004

Hand This Off

This episode discusses the handoff process between designers and developers, emphasizing the importance of using design system resources for efficient collaboration. It also highlights common pain points in the handoff process and the potential benefits of designers understanding development and vice versa.
  • design
  • development
  • handoff

Transcript

00:49Hey, good to see you.

00:49Thanks for coming.

00:50This is another episode of wireframe.

00:52And today I’m going to be talking about handoffs.

00:56All right.

00:56So something a little bit different today because someone reached out to the

01:00design system Slack channel, looking for some feedback about the handoff process

01:06and I DM that person and And they sent me a whole bunch of questions that they

01:10said I could answer either in a loom or even in a video call, but I said, what

01:15the heck, let me just do it on a podcast because I think these are great questions.

01:19I did skim over the questions.

01:22So I have a general gist of what they’re asking about, but I didn’t

01:25actually read them in their entirety.

01:28So I’m going to be reading them out.

01:30In this episode here.

01:32And I’m going to be basically giving you my answer off the dome.

01:35There’s nothing here that I’ve prepared to answer these questions about.

01:39So everything that I’m going to be talking about is really just what’s

01:42off the top of my head when it comes to the handoff process, which is

01:46what all these questions are about.

01:47All right.

01:47So let’s get started.

01:49First question is what does an ideal design handoff process look like

01:54from a development perspective?

01:56All right.

01:57So the ideal one, something that I would like to see.

02:02If a designer was giving me some material for me to build would be specifications

02:08that use design system pieces.

02:11So we’re talking about the tokens that I’m supposed to be using to

02:14compose these things all the different types of states that we considered.

02:20And that’s not just hover and active.

02:21We’re talking about things like empty state or first time user experience stuff.

02:26All the different considerations that Have been accounted for

02:30that would be really good.

02:31Additionally potentially some accessibility things, for example

02:35what could be announced in the flow of this particular thing

02:39that I’m going to be building.

02:41I’m sure that the question is probably based on trying to build

02:44applications or products or features.

02:46Of course, I’m coming from a design system angle.

02:48But again, you know, trying to relate.

02:52The thing that I’m about to build with existing pieces as much as possible is

02:57going to be the thing that I really want to see because then we identify exactly

03:02the stuff that I do need to build, right?

03:05So we imagine that there’s going to be a lot of these resources that are

03:08already in the system that are already identified in this handoff in this

03:12design, and then that’s going to be.

03:14You know, one unit of work that should be, of course, easier because

03:17it’s all design system resources.

03:19And then there’s an additional, of course, unit of work that may be novel

03:23or unique to this feature that may not be covered entirely by the design system.

03:28So knowing how much additional work that I’m going to need to do in order

03:32to build this particular feature up front is going to be really great

03:35because the more that the system is not being used, the more that I will

03:40need to build More custom and that’s going to just take longer time, right?

03:44That’s the, the beauty of design systems is that there should be resources

03:48that you can use very quickly to then build Experiences very quickly, right?

03:54So that’s what I’d really like to see.

03:55That’s the ideal state is using all the system resources.

03:59All right.

03:59What are the most common pain points when receiving a design?

04:02Well, kind of just mentioned that, right?

04:04It’s having a design that doesn’t use the design system.

04:09Just plain and simple, right?

04:10Where you don’t know where these numbers came from, where these colors came from,

04:15you know being inconsiderate about other users, other brands that might be using

04:20this, this experience you know, that, that kind of thing where I’ve seen many

04:25times in design that folks are building a.

04:29Perfect experience, right.

04:31Or the, or what they believe is the perfect visual, right.

04:35And not considering maybe even mobile, right.

04:37I mean, it sounds wild for 2024 where people aren’t even considering

04:41mobile, but that does happen, right.

04:42I mean, especially in an art board with an infinite canvas, you would love

04:46to just, you know, put all these very interesting things on it and people

04:51sometimes forget that you’re really trying to be solving user problems.

04:55And with that.

04:57There ends up being a lot of conflicts because, you know, especially a user

05:01professional like myself, when I see something like that, I get upset, right?

