UX & Development: Playing Nicely Together

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Our presentation from Capital Camp on July 27, 2013 in Washington, DC. Our static slide deck is posted after the video. A similar version of this presentation was given at the iRockville Meetup on July 16, 2013. A symbiotic relationship between user experience and development requires work, but the results are amazing. When these two worlds collide and collaborate, work gets done faster and more efficiently, iterative design becomes a staple, and the project’s budget (and team) bears less stress. However, collaboration like this isn’t always easily cultivated and sometimes people just don’t understand how to play nice. Add to this, a history of project managers focusing only on UX at the beginning and then attempting to bring development in at the tail end, and you have a recipe for team frustration and shrinking timelines. So, can there be a silver lining from the storm? The answer is yes. In our presentation, we’ll talk about how to begin engaging team members; best practices for facilitating, maintaining, and troubleshooting this collaboration; and the benefits of fostering a collaborative relationship so it can thrive. Focusing on our method of using digital prototyping to bridge the gap between creative design and logical development, we’ll share our insights of implementing this tool as a way to encourage and empower team collaboration. Additionally, we'll discuss our own hurdles we overcame to show you how this can really be implement into your own project process. From establishing a healthy collaboration between user experience designers and developers, we’ve had a notable amount of success with our projects. We’ve had shorter development time, less meetings (which everyone loves), and a better understanding of each other’s work.

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