As exciting and enthralling web design is, the entire process can sometimes be marred with confusion, lost conversations, chaotic feedback, and delayed timelines. Whether you are a UI/UX designer, web developer, or product manager, these are the occasional devils that accompany many projects.
The common threads connecting these pitfalls are often sloppy communication and team collaboration on projects. The collaboration of the internal team is important, but the client and project managers need to be on the same page for clarity of thoughts and objectives.
We at Brucira have faced such hurdles during our internal projects where sifting through long email chains, getting and implementing the correct feedback was cumbersome and haphazard. That’s why we created Ruttl, a simple yet effective tool for the project teams and designer-developer community in particular.
We’ll talk about Ruttl in detail as we go along, discussing 6 secret methods of improving project collaboration.
So, how to improve collaboration?
1. Onboard everyone right from the beginning
Whenever a new project gets kicked off, a briefing session must clearly understand the direction, goal, and objectives. As is the norm with designing projects, the designers are always at the forefront, and others follow in the later stages.
But to have a streamlined workflow, it’s a great thing to have every stakeholder on board right from the word go, be it the product manager, the designer, the developer, or the content creator.
Ruttl is designed to keep the entire team connected and informed right from the beginning of the project and during the editing and review phases. Its visual-heavy interface keeps things uncluttered, concise, and intuitive and helps managers add and coordinate team members at will.
2. Common communication language
Designers talk about visual cues, colours and fonts, whereas for developers, everything means codes and numbers. The project managers, sales team, and others have their own interpretation for individual projects. To enable better collaboration, there must be a way or tool to effectively communicate in a common language that all the stakeholders can understand.
Ruttl enables each team member to leave comments and suggestions right on the website without resorting to emails with marked screenshots. This way, designers or managers can easily convey their thoughts to the developers without getting into the specifics of each other’s domains.
Designers can comment in terms of font colour, character spacing, kerning, image placement etc. which the developers can easily pick up and implement as CSS values.
3. Ideate, iterate and store
Web design is all about ideas flowing from the design team to the developers where it gets executed. And no design gets finalised without having multiple iterations to satisfy the objectives or the client’s desires. Just imagine a situation where a design iteration was better suited than the current one.
This requires each iteration to be either stored separately or redone, leading to unnecessary time delays, monetary losses, and frustration.
Ruttl stores every design iteration separately so that switching between different versions becomes effortless and time-saving. This also aids the review process in assessing the different changes that took place during the designing phase.
4. Regular follow-ups and coordination
Designing is a task that requires a lot of back and forth communication and the right mix of collaboration and coordination between developers and designers. On the other hand, project managers should follow up with both the client and the internal team to keep track of the various projects’ pace.
Ruttl provides managers with an overview of multiple projects at the same time and place and frees them up with the micromanagement of each task or communication while still keeping a check on the progress.
5. Reduce dependencies
Even after a design has been finalised, some minor edits or touch-ups might be required for which the sales team may approach the designers or developers. Such dependencies should be reduced for a more efficient workflow. Ruttl enables anyone with or without coding know-how to edit images or content on the go without things going haywire.
6. Keep clients in the active feedback loop
Clients can sometimes be unpredictable with their needs, and it often happens that they prop up a different demand during the designing phase. To avoid any confusion or such sudden directional changes, the client must be regularly invited to review the design and provide feedback.
Using Ruttl, one can easily share live websites with clients and get their valuable feedback without emails or logins, simplifying the client-side management smoother.
Brucira’s path-breaking review and feedback tool does away with the clunky and cluttered methods and brings ingenuity, clarity, and efficiency to the table. Check out Ruttl and get a free demo right now.
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