05:06What is the purpose of me doing this work?

05:08I, I need to know, right?

05:09What, why, why did we decide to do this direction when it isn’t obvious

05:14to me that it’s, you know, should be the right direction, right?

05:17It’s just, sometimes I, I feel that we’re left out right from as developers

05:22that we don’t know the entire story about where this design came from.

05:25And I think designers would have a lot better time in the handoff

05:29process when you provide all of that data up front, right?

05:33Who did you talk to you know, what users, what designers, what

05:36parts of the team did you talk to?

05:37I think all of that stuff when it’s missing is hugely a pain point when

05:42that handoff, of course, comes in.

05:44I’m trying to think about maybe what other materials might be pain points.

05:53I mean again, if you don’t have the design system references

05:56in there, that’s a huge pain.

05:58Any other pain points that I have?

06:01Yeah, I think it really just comes down to the communication, right?

06:03If there’s a lack of communication between design and development, right?

06:07You don’t know where this information came from or where this design is meant

06:14to go or, or what it’s meant to solve.

06:16And you’re kind of in the dark and you, it’s like the throw it over,

06:19the fence and here you go, developer, good luck Godspeed, that’s not great.

06:24Right.

06:24You want to have that collaborative experience to like work together.

06:27I’m reminded of Brad Frost and Dan Mall doing a talk at Clarity years ago, I

06:31believe talking about the hot potato process 1 where they’re basically going

06:34back and forth between design and development, trying to get, you know,

06:38ideas flowing to then, you know, make an experience that’s going to work.

06:43With, you know, a couple more cooks in the kitchen.

06:46I’m not talking about a lot of cooks here.

06:48We’re just talking one designer, maybe one developer that, you know, work together.

06:52I think that’s a really better handoff process.

06:55All right.

06:56The next question is what do you wish designers understood better about the

07:00development side of the handoff process?

07:03Okay.

07:04So this comes along with a hot take and the hot take that I’ve

07:08been, I actually have a blog post that’s like sitting and marinating.

07:13And the title of the blog post is, I think it’s designers should code.

07:19So let me explain, and I’m not going to go into all of that, into the blog

07:22post that, that may or may not show up.

07:24The general gist about this is that I believe that People who understand their

07:30medium in art or design do better than folks who don’t so What do I mean by that?

07:37If you are a painter then you Will be more effective at your craft if

07:45you understand how your paint is affected by the canvas and vice versa

07:50right how the canvas is affected by the paint and Choosing the right

07:53paints for the right canvas and all of that kind of stuff, right?

07:56So all of your materials understanding your materials It’s it’s not a

08:00matter of you making your own canvas or making your own paint.

08:04It’s a matter of knowing What materials to use and when right?

08:08So the more that you know about your Materials the better you will be at

08:15what you do now transferring that over to digital design as we know it today

08:20The folks that know the designers that know HTML and CSS Will do better off in

08:26my opinion than folks who don’t , and it shows, I think, I mean, we see

08:31this with UX engineers and design technologists and the like, right.

08:34Those are the folks that can really you know do both sides of this kind

08:38of craft of design and development.

08:40Right.

08:40So.

08:41The more designers that understand development, even in a small

08:47slice, I think that that would be beneficial just overall, right?

08:53And that goes both ways, right?

08:55Developers should also understand design, right?

08:58They should understand user experience and how that feels.

09:01Sometimes I feel like that’s not the case.

09:03I mean, Look at web pack for the developers out there.

09:07Web pack is such a disaster.

09:09I’ve avoided for my entire career.

09:12And I’m very thankful for things like Vite out there that just suddenly work.

09:17And I use that in the background of Astro and that’s why, how I know about Vite.

09:21Yeah, I mean, I, I imagine there’s lots of things that are meant to improve

09:27developer experience that just don’t.

09:30You know, there’s lots of different technologies that claim to be

09:33better in a particular aspect when they really are just more

09:37configuration and wild documentation.

09:40I mean, you know, I think about, you know, AWS or GitHub’s documentation

09:44and how, Vast it is and just jarring.

09:47It is to, to go around.

