Why I don’t “hand off” design work

I don’t believe in design handoffs.

First, because I don’t like wasting time writing documentation for people who don’t even open both eyes when looking at designs.

Second, because I like when things actually work.

Design doesn’t stop at the Figma file. That’s the easy part. The real design happens when you see how it behaves in production, how it reacts to weird data, how it breaks because someone pasted an emoji into a form.

So no, I’m not disappearing after I share the file. I stick around. I’m annoying, too. I’ll give you a demo. Snippets of code you didn’t ask for. If you tell me “it’s not doable,” I’ll code it myself out of spite.

But when we’re in it together and something’s not working, I’ll adjust the layout. Rewrite the copy. Question the interaction, the entire experience even. Design your suggestions instead. Kill what needs to be killed.

That doesn’t mean I hover. I trust the people I work with. (I also know they won’t read documentation, and that’s fine. I don’t read all the docs PMs write either.)

But I care enough to stay close. To debug, fix, rethink. To make sure what ships is what we meant to ship.

I’ve seen what happens when I don’t stay until the end. It wasn’t always pretty. So I don’t hand off. I stay until the thing works.