How to get your developers involved early in the design process.

Benefits #

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Wireframes #

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Low-fi Mockups #

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7 Ways to jump start your design sessions #

1. Use overlays to obfuscate the design details and focus on bigger elements.
2. Decide on a layout grid. Use to create boundaries around landmarks.
3. Capture and give semantic names to reusable components. Can we reuse a component by giving it a few variables? instead of creating a new one?
4. Break down parts of each component and which semantic elements can be used to represent them. Can this information be presented in a way that more usable, accessible (list vs dropdown; accordion vs slider). Which text should be links? What will they link to?
5. Create a semantic heading order.
6. Identify dynamic data. Start thinking about their sources (labels, text, multi-language, images, APIs) and how they'll be maintained (dynamically via API; manually via content management system; contact form submission guidelines)
7. Identify images placeholders. Even if you don't have them available, start thinking about where they should go and their purpose - descriptive or functional. Think about what these images should look like on mobile (if necessary). Start documenting alt text.

Get everyone involved. #

These workshops not only get designers and developers on board, but also get conversations going with content managers, 3rd party tools and support teams. UX researchers should be included since they should already have the quantitative/qualitative data to support who the users are and what the UI should look like.