UX is a Team Sport

Lane Halley ·

User Experience Design is a Team Sport

Originate Labs participants

Following traditional “waterfall” methods, designers create wireframes & high-fidelity comps which are delivered to developers who build the product. The handoff between design and development causes frustration and inefficiency when construction starts. What happens when it’s not possible to realize all aspects of the design within the constraints of the project? What about edge cases the designer didn’t consider? Once the issues are discovered, designers often aren’t available to make changes and the development team has to use their best judgement when implementing the design.

What if there were a better way? What if designers could preview their work earlier and developers could give input about technical considerations? When designers and developers have necessary conversations, they can better support each other and build better products, faster.

Carbon Five was invited to present a lunchtime workshop at the Los Angeles office of Originate Labs. Mike Wynholds and Lane Halley shared some techniques used at Carbon Five to create necessary conversations and get the whole team engaged in user experience design decisions. The workshop materials we used were adapted from the internal training program we use at Carbon Five, developed by David Hendee.

“No plan survives contact with the enemy” –Helmuth von Moltke

Lane Halley
Lane Halley

Lane Halley is a product designer at Carbon Five.