09:49And I could see that being a barrier for designers just generally speaking,

09:53but it’s a barrier for me too.

09:54You know, it’s just it’s not fun.

09:56But anyway, I think designers understanding how, how to code just how

10:01that , Operates is going to be beneficial.

10:03My wife is a designer with a master’s in design and she knows a little bit of code.

10:10I don’t think that was part of her curriculum, but she knows how

10:12to go into dev tools and change a couple of CSS properties.

10:15That’s fine.

10:15She could write a couple of lines of HTML and understand, you

10:18know, how that renders on a page.

10:20So that’s all I’m really asking for designers to do.

10:24Other things that I wish designers understood about the development side.

10:27Well, I guess another hot take on this is, is that developers can do just

10:33about anything that you want them to do.

10:35Okay.

10:35So if some developer tells you, no, they’re half telling the truth.

10:42And I say that because there are trade offs with every decision that we make

10:46when it comes to development, right?

10:49Whether it comes to performance or you know, resources that we

10:53have to even try to build on.

10:54You know, consider building something depending on how complex it is, you know,

10:58so and performance is actually one of the big things that I’m thinking about

11:01it because like you can imagine some designer asking for six different fonts

11:05to be loaded on the page because, you know, that’s the style that they want,

11:09maybe old style movie poster with lots of different typography and As you might

11:13know, the more fonts that you load in the page, the more requests that you

11:17have to make for different assets and the heavier the page ends up being,

11:20you know, and granted, like, are there, you know award winning sites that are

11:24out there that have that loading screen to come up to then enter the site?

11:29Yes, that exists, but you may also know that every millisecond

11:34that Amazon takes to load is dollars off of their bottom line.

11:39So there is a balance, of course, between that, engaging experience

11:44and one that is just meant to, to get the user to end at a goal, right?

11:51So there’s a balance between that you have to always pay attention to.

11:55And I would hope that designers understand that that’s what we’re trying to balance.

12:01Is that it’s not that we Don’t want to do the work or cool work or

12:05amazing work interesting stuff that could be coming out of this work.

12:09It is a matter of thinking about.

12:12Things systematically.

12:13That’s what developers honestly do.

12:14We’re thinking about scalability, how easy.

12:17It is going to be able to maintain and, and update this this change

12:20that could be happening here.

12:22So something to just pay attention to, like, you know, we want to do the stuff.

12:26That you’re doing, but we want to do it in a way that’s going

12:29to be maintainable over time.

12:31We do have to maintain this code after all, right?

12:33This is the stuff that the users are logging into that are using on a

12:36regular basis, and we need to return to it to update it for whatever reason.

12:41It’s not something that we can normally just ball up and throw out.

12:45Right.

12:45We usually have to maintain this stuff.

12:47It’s a little bit different from design, right?

12:48We will just kind of create a new art board to start fresh.

12:51Like that’s, that’s cool.

12:53But it’s a lot more resource intensive on the code side.

12:56So probably something else that would be helpful.

12:58And I’m sure there’s other things that would be really helpful

13:00too, for designers, but those are the two things that are coming.

13:03Off the top of my head…

13:04how do you think about the handoff process overall?

13:08Do you think, for example, that development and design teams should

13:12aim for more of a design ops approach?

13:15Interesting.

13:16Okay.

13:17So first off, I want to talk about the word design ops and I

13:21originally understood design ops as.

13:26Person or team who would unblock design unblock design could mean

13:33a lot of different things Right when I first learned about the term

13:37I’ll say five or six years ago.

13:39I Understood it as okay, you know this designer who’s supposed to be sitting,

13:44you know in figma as an example They’re gonna have a lot of Other things that they

13:48need to take care of throughout the day.

13:50For example, maybe they would be scheduling research studies.

13:54So they have to be interacting with lots of different people to get that

13:57stuff done and maybe that design ops person would help in that way.

14:02Right.

14:02Design ops.

14:03I’ve seen it more recently where that person is maintaining the

14:06design system and its libraries.

14:08So, you know, Figuring out the best way to work with Figma and that kind of thing.

14:13So I’ve seen that as well.

