What is a Design Collaboration Platform?
In today’s era of modern technology, especially during Covid19, the workplace is not just a physical space where people remain occupied and work towards achieving their goals. Instead, this era of rapid progress demands an instant access environment to do good work.
As a result, the workplace has become entirely digital, where employees communicate and share in unprecedented ways.
Why are organisations using product design collaboration platforms?
This is why the leading organisations of the world have switched to the collaboration platform. They want to forge goal-oriented business relationships beyond natural workgroups.
They have employed technologies like instant messaging, e-mail and other social media platforms, and virtual meeting tools to achieve this purpose.
Digital Design Collaboration Platform Process
The digital design platforms break down the communication barriers and foster efficiency, innovation, and growth.
And the success factor is the effective implementation of a digital design platform capable of driving actual cultural change
A design phase is collaborative in that it is based on the feedback and ideas from different people, sources, and departments.
Why is collaboration essential in design?
Making a great design requires a collaborative approach where everyone on the development team contributes to creating a great product based on the user’s feedback. Such a platform should produce a more innovative and original design that solves the user’s problem and fulfils the desired goal. The collaborative design platform works on this very idea.
In other words, digital product design collaboration is necessary to make better content management, workplace communication, information flow across the organisation and document management and thus leads to maximise productivity and efficiency of the employee.
We can summarise the benefits of digital design work collaboration in the following lines.
Benefits of digital product design collaboration
1) Digital product design collaboration ensures continuous communication that is critical to avoid misunderstandings and prevent unpleasant surprises and costly revisions.
2) It ensures the client’s involvement through a continuous dialogue to make all the team members up to date and well-informed.
3) Digital product design collaboration is a source to provide creative solutions to the designers by providing them as much information as possible through close cooperation.
4) The client’s involvement in the design process ensures a better understanding of their part and becomes more interested in the outcome. Moreover, the client’s involvement provides a better solution to fulfil their needs by utilising their specialised expertise in the process.
5) Effective digital design collaboration saves both time and resources and, in this way, helps avoid unnecessary iteration.
Digital Design Collaboration Platform Process Components
The digital design collaboration platform includes the following components:
Use: (collaborate, communicate, connect) The design collaboration platform is based on the employees’ ability to do their job by connecting, communicating, and collaborating with others.
As a result, good business relationships can be developed within and beyond natural workgroups to facilitate knowledge sharing across the organisation.
Technology: the digital platform technology enables you to adopt the right tools for the employees to do their jobs. All the work is based on the tools provided to your employees to do their work.
Controls
The efficient use of technology in the digital platform is established on the proper controls demanding you support the digital platform with appropriate governance structures and management processes.
Measurable business value is also essential to deliver the benefits and direction of your organisation and guide your digital platform’s approach.
Digital Product Design Collaboration Process
Now let us have a look at the process of digital product design collaboration.
The activities of the digital product designers and clients differ from project to project based on the project’s complexity, goals, priorities, and challenges involved, and budget.
In addition, the team members’ preferences also contribute to the variation of the work by the designers.
The collaboration process is evolving continuously as new tools and techniques add to the process from time to time.
We apply some techniques almost daily like meetings to kick-off the project, efficient knowledge transfer, regular communication, and finding solutions as a team.
Digital Product Design Collaboration Process Steps
Let’s discuss each one by one.
Project kick-off
It is a proven tactic and comprises a few hours session during which a client meets the team working on their project. In this way agency and the client develop an understanding of each other and the project.
It includes the project briefing and requirements, explaining the digital design process step-by-step to clarify any confusion or issues involved.
Effective Knowledge Transfer
The digital design collaboration emphasises the effective transfer of knowledge about the product, the business, and its users because it is necessary to make a viable blueprint for the end product.
Here, the client answers many questions responsible for the user experience, like the target audience, the business goals, and the present technology constraints. Moreover, documentation may also be required to complete the particular task.
For this purpose, some collaboration platforms are Dropbox or Google Drive folders to share all the relevant materials.
Remember to have the right balance between too much or too little communication at this phase. It is possible by keeping regular and healthy contacts between the clients and the product design team.
Regular Communication
A digital design collaboration platform works well during this session. You can organise weekly design-oriented meetings to allow the experts to present their work and get feedback from the client.
A good platform works well in practice in the following ways.
1) Maintaining regular communication with the client and all the team members on what is happening? What has been done? And what will or should the next step be?
2) Enabling the designers to make well-informed decisions with the help of client feedback.
3) By strengthening the relationship between the client and the team and among the team members too.
Finding solutions collaboratively
This is a method where both the client and the design team consult, and sometimes it results in design work itself.
When
everyone contributes and demonstrates their skill, expertise, and knowledge, they add value to the greater whole.
We get a chance to explore the diverse range of ideas from different sections of life. It means everyone is contributing towards the solution that makes the outcome worthwhile and valuable.
