12 Senior Designers Show Their Engineering Handoff Process

Summary

Key Points

• Design teams at companies like Figma and Slack create detailed documentation, including specs, annotations, and explanations of design decisions. 0:09
• The handoff process typically involves providing engineers with clear explanations of design decisions, interactions, and edge cases. 0:22
• The use of design systems and style guides helps to facilitate the handoff process by providing a shared language and set of components. 0:22
• The future of handoff involves designers working directly in code and sharing code-based prototypes with engineers, reducing the need for detailed specs and annotations. 0:26
• The goal of the handoff process is to ensure that engineers have all the necessary information to accurately implement the design. 12:35
• Designers use various methods to communicate design intent, including creating separate pages for specs, using Figma's dev mode, and adding notes and comments. 14:42
• The shift towards designing in code is changing the way designers and engineers collaborate, with a greater emphasis on code-based collaboration and less on detailed specs and annotations. 18:49
• Design teams create detailed specifications and annotations to hand off designs to engineering teams, often using tools like Figma. 26:39
• Designers are using tools like GitHub and experimental builds to share and collaborate on code-based prototypes. 26:56
• As design teams begin to design in code, the handoff process is changing, with designers creating code-based prototypes and sharing links to collaborate with engineers. 27:03