Working with UX Design

Been working on a product development had made me realize that its always tough to get best of the combined tribes, Developers & Designers. The whole success factor depends on how well they have been integrated in the process, and how user experience and development is perceived. The occurrences where product developers and user experience designers collaborate poorly can easily be improvised. Which would mean incorporating a more dynamic & integrated product development process where both teams work together on key phases and in shorter and more frequent cycles rather than long, inflexible phases. What I have outlined below are some observations and tried out mechanisms which have been taken to accomplish a more integrated process.

• Treat the specifications and user experience design documents as breathing documents.
• Regularly the development and user experience design teams should exchange feedbacks, and incorporate collective notes.
• User experience designers should stick to constraints defined by product developers, should consider the viability of their design in the context of implementation and marketability, and should consult with product developers on viability of features.
• Product developers should not seek to define how each feature should work, but should rather define the broader project goals and product requirements.
• Both user experience designers and product developers should be involved in identifying opportunities, competitive analysis, market and user research, feature design, design refinement, implementation.
• Both teams should utilize an iterative and dynamic product design process instead of rigid, linear approach.

Moreover, I believe that the optimal product design and development process necessitates both product development and user experience design methodologies. I call this approach “product experience development” to emphasize the equal rolls of both fields in the overarching process. Product design and development focused on only one of the fields is incomplete and ineffectual.