A UX designer’s field guide to working with engineers
We’ve all been there. We’ve crafted a delightful customer experience, relentlessly iterating on customer feedback, only to be met with an engineer who didn’t agree with the design approach and didn’t want to ship the design we created.
After working on product development teams for large corporations, I’ve learned that engineers are key stakeholders and their buy-in is critical to ship the right experience.
Building influence with engineers is a key skill for UX designers, and fortunately, with these 6 tips, it’s easy to do.
1. Listen actively
In Dale Carnegie’s classic book, How to Win Friends & Influence People, Carnegie highlights the value of being a good listener, and showing genuine interest in others. Listening is the simplest, most overlooked technique to building influence with anyone.
Generally, people have a need to be heard. Listening is a good way to earn trust with those you work with. Listen to understand, not just to respond.
According to the Harvard Business Review’s article, “What Great Listeners Actually Do”, Level 3 listening engagement includes capturing ideas, asking questions and restating issues.
Actively listen to understand concerns, and summarize what the other person has said to make sure you’ve correctly understood.
2. Communicate collaboratively
Engineers and designers don’t always speak the same language. Dive deep and pick up some markers and whiteboard with engineers.
Communicating concepts on a whiteboard ensures there’s a shared understanding of the design problem and solution, while inviting engineers to contribute ideas.
It’s helpful to understand how the engineer you’re working with likes to communicate. In the book, The Influence Edge, How to Persuade Others to Help You Achieve Your Goals, there’s a guide to understanding how the person you want to influence communicates, so you can amend your style accordingly.
3. Ask questions
Engineers know about the code and the inner workings of how it’s structured. When engineers tell you the design is hard, don’t be afraid to ask why, or ask them to show you the problem.
It’s often in these discussions where opportunities unveil themselves.
4. Involve them early
To engineers, the design process often looks like a black box filled with sticky notes.
Make it a habit to ask engineers if they want to be involved in the early stage of the design. Some engineers like being involved in the early ideation and conception phase, others don’t.
I often find that engineers like being involved early to give input. 5.Customers first
If there are multiple design solutions, and the engineers you’re working with have strong opinions, involve the engineer in customer research.
Involving engineers, and being transparent with customer research, provides more context and insight into customer problems.
This helps avoid questions on the validity of the approach.
5. Be open to other ideas
There are often multiple solutions and different avenues to get to a solid design.
Brainstorming different approaches with engineers is a good way of discovering alternate solutions and trade offs on speed and quality.
6. Leverage their expertise on edge cases
Design solutions cover 95% of the main use cases, however edge cases arise during development, and engineers often have good workable solutions.
Leverage their ideas on handling use cases, since they’re the ones who have the most expertise on how they arise.
These simple tips will help you earn trust with engineers, so you can collaborate together on shipping a high quality user experience.
Try these out, and let me know how they work out for your next project.
References Cited
Carnegie, Dale. How to Win Friends and Influence People. Vermilion, 2019.
Vengel, Alan A. The Influence Edge: How to Persuade Others to Help You Achieve Your Goals. Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2001.
Zenger, Jack, and Folkman, Joseph. “What Great Listeners Actually Do.” Harvard Business Review, July 14, 2016. https://hbr.org/2016/07/what-great-listeners-actually-do
