

I deliberately put this high on the list to ensure they make it onto your checklist. The point remains the same: Think it through, make it descriptive and start the discussion! The refined version will make a great checklist! High fidelity screenflows perfectly help development explain how a feature works. Start the discussion early in the sketching phase. Hand-drawn sketches of flows for our client Stylelike. Not only does the design handoff itself make it just useful, but it also reveals missing steps and edge cases, and forces designers to rethink illogical steps in the flow, etc. (Full disclosure: Zeplin does not pay us we simply love the product <3) You must have a basic prototype (in Invision, Marvel or Sketch, and links in Zeplin), but developers often request it to provide a static map of all the essential screens and their relations in a more didactic visual form. It contains all the assets, made exportable. Upload your design, enter commit messages for version control, comment and discuss or simply use this feature to specify the details. Thanks God for the relatively painless present! Zeplin (and similar solutions like Avocode) dramatically improved the entire designer-developer workflow. psd files for dev, and the discussions and version control needed top organization. Back in the bad old days, designers had difficulties exporting png’s for different members of their product team, organizing their assets and. Your screen designs serve not only as reference points to developers. Illustration from Intercom’s article about the values of designer-developer collab.


) The checkpoint of designer-developer discussions should recur repeatedly, all of which using the right tools in your most preferred workflow makes it easier. (Read more about this approach in Intercom’s great article. The preparation for the design handoff should begin at the very beginning of the entire process. Even if several dedicated people are standing ready to take over the mediator role, designers should find their way to the developers’ tables. The technicalities of the design handoff also matter, but however nice and neat the specification, it makes little difference if you haven’t actually talked to developers until the design handoff.

Since design handoff refers to the end of a phase, the mistake of concentrating on only the best-practices about uploading, exporting and specifying designs comes easy (which I will mostly do). So, in this article, “design handoff/handover” refers to the point when designers need to transfer their ideas for development. What does “design handoff” mean?įirst of all, I must state that a “finished design” of a digital product does not exist. Keep these anchor points in mind, for designers and developers equally, as well as product team leads and other managers.
