Planning a project, where does design come in?

On the new version of the playbook, you go into great detail into how to use trello boards, especially Current. I really like that as a developer, but something I struggle to understand is where does visual design fits.

On the Product Design board there is room for user flows and user experience, but not visual design. From what I understood you don’t use photoshop or PNGs to divulge design, but even building HTML wireframes should have it’s own card, right?

What about re-designs, or design “bugs” such as changing the color of something, where do those go?

@croaky, any help?

Thanks.

Can anyone help me with this?

@cpytel

The reason you’re not able to find this is a separate step in our flow is because it largely isn’t.

Visual design is a process of continual refinement and change as we work on the application, much in the same way that refactoring and big fixes in our code are.

If something with visual design can’t be accomplished as part of the feature itself, then a separate card is sometimes created for it, but largely it happens throughout the flow of a card and is done when the card is shippable.

We’re able to accomplish this flow because we don’t have separate visual designers at thoughtbot. Instead the same designer who can improve the visual design of a feature is working on the card throughout the entire process, there is no “hand off”.

There are times where visual design is done up front, but those should be the exception to the rule as we should be prioritizing usability and function over style.

I hope that answers your question. Happy to clarify any points.

@cpytel So, the first implementation of the feature will follow the layout and “style” you’ve reached on the design sprint wireframes, correct?

And only after it is shippable (but before shipping?) the graphical design touches occur?

No, not quite. The visual style may be refined throughout the time that it is being worked on.