We often as users only see the final product and not the steps inbetween to get there. What users don’t see is all the bugs and the defects that happen in the process. Creating a product that looks and functions the way it was designed to requires the design team to execute a whole process called QA.
What is QA
QA = Quality Assurance, this is the step between development and testing to ensure consistency between what has been designed and what has been coded out. This often involves the designer reviewing the coded version of the UI and working, and closely with the developers to make updates to the UI in code.
Why is it Important?
The most important reason of why we do QA is to ensure consistency of the whole product. When inconsistencies do not get addressed when it should be it will often collect overtime and create a very disjointed experience in your product. This becomes a damaging experience and as a result, your team will be playing catch up.
Implementing QA into your workflow
A simple solution to ensure consistency is to implement design QA into your current workflow, this step should be taken after it has been coded but before testing. Very often design QA has been overlooked and view as unimportant, but as a designer you should be stressing the importance and assure that this step is crucial to creating a great product. When a software or app does not work the way it’s supposed to, you won’t have happy customers and clients, in turn your clients will start losing confidence in your product and will take their business elsewhere. Make sure that this does not happen and start implementing design QA today!