Problem
When handing over designs to developers, we were consistently facing the same issue: misalignment between UX and content final designs.
UX and content were struggling to collaborate due to using different platforms to work on. Content designers did not have access to the tool that UX designers were using to prototype. Meaning we could not update content in prototypes ourselves. We were handing over documents for UX designers to refer to when updating their design, prior to handover.
This led to inconsistencies between the content reference and the prototype. These are the two documents we hand over to devs for updating their build. Therefore there was friction occurring due to confusion on which is the correct version to implement.
What I did
I assisted in facilitating a session with the two design practices to understand what they thought was the problem. It turned out that updating the prototype was a difficult task due to the tooling being complicated. And if someone else had access to this tool, the prototype could be broken easily. It was clear that we required a more collaborative tool for prototyping.
We as a team pulled together suggestions for alternative tools. We then handed this over to our senior management team and discussed the reasons behind this change.
Outcome
We moved over to Figma. UX designers and content now work collaboratively on the prototype. Content has full oversight and responsibility on the wording, and that burden has been removed from UX.
The friction with handovers has reduced significantly, as the content is now correct on both documents, since one group is responsible for ensuring this.
Improved collaboration has meant that:
- design improvements are completed quicker
- content and UX make decisions together on wording and components
- the design team feels more unified
June Caldwell - senior UX writer and content designer 