The stepstone to success of several major companies was a collaborative effort among creative minds. You don't have to look far to find examples. A peek at the history of Windows, Apple, and Facebook will show how collaboration played a crucial role in their making and success. When creative minds come together, share their perspectives, and work alongside each other, it produces results that are transformative.
In this article, our focus is on discussing how a collaborative UI UX design can help to build better products. What happens when you propel a design team's creative thoughts collectively to ideate and design? Many things! But, one thing you can be sure of is that you will get out-of-the-box ideas. When your mind is opened to new perspectives, you naturally create designs that are unique and exciting!
So, how can you bring collaborative design into play? It is common knowledge that designers mostly like to keep to themselves and work in their cocoons. So how to invite them to participate in cross-team collaboration? Let's see a few tips.
Set joint goals
A UX design process has several steps- research, ideate, design, and test. Often, the team works in segments, like researchers do their research activities, designers carry on with the design, etc. Unfortunately, this creates a barrier to communication. Since each segment is working to achieve their individual goals and not towards a common goal, there is not much scope for collaborating and building on each other's ideas.
Here, by setting shared goals, collaboration can be achieved. Giving a brief of the overall purpose of the project along with specifying individual goals will help people see how communicating with others in the team can leverage better results. When everyone knows what others are doing, they realize that working together with some may aid both of them in achieving their goals better.
Be a foreman of collaboration
Collaboration requires a group effort. But more importantly, it needs a leader—a leader who can create a collaborative environment and lead by example. Just telling people to work together is not how you initiate collaboration. Instead, you need to show them how it's done and give them ample space to do it. Excellent guidance can make or break the design process, especially in domains like enterprise UX.
What are easy and practical ways in which you can set a collaborative leadership? Get feedback for your work from team members. Reflect on their feedback without any ego issues and incorporate them if relevant. Take responsibilities and carry them out with maximum dedication to give them a good example. Hear what everyone has to say and give an open space for sharing. By doing these, you will inculcate an environment where collaboration will become a natural part of work.
Use collaborative tools
I cannot stress this enough! Often, what hinders collaboration between team members is the most basic thing- not having a collaborative tool! When designers use platforms that do not support collaboration, their work tends to become more isolated. And it also deprives designers of the opportunity to receive feedback from other members of the team. Having a single tool for your entire design team where they can communicate with each other is core to collaboration.
In fact, the design tools today understand this requirement and are providing collaborative features. A popular example is Figma. Figma allows multiple people to collaborate on the same file. Just by sharing the link to a design file, other team members can access the design and provide real-time feedback. It also has a comments feature where people can comment on elements, making it easier to integrate everyone's suggestions.
Improve communication
The larger a team is, the stronger the power of communication. Communication is a factor that is usually underlooked. But, it is necessary to understand that not articulating ideas and goals clearly right during the beginning stage itself can cost much in the later stages. When there is a communication gap, researchers might waste time researching irrelevant topics, designers might spend a lot of time designing unwanted features, etc.
To improve communication, some steps you can take are:
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Hold meetings with the complete design team at regular intervals to discuss ideas, progress, and challenges.
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Use project management tools like Asana to delegate, track, and update tasks to team members.
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If you have any remote employees, use video conferencing platforms like Zoom or Microsoft Teams to ensure their participation and teamwork.
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Ensure that you provide your team with a space to openly share their views or ask doubts without fear of judgment or consequences.
Summing Up
Coming back to our question, does collaborative design help to produce better results- definitely, yes! It is, in fact, the secret behind the success of many UX design services in the world. When the best minds come together to work, the results will indeed be astonishing. Especially in creative fields like UI UX design, having an open space to interact and communicate is vital to the design process.
