- The importance of Design QA in digital Product Design
- Originally written by Jess Eddy
- The Nuggets translation Project
- Permanent link to this article: github.com/xitu/gold-m…
- Translator: lihanxiang
A perfect user experience is not an accident. In application design, everything the product team does is for the user experience; Development, design, DevOps, and quality assurance — each of these roles affects user experience, especially the relationship between design and user experience. Since I became a product designer, an important part of my obsession is to make sure that the design of the product can be realized as expected. What does that mean? It represents that the coding effort on the design side needs to match exactly the actual design.
Why is this so important?
Consistency is a major principle of good product design, and inconsistencies in product design and development will inevitably arise over time. Over time, these problems add up to “design liabilities.”
Design liabilities affect the integrity of the user experience. When some variables emerge over time, the design is disconnected from reality, inconsistent, and always in a state of patching up the gaps. — Design liability
While it can be challenging to completely resolve inconsistencies on a moment-to-moment basis, implementing design QA is an important step in combating design debt.
Design QA can be a challenge
There are also some basic flaws that can make design quality assurance a challenge:
- The team or company does not understand or value design enough to create an environment that produces good design results
- People don’t realize the difference between a designed version and a poorly coded version → “Good enough for me”
- The team focused on quick completion and functional delivery — visual integrity is easier to reduce than coding — “We don’t have time for this”
Speed vs. quality
To illustrate this last point, as a product team, they often take risks by trying to complete the functional delivery shipping model. ** Toward the end of the sprint, the team often sacrifices a sense of the big picture and attention to detail in order to accomplish some feature. Before this team game is over, design-related implementations may give way to “saving time” in order to speed things up.
Collaboration is a good thing, but it’s not enough
As I’ve written before, teamwork and collaboration are necessary for product teams to get their work done. Designers and developers working together at the concept stage, using tools like Zeplin to bridge the gap and bridge the gap between design and CSS; These are all great and helpful, but they don’t replace the traditional way designers sign code design agreements before they start.
That’s how design QA comes about! ✨
#### What is Design QA
Design QA** (QA = quality assurance) ** is just one step between development and testing. This is an opportunity for designers to do:
- Look at the coded version of the UI before testing
- Work with the developer to update the UI in the code
Maybe you work in a small team and have done some version of design QA with great rapport. Or maybe you work for a company like Pivotal, where designers and developers work together, and design QA is built into the workflow. If this is not the case, the quality of the design implementation can easily be neglected in development.
Design QA as part of your workflow
Your standard workflow might seem to have these versions. If your team moves tasks from one part of the development cycle to another while doing any kind of work, then your work will serve those tasks.
How do we ensure design integrity in this workflow? When a task in development is completed, it is usually up to the task developer or product manager to move the completed task to the testing department. Sure, teams can get into the habit of doing design QA directly for some releases rather than doing it in the process, but this will fail; After all, the best design implementation is one that people forget or own.
The bigger question is: if design implementation is necessary, why don’t we do something about it?
By making design QA an important part of your workflow, you can prevent it from being overlooked. It is also important to recognize that design implementation is an important part of the team’s workflow. The above workflow looks a lot like this when we add design QA to the workflow.
Involve developers in the design process
Just as designers are involved in coding, it is equally important to include developers in the design process.
Design and development are like two sides of the same coin, and the more independent they are from each other, the more challenging the entire workflow becomes.
To get developers involved in the design process, here’s what you can do:
- Before the design of a feature begins, discuss the requirements for that feature to determine technical details that may influence design decisions.
- Describe the initial design solution together.
- Share design ideas with developers at work to get feedback.
Most of the challenges we face in product design and development can be solved with mutual respect, positive communication, and sincerity.
Enjoy working!
Additional reading
→ Why should developers and designers work together
→ Some tips for designers and developers working together to achieve good UI
→ How should designers and developers communicate to create better projects
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