14:14So I just want to kind of like mention that design ops could be kind of

14:18a multifaceted area and it might depend on the team or organization

14:24about what design ops might mean.

14:26Okay.

14:27But how do you think about the handoff process overall?

14:30And aim for design ops approach.

14:32Well, I guess that, that matters about how design ops would interface with

14:37the handoff and I’m not sure how much they would be involved in the handoff.

14:47So traditionally, right?

14:48Traditionally, you would have a designer working on a particular design, particular

14:52feature, whatever that is, and that would be handed off to the development team.

14:56Just kind of like, you know, maybe there’s a, you know, handoff meeting, right.

15:00These talk about, you know, what things are going to be changing,

15:03what things to pay attention to, what things are less important.

15:07But that goes right to developers and I’m not entirely sure where the design ops in

15:12this question would kick in in that way.

15:15If in the ideal approach, right, where they’re handing off parts from the

15:19system, then maybe it does go through design ops because maybe design ops

15:25is in a place where they’re validating how systematic this design is.

15:32That’s a possibility, but again, I’m not sure exactly where the design ops

15:37part of it comes into this question.

15:39The question again is just, how do you think design ops About how do you think

15:44about the handoff process overall?

15:46I think it would be like, what do you think about the process overall?

15:50And as it is today, where I’m working with designers, I don’t enjoy it,

15:59but I’m familiar enough with the expectations, especially as a, you

16:04know, a trade UX engineer, I communicate a much better with designers than

16:09I think many other engineers might.

16:12So I think I have a little bit of an upper hand there.

16:14But past that, I’ve seen many, many engineers show up in a support

16:18channel asking questions about design that don’t follow the system.

16:23And that’s, I think the big problem that we have, right?

16:26If you’re not following the system and you have to build things from scratch, there’s

16:29going to be a lot of questions about how I might build something because it doesn’t

16:33look like this is part of the system where I don’t know if it’s part of the system.

16:37So that’s been a big problem.

16:39All right.

16:39Next question.

16:41How does a design system help facilitate the design handoff process?

16:44Well, I guess I’ve been talking about that the whole time, right?

16:47That handoff process, if we are identifying the pieces that are part of

16:51the system immediately, then it’s much easier for the developer to grab those

16:55pieces from a library that hopefully exists and then start building these

16:59experiences and then identify exactly what parts of the experience they might

17:04need to build custom or otherwise You know, dive in deeper about, right.

17:08Cause the more that’s already prebuilt, the faster this thing comes out.

17:11Right.

17:12So I already kind of mentioned that.

17:15All right.

17:15The next thing is when you’re handed design files, do you ever get lost in

17:22parentheses in complex file systems, non standardized terms, et cetera.

17:27Lost in design files.

17:29Of course, of course you’re lost in design files.

17:33I imagine, you know, with dev mode in Figma.

17:37Someone who may be in a design ops role might’ve curated that,

17:42that file so that a developer couldn’t traverse it a lot easier.

17:45I remember seeing the demo of it in last June where they were

17:49demoing how you might mark certain.

17:53Artboards that are important to the developer so that when a developer

17:57goes into dev mode, that all they need to see is those particular

18:01screens that they’ll be building right where, and as a designer, you

18:04might have an art board that’s full of explorations and presentations and

18:09other resources that are just going to be all over the place, right?

18:12It’s just kind of like a mess sometimes that might happen.

18:15And.

18:16In order to organize it a little bit better Figma is able to like

18:19mark out those things, but if it’s disorganized, of course you’ll get lost.

18:23I mean, that’s anywhere.

18:24I mean, we get lost in code all the time as well, right?

18:27You go into somebody else’s repo and you’re like, what does this even do?

18:30Right.

18:30How does this even work?

18:32If it’s not something that you’re familiar with.

18:34So it’s very common for that to happen to get lost in a design file or, or, or even

18:40development in, in the file structure.

18:42I wonder a little bit now I’m thinking about it how we might

18:46attempt to solve for that, right?

18:50My gears are turning a little bit.

18:51I have to definitely think about that because I think there’s a world

18:54where wayfinding in files that we are creating like creative files.

