Sharing Designs with Dev Stakeholders

Tags: Deliver designs, Articulating design decisions, Non-designers, scalability, feasibility, performance

Sharing designs with the development team is critical to successful implementation of the product. Developer feedback helps in understanding the technical feasibility of a design solution. This meeting can be leveraged to explore innovative ways of implementation. Performance and reliability issues with the design can be surfaced as well. Developers can also help with scalability and robustness of the solution. Following are some tips to keep in mind while presenting designs to dev stakeholders.

When should you use this

• Get feedback on designs from dev stakeholders
• Share final designs and workflows with the stakeholders
• Explain your rationale for designs
• Align the dev stakeholders with the product goals

Materials Needed

1. Mockups
2. Notebook for gathering feedback

Prep Required

• Set an agenda for the meeting
• Have 1-1 sessions with key stakeholders before the meeting to avoid major roadblocks

Steps

Before the meeting

1. Use a relevant persona in a scenario to present your mockups. Show how the persona can use the mocks to achieve a real-task. This will help with understanding of the workflow and the stakeholders will be engaged throughout the presentation.
2. Revise the rationale for the designs incase you have to defend them during the presentation.
3. If possible, do a dry run with design teammates. They will help with fleshing out the rationale and improve the flow of the presentation.
4. Present the design 1-1 with key stakeholder/s before the meeting so that they are on-board with the core concept.
5. Display ideas

Collect the ideas from the group and post them on a flat working surface visible to everyone. It should end up resembling the following figure.

During the meeting

Communicate the following during the presentation (Source)

1. Communicate the context of the presentation clearly. Context includes who are the key personas, what are the main workflows, what kind of research was done, what are the constraints.
2. There may be instances where the feedback is based on opinions and not relevant. In such cases try to reiterate the context and bring the discussion back to the workflow.
3. Some feedback might be vague. It is the presenter’s obligation to get to the base of the feedback by asking relevant question.

Sharing designs with the developers is a great opportunity to explore not just the technical constraints but also the opportunities.

After the meeting

1. Iterate on the designs based on the feedback.

Resources:

Presenting designs https://uxdesign.cc/the-relationship-between-design-deliverables-and-presentation-skills-56c713694446

https://uxplanet.org/how-to-present-design-decisions-framework-eb7e596ff15e