Confused about who should design the User Interface for a New App - Business Analyst or Designer?
This article clears the confusion with a real-world situation and states all the valid reasons why a business analyst should prepare low-fidelity wireframes first.
Embracing a New App: Real-world Situation for Business Analyst #
Let’s say you are working as a Business Analyst and one fine day, your client shows up with the following new requirement:
I want to create a web application for my Coaching institute to help me set up all the instructor profiles, courses and students.
I should be able to create a course schedule and assign an instructor to the course and the instructor should get automatic reminders before the course schedule.
An Instructor should be able to take student’s attendance online against the course. I should be able to view the progress of all the courses and attendance of instructors and students.
You would first elicit all the features/functions that the client needs in the web application.
What should be your next step?
Would you involve a Designer to create hi-fi designs directly based on the requirements?
Or
Would you first prepare low-fi wireframes yourself and once they are finalized, hand them over to the designers to create hi-fi designs?
Let’s understand both approaches to make it clear which one to go for.
Approach 1: Involve Designer To Create Hi-Fi Designs From Requirements #
Here, let’s say you arrange a meeting with a designer from your team, explain the requirements, and ask the designer to create Hi-Fi designs based on the requirements.
What will happen in this case?
A Designer does not know about your client’s business processes, client requirements and how the users are going to interact with the new application.
So, you have to do the following:
- Explain your ideas and client requirements to the designer
- The designer creates hi-fi designs and sends it to you for a review
- You review the designs and provide your feedback,
- The Designer keep revising the designs until you are satisfied with the outcome
- You involve the client’s stakeholders to review the designs
- The client’s stakeholders provide their feedback and the revision loop continues until the designs are finalized.
So, the whole process is very time-consuming and it’s simply not effective.
Also, creating hi-fi designs requires more effort than creating low-fi wireframes hence it’s better to create wireframes and go for hi-fi designs as a next step.
Approach 2: The Business Analyst Prepares Wireframes First #
Here, you will prepare the Low-Fidelity (low-fi) wireframes first, get them reviewed by the client and once they are finalized, hand them over to the designers.
- This sounds good because you have a complete understanding and knowledge of your client’s business processes, use cases, and what exactly the client needs in the new application.
- It’s a lot easier for you to create wireframes of the new app, get the client’s feedback, make revisions and finalize it. i.e. get the client’s approval on wireframe designs.
- After that, send the wireframes to the designers so that they can easily produce hi-fi designs that are fully aligned with the client’s needs.
Conclusion #
By understanding this situation, it’s clear that a Business Analyst should prepare low-fi wireframes first, get them approved and hand them over to the designers.
I faced the same situation in one of my projects and it was a very cumbersome experience, so I changed the process in such a way that, for any new app, a Business Analyst should prepare low-fi wireframes first and that worked pretty well.
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