Building successful communication strategies across collaborating product teams

When working on a UX design project, successful communication between your internal team and external partners is the key to a relationship that creates outcomes everyone in varying product team roles can be proud of.

As a client, you want to view the latest changes, get regular updates on work progress and provide feedback with ease. Feeling out of the loop is the worst, right?

What you absolutely don’t want is to spend half your life asking, “Where’s the link for…” or figuring out the best way to make sure everyone’s on the same page.

If this isn’t your first time at the rodeo, you might have already established some standard ways of working here, but if not, then it shouldn’t be down to you to figure out what works best – unless you really want to! It’s on us.

Running an efficient design team means paying attention to communications and handover as much as it does to creating amazing visuals.

It’s up to your UX agency to find solutions

As a UX agency, our job is to find solutions. While repeated “Where can I find…” requests can make even the most placid of designers a tad frustrated, it’s not up to a client or collaborator to solve this problem.

It sounds basic, but you can’t ever assume that everyone knows everything you know or that people are going to instantly understand where to look. To ensure that different product team roles are effectively aligned, we need to create an ecosystem where they can find all the information they need.

If we’re hearing the same request again and again from a client, it shows that something in our process is broken. Rather than lay blame on them, we need to revise workflows or create assets that address these recurring requests.

Project management

Successful communication comes from having defined rules and processes – they don’t need to be complex or use the latest shiny new platform or methodology.

We’re not going to tell anyone which project management tools to use because everyone has their own preferences. What works for us might not be at all appropriate for another team and project. Ultimately, the tools aren’t what matters most – it’s the clarity of communication.

That being said, at Lighthouse we find Basecamp useful. We’ve used it for most client communications over the past 12 years.

We have a few rules that are set in stone to keep us on the straight and narrow here.

Rule #1

Everything goes in one app. We don’t want any project-related chats in people’s inboxes via direct email. If this happens, it gets copied and pasted into the primary app.

If communication happens in inboxes, it might get lost. Having everything in one app means that there’s a clear paper trail of everything we’ve talked about available at any time, and all the right people have access to them.

Rule #2

To-dos for everything.

Else it’s easy to end up with big spirally threads that end up covering multiple subjects. These are painful and often cause confusion, especially when different conversations start to get mixed up.

We split tasks into straightforward to-dos, keeping conversations focused on one topic or set of deliverables. Assigning people and setting deadlines also ensures accountability.

Rule #3

That’s it, there aren’t other rules.

With these simple rules in place, we’ve managed to fix the majority of repeating problems that we’ve experienced with clients over the years.

Of course, it doesn’t work perfectly all the time, but with these in place, we’ve made vast improvements.

Don’t forget to onboard

A UX agency may have used a tool for ages, but that’s not to say anyone else has ever heard of it. It’s crucial to onboard everyone – from clients to varying product team roles – effectively.

There are a few ways to do this:

• A standard kickoff mail, message, or call.
• A video tutorial (or series of videos) showing how the basics work.
• A detailed onboarding document that simplifies complex processes.

On that note, though, the need to send large documents probably means the process is too complex. No one likes to read long files, and the sad fact is recipients are likely to ignore them.

This goes both ways. If an agency has to adapt to a client’s process and tools, then this needs to be provided to them as well. When everyone’s aligned, things run smoothly.

“Where’s the link for…”

Each project has a unique set of requirements for feedback, sign-off, and handoff. In the past, this had left us with inconsistent ways of delivering end-product outputs to clients, creating communication issues.

Something we kept on hearing was “Where’s the link for the wireframes?” or “Can you send over the link for the latest UI design?”

We thought this was clear – it was all in one place in a thread of its own – but for whatever reason, this hadn’t sunk in.

We wanted to find a solution that would work for everyone and result in successful communication, so we came up with something ultra-simple that would help.

The solution: a spreadsheet

On most of our larger projects, we maintain a central spreadsheet full of all the flows, screens, and other tasks we’re working on, with links to wireframes and prototypes, as well as updates on status and sign-off.

As easy as pasting into a spreadsheet with no code required whatsoever, making it publicly accessible to our clients to engage with and give active feedback.

It requires some management, but it’s paid off massively in terms of the efficiency it brings to client communications. We refer to it in most meetings with the client so that they are completely aware of what it is and where to find it. One link for everything they need – simple.

It might not be the sexiest of solutions, but it didn’t need to be.

Remember, most people need to hear something 10 – 20 times before it is absorbed properly.

Successful communication isn’t a single tool

While it was tempting to make this article into a list of our most-used tools and shout about how great they are, they’re not what matters most.

Basecamp and spreadsheets work for us, but they might be a disaster for someone else’s project – and that’s absolutely fine.

What truly matters is creating an ecosystem that ensures no one is left wondering or searching. This enables different product team roles to focus on the real work of creating great things.