Last Wednesday, we gave a presentation at the UIG spring conference about a tool that has significantly simplified our design process: Sketch App.
Like many project teams, we are constantly asking ourselves where exactly we can start and what we can do to simplify and speed up the design process and optimise communication with the project team.
As a concept/design team, we often work remotely with our customers - so we don't always sit with the entire project team in one place. This actually works surprisingly well, but also brings its own challenges - especially in the Handover of design documents. The lecture was about precisely these challenges.
Frankenstein lives - often on the www
Ultimately, it's about communication and documentation - and how to make it easier for us to create them. There are many different reasons why digital products, such as websites, online shops or applications, are so difficult to launch or relaunch. a) behave differently than expected/planned and/or b) look different than it was planned.
If, for example, the fact that a digital product grows or is expanded (and it does in 99%) is ignored right from the start - or if a concept / layout is not well documented, for example - and also has gaps due to missing "intermediate steps" or elements that have not been thought through and defined to the end - this leads to sometimes marvellous interpretations of what is ultimately implemented. Everyone then does a bit of what "suits" them. The result is Inconsistency in interaction or UI patterns (everything works differently) and in visual design (everything looks different). In short: Congratulations, your product got "frankensteined".
Inconsistency is a usability problem
Our users are the ones who suffer. Inconsistent behaviours of digital products and a diverse patchwork of UI elements cause confusion with sometimes high cognitive effort. In other words, usability can suffer considerably as a result.
Good documentation is half the communication
We want to counteract this room for interpretation and the resulting inconsistency.
For example, the "sketch app" software makes our design documentation and therefore communication much easier than the software we were using before.
In other words, we have realised that there is software that is simply very well suited to communicating the design concept of a digital product to the rest of the team in a coherent way and thus simplifies these processes considerably - at least that is our experience.
Because: the "hurdles" (barriers) are often in the Loss of information The key is to find the "handover point" that occurs when one project team (e.g. concept) hands over the design document to the "next" project team (e.g. visual design) at a certain stage of the project. Between these two teams alone, the susceptibility to errors and irritations can get out of hand - not to mention the handover to technical development, which often has to make do with a pile of jpgs that do not cover many statuses or is forced to fight its way through too many individual documents in order to understand and "read" the overall concept. This is all very tedious.
Of course, it is not the sole task of software to simplify processes. There is no such thing as a "magic button" that you press and everything will be great. The human factor plays the main role here.
But with sketch it is considerably easierIt is much easier to create design documentation and pattern libraries than with Photoshop, for example - which was our faithful companion in the field of visual design until about two years ago. It is now also much easier to "transfer" e.g. UI patterns or wireframes in the conceptual "shell" into a visual design without loss of information or to refine them step by step, as everything is done in a single document.
As I said, this presentation reflects our own experiences and the procedure is not suitable for every situation. In any case, it has helped us a lot to create good and seamless design documents - especially when it is clear that a visual layout is created in addition to the concept, which helps to counteract the risk of document confusion and transcription errors and the misunderstandings that often result.
It remains exciting, because the web/ UX/ design industry is longing for products that are perfectly tailored to the specific requirements of the UI design process. Sketch is one of them.
Links
https://www.sketchapp.com/
http://sketchtoolbox.com/
http://www.sketchappsources.com/
