and take the State of Designer-Developer Collaboration 2024 Survey. It’s a global survey that aims to shed light on the design handoff process, and the role design systems play in addressing the inherent challenges—and we need your input!