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Who is to Blame: A Comprehensive Review of Challenges and Opportunities in Designer-Developer Collaboration

Shutong Zhang, Tianyu Zhang, Jinghui Cheng, Shurui Zhou

TL;DR

The study addresses persistent collaboration gaps between UX designers and software development engineers by combining a systematic literature review of 45 papers (2004–2023) with qualitative analysis of practitioner discussions in forums and a VS Code open-source project. It identifies three core challenges (separated decision-making, differing professional behaviors, and lack of mutual understanding) and two high-level categories of best practices (improving development workflow and enhancing communication), along with six sub-practices. The work triangulates academic insights with real-world practices, revealing partial alignment between recommended practices and current tooling, and highlighting opportunities for integrated boundary objects and shared vocabularies. The findings offer concrete guidance for tool design, education, and future research aimed at aligning UX and SE lifecycles beyond the UXD-SDE dyad to broader cross-disciplinary collaboration in software engineering.

Abstract

Software development relies on effective collaboration between Software Development Engineers (SDEs) and User eXperience Designers (UXDs) to create software products of high quality and usability. While this collaboration issue has been explored over the past decades, anecdotal evidence continues to indicate the existence of challenges in their collaborative efforts. To understand this gap, we first conducted a systematic literature review (SLR) of 45 papers published since 2004, uncovering three key collaboration challenges and two main categories of potential best practices. We then analyzed designer and developer forums and discussions from one open-source software repository to assess how the challenges and practices manifest in the status quo. Our findings have broad applicability for collaboration in software development, extending beyond the partnership between SDEs and UXDs. The suggested best practices and interventions also act as a reference for future research, assisting in the development of dedicated collaboration tools for SDEs and UXDs.

Who is to Blame: A Comprehensive Review of Challenges and Opportunities in Designer-Developer Collaboration

TL;DR

The study addresses persistent collaboration gaps between UX designers and software development engineers by combining a systematic literature review of 45 papers (2004–2023) with qualitative analysis of practitioner discussions in forums and a VS Code open-source project. It identifies three core challenges (separated decision-making, differing professional behaviors, and lack of mutual understanding) and two high-level categories of best practices (improving development workflow and enhancing communication), along with six sub-practices. The work triangulates academic insights with real-world practices, revealing partial alignment between recommended practices and current tooling, and highlighting opportunities for integrated boundary objects and shared vocabularies. The findings offer concrete guidance for tool design, education, and future research aimed at aligning UX and SE lifecycles beyond the UXD-SDE dyad to broader cross-disciplinary collaboration in software engineering.

Abstract

Software development relies on effective collaboration between Software Development Engineers (SDEs) and User eXperience Designers (UXDs) to create software products of high quality and usability. While this collaboration issue has been explored over the past decades, anecdotal evidence continues to indicate the existence of challenges in their collaborative efforts. To understand this gap, we first conducted a systematic literature review (SLR) of 45 papers published since 2004, uncovering three key collaboration challenges and two main categories of potential best practices. We then analyzed designer and developer forums and discussions from one open-source software repository to assess how the challenges and practices manifest in the status quo. Our findings have broad applicability for collaboration in software development, extending beyond the partnership between SDEs and UXDs. The suggested best practices and interventions also act as a reference for future research, assisting in the development of dedicated collaboration tools for SDEs and UXDs.
Paper Structure (39 sections, 8 figures, 6 tables)

This paper contains 39 sections, 8 figures, 6 tables.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Related Work
  3. Collaboration Scenarios During Software Development Process
  4. Related SLRs on SE and UX Integration
  5. Review Protocol
  6. Systematic Literature Review
  7. Identification: Keyword Searching.
  8. Screening, Eligibility, and Inclusion.
  9. Paper Selection Process.
  10. Data Analysis.
  11. Analyzing SE&UX Discussions in Forums and Issue Trackers
  12. Data Selection From Designer-Developer Forums
  13. Investigating Issue Discussions in Open-source Project
  14. Data Analysis
  15. Limitations and Threats to Validity
  16. ...and 24 more sections

Figures (8)

  • Figure 1: Data collection process and statistics following Identification, Screening, Eligibility, and Inclusion.
  • Figure 2: Paper selection process
  • Figure 3: Paper selection statistics
  • Figure 5: Statistics summary of the selected papers in terms of their (a) Publication Years, (b) Research Methods, and (c) Author Keywords.
  • Figure 6: Research Methods Sample Size: (a) Case study, (b) Interview, (c) Questionnaire/survey.
  • ...and 3 more figures