There seems to be three ways (in my experience) for circulating design artefacts for discussion, collaboration and approval – particularly when integrated into an Agile development methodology:
1. Top-down, where you start with the UX vision and strategy, progressing through the detail of research outcomes, design framework and fundamentals, the architecture and finally the user interface. A lot of people couldn’t care less about the first 90% of that, their eyes glaze over and they respond with “Just show me the wireframes”.
2. Bite-size, where you share just one small section at a time, self-contained parcels of wireframes with some design justification included – enough to intercept most questions and doubts. Unfortunately it means there is little context and when spread over weeks, they don’t see the big picture.
3. The big reveal, where you show them the final design deliverables, specifically wireframes. They get to see the whole picture but there’s no time or room to explore the reasoning behind it, the strategy and research, the iterations and the many ideas that were considered and then include or discarded. Working with the entire design is difficult and either gets very light critique spread over many aspects, or falls apart and you end up coming back with a bite-size approach anyway.
What are your experiences with trying different approaches to sharing design and the amount of data and rationale you proactive present to accompany design deliverables?
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