Thinking about better ways for designers and engineers to work together.
※This article is machine translated.
In-house roundtable discussion between designers and engineers
Improved collaboration and openness between professions.
I think this is one of the issues that many companies are grappling with.
Cocone is a company that provides avatar and digital world services on a global scale. 40% of its approximately 500 employees are designers, which is rather unusual for a company in a similar industry.
There are many situations where things are done by design driven, and that is why the quality of the relationship between designers and engineers is directly related to the driving force behind the growth of the service.
Although we still believe that there is a good atmosphere between the different types of jobs, we recently held our first “Designer x Engineer Roundtable” led by the Designer Management Office* with the aim of furthering mutual understanding.
(*An organization that provides cross-sectional support and training activities so that designers can be more active in the field)
The total number of participants was 17, including leaders and volunteers from each service (business). Since this was the first meeting, the designers were originally from the UI department, which has many opportunities to interact with engineers. The engineers were mainly those in charge of clients.
The purpose of this project is straight-forward: ” Interaction between engineers and designers across projects.
We aimed to make the meeting as meaningful as possible for the participants by including soft topics such as mutual impressions between professions and recent AI generation, while at the same time providing topics that would draw out discussions on issues that are troubling each organization.
Incidentally, since designers and engineers are assigned to each service (business) of our company, there is also the aspect of a cross-divisional roundtable discussion.
The themes of the day’s talks, solicited from participants, were as follows
Roundtable Talk Themes
- I would like to ask those of you who have changed jobs, how do you feel about each other’s positions at Cocone compared to your experiences at other companies?
- Are there any design efficiency tools that you would like to see as common company features?
- I’d like to know if there are any features that you are actually making useful.
- Anyone else having trouble with git?
- Use of Generative AI Technology
- As a leader, I would like to hear “this kind of engineer’s way of working is a bit troubling” from the UI point of view, carefully and softly choosing words, but clearly and clearly!
Picking up on the most memorable exchanges
I would like to ask those who have changed jobs, how do you feel about each other’s positions at Cocone compared to your experiences at other companies?
［Designer.]
The engineers at Cocone are friendly and easy to talk to, as many of them like cute things and like making things! I feel that we can talk about many things outside of work, such as hobbies.
［Engineer]
At my previous company, I had a distant relationship with the designers, and there were few opportunities to discuss things with them. Since coming to Cocone, I have had more opportunities to interact with them, such as when we work together to create tools to improve efficiency. Also, as I mentioned earlier, I feel comfortable talking to them because we have similar interests and tastes in common, such as a ” kawaii thing lover.
Do you have any design efficiency tools that you would like to see as common company functions?
［Designer.]
（It is not uncommon (in the projects I am in charge of) for designers and engineers to touch each other in Unity’s Prefab, and then there are conflicts when it is time to integrate them. I would like to have something that shows the work status.
［Engineer]
It may be because we are doing the Prefab commonality properly, so that even if we are touching completely different screens, the main source is referring to the same one and there may be a conflict. In other projects, we don’t have that much commonality, so even if there are some design deviations, there doesn’t seem to be any work batting around. I think there are parts where commonization makes things easier and parts where it has disadvantages. I guess it depends on which one you take as a project.
Is anyone having trouble with git (question from an engineer)?
［Engineer A]
Right now we have the designers using SourceTree, but as an engineer, I don’t necessarily want them to use SourceTree. Also, even if the leadership team has no problem using git, I would like to know how the team members and the whole team are doing. Sometimes I’ve heard stories of git conflicts that took all day to fix. I hope to eliminate such waste.
［Designer A]
Sometimes there are members who still don’t understand, and I think it would be better to have an engineer teach them rather than me there. However, I have not been able to create such a place yet, but there are members who want to learn.
［Engineer B]
UI people are usually involved with client engineers, so I think they are close enough to ask if there is something wrong with the behavior, but designers who draw illustrations, for example, are not as involved as UI designers, so they may not feel comfortable asking yet.
［Designer B.]
Yes, I would! Then I was thinking that I would like to consult with you in the future about a lecture session on git with the whole designers in mind.
［Engineer C]
It is not limited to git, but it may be better to call it a ” work efficiency study group. There are cases where people psychologically “don’t read” error messages even if the cause is written in the error message, so a study session that says, “Don’t be afraid of things that sometimes appear on the command line, etc.,” may be the first step toward various improvements. This may be the first step for various improvements.
Use of Generative AI
［Engineer]
I would like to ask the UI designers, are you looking for a generative AI where you can type ” design a button like this on this screen” and it will come up with a button that looks like it?
［Designer.]
There are many illustration generation AI tools, but I have not seen many UI generation AI tools. To begin with, it is a bit different from outputting an illustration, since it becomes “this is how the customer will move, so we need this screen or button. Ah, but it would be nice if you could create (UI) animations for us. You have to think about the thinking part to come up with it, but we want to make those parts easy (laughs).
As a leader, I would like to hear “This kind of engineer’s way of working is a bit troubling” from the UI designer’s point of view, carefully and softly choosing words, but clearly! (Question from an engineer)
［Designer.]
Basically, everyone is nice to me and I don’t have any trouble! On top of that, yes, it’s true for any job, but I hope we can work together to figure out how to do it, rather than starting from a place of denial.
［Engineer]
In fact, engineers are the ones who often say “I can’t do it” (laughs). However, sometimes the engineer’s “I can’t” is “I can’t do it (because it would take too much time),” so it would be good if you could explain your priorities or ask “How can I do it?” It would be good if you could explain your priorities and ask, “How can I do it?
(All engineers and designers look satisfied.)
The scheduled time (one hour) was fully utilized, and there were no interruptions in the conversation. The participants actively engaged in a question-and-answer session, and it seemed that there were things that could only be talked about in such a forum.
Finally, we asked Nagata, who led this project, about the background of the roundtable discussion.
Background of the project
In the process of creating services, UI designers and client engineers are often involved, which inevitably leads to communication and mutual understanding, so there are no major issues at present. However, with the recent increase in the number of new members and projects, I felt that some teams may not be able to deepen mutual understanding as much as those who have been with the company for a long time, so I decided to hold a round-table discussion in consultation with Engineering Manager Saito-san. It would have been fine if we had done it within a specific project, but by communicating with people in other positions in other projects, we could learn about the thinking and values of UI designers and client engineers from multiple perspectives, so we invited the UI leader of each project and the leader of the client engineers to participate in the discussion. I tried to conduct it by inviting them.”
Planning considerations
We also made the roundtable meetings closed to the participants to make it easier for them to speak frankly, and played background music to help them relax as much as possible. I tried to make them feel as relaxed as possible.”
About the future
The roundtable discussion was established as a template, and I would like to expand it horizontally to other teams and occupations. It would also be ideal if projects or teams that feel they would like to talk to each other for a while spontaneously start holding round-table discussions or similar activities.”
