The following content is translated and sorted by The Copyar team, only for learning and communication. Copyar iDoc is a product collaboration design artifact that supports intelligent labeling and image cutting.

Teamwork has always played an important role in design. It’s also one of the most challenging parts of the design process — not everyone is on the same page when sharing and interacting with team members. But once you understand and taste the benefits of collaborative design, you’ll love it.

I. Understand the meaning of collaborative design

“User experience includes all aspects of end-user interaction with companies, services, and products” — (NN/g Nelson. Norman Group). Similarly, this shows that the end result of product design does not come from just one person, such as a UX/UI designer; It comes from close collaboration and productive interactions among stakeholders.

This fits in well with the point I made in my previous article: there should be no individual “rock star, guru or ninja” character on a team. Conversely, there should be collaboration between designers, product managers, marketers, and developers/engineers. Specifically, “collaboration across functions.”

Therefore, once user requirements are identified, it’s time to start collaborating on design. No matter what product needs to be designed, gather all team members working on the project regularly to share ideas through sketches and quick wireframes.

The most important thing is to keep an open mind and the ideas of all team members should be respected and considered. In most cases, depending on how the team is organized, it is the designer’s responsibility to organize another meeting after discussing the need for these ideas with the PO(product owner) or PM(project manager).

“In a typical collaborative design meeting, the team needs to sketch together. Review the sketches as they are roughly done and converge on a solution that they think has the best chance of success.”

At this stage, it is best to use a “low-fidelity” wireframing, as it enables quick and necessary changes without taking too much time. These can be personal sketches from all team members or designer whiteboard sketches based on comments/ideas from team members.

Recommended collaboration tools:

Design Studio is a way to bring cross-functional teams together to visualize potential solutions to Design problems. It breaks down organizational walls and creates a forum for teammates’ views.

Copy iDoc, faster and simpler product collaboration design platform. Support to upload design draft of PS, Sketch, Adobe XD, and prototype diagram (Mockplus, Axure, etc.). Features include intelligent annotation, one-click cutting diagram, diverse annotation, quick interaction, full picture drawing board, document writing and management, team management, etc.

Remember, sharing is caring, and team members who care about the project will think and share their ideas. Caring is listening. As a manager or leader, listen carefully to what your team members have to say. Whether you think the two are related or not, the main idea of this section is to gather everyone’s ideas and narrow them down to reach a consensus.

two Use a design system (style guide, brand guide, component repository, etc.)

The collection and management of design documents is onerous. Over the past two decades, printing has also moved to the digital world, with printouts becoming PDFS, Web pages and wikis. Likewise, the collection of design documents and components should be presented in a reusable form.

Apple’s Human Interface Guide was the first to translate style guides into highly detailed online documents that users can access to all the components of apple’s operating system. Since then, companies like Mailchimp, Ubuntu, Salesforce, and Dropbox have created their own design systems. Such systems serve both designers (with colors, fonts, spacing, and so on) and developers (with asset libraries, JS, CSS, templates, and so on). It makes it easier for them to use and reuse components without having to rework each time they need to change.

While the components of a design system may vary by product nature, the beauty is that they can evolve according to the needs of users. Most importantly, they are easy to access and use.

So what can designing systems bring to team collaboration? Ensure product design consistency, quality and lower cost. “Even if the design specification does initially require the team to build it themselves, the effort and cost will be worth it in the end!”

Design specification finishing tools recommended:

Moke DS, a simple and efficient online design system, can easily customize design specifications and manage UI design resources. Support for direct application of design elements in Sketch, Mockplus, one-click export of CSS and design specification diagrams.

3. Overcome the challenges of teamwork in remote locations

Working with teams across the country and even abroad can be challenging, especially when it comes to time zones. (Even at a company like RevSquare/Pentalog, we experience this every day — we have employees in North America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, and Asia.) So, sometimes collaborating remotely can be quite a challenge! In what ways do these challenges manifest themselves? How to solve it?

1. Schedule meetings

Fortunately, there are some great free Web conferencing tools that can help overcome the distance problem when it comes to organizing meetings and sharing screens. Free communication tools: Skype, Google+ Hangouts, Join.me or Zoom (free 40-minute calls). Paid services such as Slack, Skype Pro, Uberconference, or Zoom (for longer access) are also great choices for daily conversations related to a particular project. I have to admit that technology has made the problem of remote teamwork easier to solve.

If you need to set up a meeting with the virtual team, it’s best to make sure everyone is available before sending a Google invitation that includes details of the meeting, such as subject, time and communication channel (Skype, Zoom, join. me in foreign countries, wechat, QQ, email in China, etc.).

2. Screen sharing information

During the meeting, team members (such as designers or PO/PM) can share documents, such as Google spreadsheets (Tencent online documents) via screen display. Other team members can view, access and interact with the document; For example, if there is a row for each topic and a column for each member, then each member can input their own ideas.

In addition, sketches or wireframing need to be drawn in real time on a whiteboard, and dual monitors can be set up in the conference room so everyone can see progress in real time while sharing ideas.

4. Work happily with all teams

• Although there are many excellent collaboration tools available, not everyone knows how to collaborate with people from different disciplines. How can you work well with your team?

1. Make a team agreement

This is a set of rules agreed upon and put together by the team; It describes how members should interact in a positive and constructive way. A good TWA should consider the following factors:

• Process Overview (What process will be used?)

• Form (how do you communicate every day? Is there a demo every Sprint?)

• Communications/tools (What tools are used for information notification :Basecamp,Redmine? Or sharing Google Doc? What design resources are available to the front end team? Send Photoshop files directly or use a collaboration tool like Zeplin/ Copycat iDoc?)

• Requirements and Design (what needs to be provided to designers: user scenarios, endpoints, and so on? What needs to be provided to the development team when the design is ready?)

• Development (What are the specifications for front-end development and integration?)

• Work schedule limits (what are the limits on a task? How do you remove all the bottlenecks in the process?

• Deployment (what is the sprint and release rhythm? What are the acceptance criteria for user stories?

(Step Specifications from Designing Great Products with Lean UX and Agile Teams by Jeff Gotheld & Josh Seiden)

2. Always hold a retrospective meeting after the Sprint

At the end of each Sprint, retrospective meetings can help the team assess what went well and what went wrong. This review and feedback helps make improvements before the next Sprint. According to my experience at RevSquare/Pentalog, writing Steering Committee reports once a month is also a good complement to meetings. The report can summarize what progress has been made under specific working conditions and what remains to be improved.

Keep in mind that teamwork means close collaboration and productive interaction between stakeholders from different disciplines. This also involves team members cherishing the present time and making continuous improvement every day to provide users with the best products and solutions.

This article originally appeared on RevSquare and has been reprinted with permission.

Original author: ELISA RITEAU

The original link: www.upwork.com/hiring/for-…

Learning tools, but not limited to one tool. Copy guest iDoc, efficient collaboration, from product to development, as long as a document, let your team efficient collaboration!

Write at the end:

Click the link to pick it up:www.mockplus.cn/anti-2019-n…