The trinity of owner, designer and developer.

Due to the way we work, we often operate as a design team embedded into a project/company.

Working this way, enables us to become part of that company for the duration of the project (and beyond), benefiting from greater communication, teamwork and innovation.

The more we work this way however, the more we notice how often there is a dysfunctional relationship between owner, designer and technical developer.

The problem often stems from one team not understanding or trying to accommodate for the pressures and requirements of the other team. This will often exacerbate the problem; on one side unrealistic expectations are set and not met, while on the other a 'you can't do that' syndrome develops with little attempt to find workarounds.

Left unchecked, this gap often widens into more of a cultural one, with those in the business seeing the development team as 'heavy lifting engineers' (mostly in an affectionate way) and those in dev referring to those in the business as 'out of touch suits' (mostly not in an affectionate way). In truth, if a common language can be found, these two groups working in harmony results in an incredibly rich, collaborative realtionship.

From our experience, bridging this gap and establishing a common language begins with the following steps:

• Having a vision
• Communicating the vision
• Sharing ownership of the vision
• Creating a strategy for realising the vision

As a UXD team, we often find ourselves founding and leading these steps on the projects we work on. We regularly have to work hard to overcome a perception that design is somewhat elitist and demonstrate that it can be a bridge between previously isolated members of the product team. In short, giving a context, vocabulary and channels that enable everyone to communicate productively.

On reflection, good UXD is mostly about facilitating the wider product team to design the product together.