Design handover process
So at our startup designs are sometimes not pixel perfect for every screen. Most UI components are reused from other screens, I am rarely introducing new components. Developers are complaining design mistakes are holding back the development and forcing them to do crunch times. Despite the fact, there being mistakes on UI components used multiple times. I am working remotely with developers (who are in Canada with not so design oriented job experience and one being old school Java guy). 1. Is it common for inhouse product designer(who has laid out most of the UI components) deliver every screen pixel perfect to Development team on InVision as if they were external clients. 2. Is it really a design issue or are they blaming me for their crunch time? 3. Is it a common issue or is it that development team is not really building modular UI components? I feel it's their skills and experience. It's kinda stressing me out. 4. How do you handover design to devs?
I like the answer. They made mistakes in Modals used elsewhere in the app. Their form placeholders werent aligned. Paragraph paddings and line heights were off, even though those are same globally. And maintaining that across 300+ screens as a single designer for both Android and iOS apps is overwhelming on top of daily design tasks and strategy items.
What you are describing sounds like implementation issues of the designs. I would separate that from designs not being pixel perfect. If this an implementation issue then use something like zeplin to help them better understand margins and asset management.
I would add to wonkaa's answer that maybe you and the team can start a conversation about a design system or methodology that could make this process smoother. Vertical rhythms, designing components modularly with different mocks at different dimensions. Things like that may help developers build more resilient components.
Yes I am following Airbnb's DLS card system in which padding, line heights, font sizes are grouped together. Most of my designs are built using that on Sketch and everything is symbols. We are using 4dp grid system everything is a multiple of 4. During last Epic some screens were drastically changed, but the base rules of design and layout were the same. Cell heights and padding were same as before. Multiple documentation methods were also tried making Google Docs with CSS style values to Headings, Paragraphs. Android team is following that but iOS naming and components are all over. Android team's only complain is to reduce those components to their convenience, which I can and do easily reduce complexity to function in multiple screens.
Great to hear! Being a frontend UI guy, some of these terms and systems are unknown to me. That lends me to ask: does your team and engineering get together to share knowledge about concepts important to your concerns? There are nuances of design and engineering that might be getting in the way of synergizing.
What do you mean there would be dozens of docs? You design at 1x for Android/iOS and account for proper spacing on small screens.
This is not correct. Designers generate screens for iphone5/8 and separately, if an iPad app is supported, screens for tablets.
So right now 1. Multiple InVision projects for Dashboard, Notifications, Onboarding etc. 2. Personal documentation / UI inventory (which I shared with Dev lead iOS) Android designs is just slightly different mostly it's just the floaty action button a drop down is added over iOS designs. They figure those differences and make it on their own. Android devs have components laid out like Airbnb card styles so spacing is always on point, on their builds
Got fired before the vesting period for my company shares. Design handover process was a way to slip in performance improvement plan. Few other people were fired before their shares vested.
Head of Design, said that I need to deliver designs, as if they are external clients. Then he said don't waste time on documentations. I need to find out more which team had more issues. Android pretty much picks up previous UI component. Sometimes I do forget an asset export on Google Team Drive
Thanks for so much input I'll keep you posted. Happy Friday
Your developers have identified something that is an issue for them. There are always deadlines, and people have to move fast, but that isn’t an excuse to deliver unpolished work. Are there times when design isn’t perfect during hand off, yes. Should it be the norm? No. Work on your craft and use it as an opportunity to improve. In general the goal for handoff should be to make development as easy as possible.