19:03There might be something there, honestly.

19:06Yeah, I don’t know.

19:07Something to think about on top of all the other things that I’m

19:09thinking about you know, 12 at a time.

19:12Okay.

19:13The next thing here is do you typically feel comfortable

19:19in the tools designers use?

19:21No, absolutely not.

19:23So fun facts, I’m invited.

19:27Most recently to a couple of the sneak previews for Figma’s new releases.

19:32And I find that funny because I’m probably the only person on these calls

19:38that doesn’t use their application.

19:42Now when I say doesn’t use the application, I, I mean, I do

19:45click links that go to Figma.

19:47I do traverse Figma files, but that’s basically the extent of

19:51how I use Figma because I don’t need to, I’m a UX engineer, right?

19:55So if I’m going to design something, I’m going to design it in like

19:59CodePen or just in code in general.

20:01There’s no reason for me to go into a place that doesn’t bring me A

20:09finished product out of it, right?

20:11Something that is actually going to work.

20:13So I find it to be like unnecessary for me to go into that

20:19application on a regular basis.

20:21I have in the past built Figma plugins.

20:24So I’m familiar with that ecosystem.

20:26But that’s been a while now.

20:28I actually haven’t been in it for a while, but past that.

20:31No, I mean, I’m not a person who’s Using those tools.

20:36And I think it’s not important for a developer to use those tools.

20:46It’s important for them to be able to traverse files, right?

20:49They need to be able to see the things that they’re about to build, the

20:52specifications that they need to pay attention to, to build it properly.

20:57Like that stuff’s important, right?

21:00I’m a think about like, you know, an architect building something in CAD and

21:04then printing it out as a blueprint.

21:06And then just handing off the blueprint, you know or even just showing a person,

21:11the CAD model and having them, you know, walk through the CAD model.

21:14Right.

21:14The person who’s.

21:16Walking through the CAD model doesn’t know or need to know how

21:20to use CAD in order to do that.

21:21They just need to know how to traverse to get a feeling of how this building

21:25and the structure is going to be built.

21:27So they don’t need to know all the idiosyncrasies of

21:30how you might build in CAD.

21:33So yeah, I don’t feel comfortable and that’s fine.

21:36It’s totally fine.

21:37Totally okay to not be in those design ecosystems.

21:42And again, that goes all the way back to what I was talking about, where,

21:45you know, the designer should code and developers should, should learn design.

21:49Right.

21:51When I say that in terms of not knowing the tool inside and out, yeah, you

21:56should know how to traverse Figma.

21:58You should know how to be able to zoom in and zoom out.

22:01You know, be able to leave comments like that’s like, fine.

22:04That’s what you should be able to learn how to do.

22:07But trying to figure out, oh, I don’t know.

22:11How to do auto layout.

22:14Not important, honestly, for a developer, right?

22:17We’re just going to put a flex box on the thing and call it a day.

22:19We could do that in two lines of code while you designers are messing

22:22around with settings, I guess.

22:24All right.

22:25Next one is, does the handoff process ever lead to antagonism

22:30between developers and designers?

22:31Absolutely.

22:33Absolutely.

22:35Goodness gracious.

22:36Yeah, of course.

22:37Right.

22:37We’re, this is not a dream world we’re talking about here.

22:39Of course it does.

22:41Right.

22:41For all those things that I talked about, you know, when we’re have designers that

22:45are not talking to developers, they’re not bringing them in the conversation, not.

22:49Exposing all of the pre work that was done to get up to this final decision, right?

22:56You know, as a designer, I feel like it’s important for you to, to kind of validate

23:01your direction right through data, right?

23:05That’s the whole thing that that we’re trying to do is solve user problems.

23:08So let’s identify what the user problem is that we were solving and present

23:14that to your team, right, and say, Hey, I went through all of these steps

23:19and this is what came out, right?

23:21And of course the, the team developers, PMs, all of these folks are going to

23:27put a lot more faith in this design.

23:30If they see all of that work beforehand being done, right.

23:34As opposed to a design, just coming out of nowhere, just like design, I made it.

