Don’t call it a handoff

There is a ton of advice and tips on better handoffs. This isn’t that. It’s an opinion piece on how I’ve been thinking about handoffs for a while. This is essentially just my musings about what has worked for teams I’ve been on and why we liked it.

It boils down to the name not making sense. Just like the whole park on a driveway and drive on a parkway thing. The term handoff implies just that. Handing a thing to others and walking away. Instead, I think of it as just another phase in the design process. A fun phase with lots of collaboration.

Collaborate from the beginning

Let’s start with this. My preference is to have the full team or at least a member from each function involved from the beginning. A shared understanding of the problem definition and details. Collaborative ideation and critiques on proposed solutions.

This isn’t always possible of course because we live and work in the real world. We aim for full inclusion and collaboration. If we only hit 50% that is still a big advantage when things shift into the development. Big chunks of the team will have some to full knowledge of the idea and we can avoid large reworks.

Continual collaboration through development

This is key and also why the term handoff doesn’t make sense. As designers, it helps to make ourselves available for quick chats, working sessions, or even just sounding boards for dev team members.

These small sessions have a lot of value:

Work through issues early

Collaborating early can help come up with stronger solutions to unexpected issues or challenges. Spend an extra 30 minutes working through something together and save a day of pushing a task back because the implementation delivers a poor user experience.

The more I’ve done this the more we’ve created a strong design/dev partnership. That then helps strengthen the product itself and increases team efficiency.

It also helps to reduce snags and design tweaks that need to be fixed later.

Promote shared ownership and excitement

These working sessions can also make the full team more engaged, excited, and passionate about the product. Designers don’t like to be order takers right? Neither do the developers/engineers on your team. Wrap them into the design process, trust them, and push them to explore their creativity.

Focus on adding joy

Often with tight deadlines and other pressures, teams are forced to skimp or skip completely that top layer on the hierarchy of user needs. The fun, pleasurable, and memorable stuff. This continual collaboration can get you to a spot where you have time or allow you and your team to squeeze in some subtle yet meaningful animations or other exciting bits.

Build relationships

In my experience, I’ve built some of the best and most enjoyable working relationships and friendships like this. You’ll spend a lot of time working with your team. The goal to me is to get it to the point where it just feels like hanging out with friends and cracking jokes. Friends that you just so happen to deliver amazing products with.

2 quick tips

I know I said this wasn’t a tip article but here are 2 that help my team:

Use videos

Sometimes there isn’t the time or a full chat isn’t needed. People may also just need a refresher. This is where a quick video walking through the solution/feature/etc. can be handy. We often stick a frame in Figma with feature details and include a link to a video walkthrough.

Explain the value-added to users

This is a perfect time to re-iterate the value-added to our customers. If you have quotes say them, if you have recordings share a clip, or at least explain what the value is and how it will help your users. This can continually build that full team empathy for your users and get people more engaged and excited about the work.

How do we create this?

There are different ways to implement this. A lot will depend on the team culture and organization. The top 2 ways that have helped me and my teams are:

Lead by example

Pretty straightforward. The more I’ve pushed for this, explained how I’m open to quick chats, and tried to make them enjoyable the more they’ve taken off. Sometimes it takes a while to become a part of the normal workflow. Other times it only happens with a few team members. Either way improvements in the process are being made and your products may benefit from it.

Be open and communicate

I’ve always tried to be honest with the team about why I love this method and what the benefits are. No one likes to have new workflows pushed on them. I try to not be a pushy salesman but instead a partner. I explain my ideas and more importantly listen to the team’s ideas and opinions. Each team and team member is different so spending the time learning about how they prefer to work and being flexible will make a co-created collaborative workflow.

That’s it!

Keep in mind flexibility is key here. Each team will be different and have a unique best fit solution.