How do you coordinate with interaction designers during implementation?

Question

Programmers are largely responsible for helping move a product from design to implementation.

This process is always full of snags:

• implementation details rear their ugly head and make parts of the design infeasible
• user feedback on early prototypes leads to changes in the design
• new technologies alter the field of what is possible, bringing back designs previously thought impossible
• priorities shift, schedules change, and requirements wander

How do you keep design and implementation in contact during the implementation? What processes do you use? Tools? Artifacts? Guidelines? Communication strategies?

Answer 1

We use an Agile development process that includes 2 week sprints. During each sprint the interaction designers are involved in the sprint planning meeting, daily standups and retrospective. Issues are addressed daily as they come up. At the end of each sprint the interaction designers and product managers have working software that they can demo with customers to identify possible changes. Those changes are logged into the task tracking system and discussed during the next sprint planning meeting.

The key to this process is having the interaction designers involved during the entire development process. We do maintain design documents that detail screen designs, workflows, etc to communicate outside the development group. The interaction designers are responsible for making changes to those documents as designs change.