23:41You go, well, okay, why?

23:45Right?

23:45Like we don’t, we don’t know where this came from.

23:47Were you just bored?

23:48You just decided, oh, okay, this is suddenly yellow now.

23:51Like, where is, where did this come from?

23:53Right?

23:53The more that you provide in terms of the information, the less antagonism

24:00I think you’ll find for developers.

24:03Additionally, I’ll say it several thousand times in this episode the more that you

24:08use the system, the better you will be.

24:10Right?

24:11The less that you use the system and the more snowflakes that

24:14appear in this design are.

24:16Otherwise unidentified in the system, the more the developers are going to go.

24:21Why couldn’t we just use X thing out of the library?

24:25Right?

24:25Oh, well, it’s kind of like that, but it’s different.

24:28Why?

24:29what is it different for?

24:31Right?

24:33And it’s entirely possible that the library isn’t fully featured

24:36enough to support everything that, that might be done.

24:41But I imagine if you got a library of, let’s say, 30 components that

24:47would be shared across all major design systems, if you got that

24:50core set, you probably can build any interface you want, more or less.

24:56For the most part, right?

24:57I mean, you’re going to have certain special features that might not

25:00be covered by that kind of stuff.

25:02Again, the less that the designer uses the system, the more stress

25:08that the developers are going to have by trying to fill in those gaps.

25:13So yeah, of course there’s antagonism.

25:15Oh my goodness gracious.

25:16So, you know, I could call out a dozen different things over the course of

25:20my career that I just was like, I, why can’t we just make this easier?

25:25You know, keep it simple.

25:26I believe this is the last question.

25:29Does the typical handoff process feel efficient or is it a pain point?

25:33All right.

25:34The answer is, there’s a lot of answers here.

25:41All right.

25:42So I’m thinking about the current process that we, that I use right now.

25:47at my day job.

25:48And the current process that we have, more or less, is that I have a fairly

25:54good working relationship with the main designer on the design system team.

26:00And we have a regular one on one on Fridays, just before adult

26:04beverage time, where we spend about an hour talking about whatever.

26:10The whatever might be work related.

26:13It might not be work related.

26:14I remember he was talking about his sheep last week, which was cool.

26:18So.

26:19Yeah.

26:20So in these meetings, we may typically go over some sort of

26:25design that might be coming up and to, you know, share thoughts.

26:29Similarly, I might have some idea from the engineering side that I might want

26:33to collaborate with, and that’s another place where we bring that stuff up.

26:37So that usually goes well.

26:40From there, depending on whose initiative it is.

26:46If it’s designs initiative, usually what happens is that the designer

26:50will go into a Figma or start, you know, doing explorations or

26:54otherwise, you know, trying to figure stuff out they will typically have

26:58meetings that bring more people in.

27:00So other designers and developers to get more feedback.

27:03And then finally, there’s like a handoff kind of thing that happens.

27:07And that ends up being a prioritization.

27:11As a ticket through our PM that says, okay, this is a thing that we’re

27:15going to put into the next sprint or prioritize just in general, and at that

27:20point, it begins a development process.

27:23And I got to pause at the development process for a moment, because if it’s

27:28something that’s dev related, that affects design, what I typically do, and what we

27:33have been now pushing on the team is to write an RFC or basically a doc that says,

27:40here’s the plan on what we want to do.

27:43And when we write this plan, we are trying to describe either changes or updates

27:49that we want to make to the system.

27:51We attempt to provide visuals as, as necessary, as best as we can.

27:55Luckily, my design partner is familiar with the code.

27:59He’s written a couple of small apps himself or websites.

28:02So putting code in there actually is not a problem.

28:05But then we write that doc and then we shop that doc around

28:09the organization at large.

28:11We try to get as much feedback as possible in terms of what we might

28:15be changing because it will affect everyone from a library standpoint.

28:19We want to make sure that it’s going to be helpful to folks that are

28:23expecting it to be helpful and useful.

28:26For, you know, the, the organization of all.

28:28So that’ll go through some rounds of review and revisions,

28:32of course, eventually.

