Visual Quality Control

A necessary step or another bottleneck of software development?

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Collaboration between design and engineering can take different forms in different organizations. Designers can be more or less involved in software development, but whether they like it or not, they are essential to this process. I don’t mean that designers should code (although I think some should–I’ll explain it in another article), but rather, they should not switch to new tasks right after handoff.

Design in the software development process

Let’s take a look at a simplified process of developing a new feature:

1. Define: the problem is identified through product discovery.

2. Ideation: a designer works on a solution to the problem.

3. Validation: the solution is verified with the product team and users.

4. Handoff: a designer prepares the final documentation for engineers.

5. Development: engineers pick up a ticket on the sprint planning.

So far, so good. I’m pretty sure…