28:33We will get that kind of merged as a doc and then we will build to that.

28:39And that’s what I talk about the development process, right?

28:41So there’s a ticket that’s of course made both of those cases and then

28:45developers will build these things out.

28:47And once the PR is done.

28:49Usually there will be a screenshot of the changes in there, in some cases,

28:53especially more complicated ones, we will have some sort of small meeting

28:58that shows off like the storybook of all the different variations of

29:02this component and how it’s meant to behave for design and development.

29:06And then it’s public and it’s released and out in the world and hopefully it

29:12helps people and then that’s how it works.

29:14Could it be better?

29:15Absolutely.

29:16Like I said in a couple of points earlier is that you know, identifying

29:22what the existing , design system resources are in these new designs

29:29is going to be more helpful.

29:31Unfortunately, what does happen often is in our system today, we

29:37have novel concepts that end up being introduced that cause friction.

29:42That’s what happens.

29:44And we always ask from developer side is there stuff that can be reused here?

29:50I’m trying to think of one thing in particular.

29:52Oh, yes.

29:53So, we’re considering a new, like, onboarding experience.

29:56Like a, kind of like a Coachmark thing, if you, if you know the term.

30:00And, one of the things I was asking is, well, we have this, Component that

30:06shows how many steps are in the process.

30:09And it seems like it’s only in this one spot at the moment, but I was wondering if

30:14we expect the ability to show the number of steps for something in other areas,

30:19I can imagine like a wizard experience where you might have different steps

30:23that you need to go through as a customer to finally verify a final decision

30:28right.

30:28So you go through like steps and it’s always good to know how many steps

30:31you’re going to be sitting in, right?

30:32Cause if it’s only six steps, then, okay, I could finish that, you know,

30:35in the sitting that I have right now.

30:37But if the thing is like, I don’t know, 20 steps, so like, hold on a second.

30:41I don’t know if I have time to even start this process.

30:43I also recognize that, you know, if it’s only being used in this

30:46one spot identified right now, you know, it’s, it’s the whole, you

30:50know, Once is an instance, right?

30:55Twice as a coincidence.

30:56And third is a component.

30:56As I think Dan Mall says, I might be misquoting there, but yeah, if it’s

31:01only the first instance and yeah, okay.

31:02We’ll build a custom for right now using pieces of course, that we

31:05already have, you know, text and buttons and so on and so forth.

31:08And then if we find that needs to be componentized, then hopefully we’ll

31:12identify that, make it, make it so.

31:14But yeah, that’s, our current typical handoff process has room for improvement.

31:20And I think everyone’s probably does right.

31:23I think seeing what I’ve seen on different social media platforms and

31:30different discourse that I’ve had with folks in the community handoff is a big

31:34sticking point that we all seem to share.

31:38And I know that, you know, Figma is trying to.

31:41Make things better in their ecosystem Through trying to connect things like

31:45VScode through the platform and such like that Admittedly, I’m not entirely

31:53confident in That direction, but I think it’s a valiant attempt certainly

32:03so anyway, I believe that was the last question I’m gonna just double check

32:06here Yes, that was the last question.

32:09But you can let me know what you think.

32:12Just, you know, tweet at wireframe.

32:14fm on Twitter

32:15and, yeah, let me know what you think about the handoff process.

32:18If it’s working for you out there, if it’s not working for you out there.

32:22I’m interested to know the results of this survey that’s popping around over here.

32:25I do know the company that’s trying to do this survey.

32:28I’m not going to name that company, but I’m looking forward to seeing

32:32what changes that company makes based on this information and the

32:36information that they’re collecting and I hope that things improve.

32:41Honestly, just overall, I hope the, the collaboration between design

32:44and development improves over time.

32:46I believe that there’s definitely still some confusion of roles,

32:52responsibilities, and things like that overall that make this a challenge.

32:58But hopefully it gets better just overall for the whole practice for.

33:05Everyone in design and development, everyone adjacent to these folks.

33:10I have some optimism, let’s say.

33:15All right, folks.

33:15See you next time.

33:16Thanks.

Shownotes

  1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnkrUt7PpnQ