Important topic! Totally agree that context switching has a heavier cost than most people realize. That's also why so many product/dev teams are optimizing for tools that improve dev productivity and collaboration.
Here are a few other links that you might find interesting:
https://livecycle.io/blogs/humanitec-dx-study/https://livecycle.io/blogs/context-switch/
I asked representatives from 200 dev teams around the world how well their developers & non developers communicate & collaborate with each other while building products. Here's what I learned along the way.
You might want to check out what the team at Livecycle is working on. They just rolled out their SDK to add visual commenting/collaboration on top of your existing preview environment - https://www.sdk.livecycle.io/signup
Check out Livecycle (https://livecycle.io/). I'm part of the team there and it sounds like it could be the tool you're looking for, since our aim is to make the review process more organized, clear and collaborative for front-end teams.
The platform lets teams collaborate on top of PR preview environments where all relevant stakeholders can comment with text, screenshots, video captures, and by easily editing HTML/CSS elements, as you mentioned you wanted to do.
All review comments are organized in the Livecycle playground (with relevant notifications for playground collaborators) and also synced back to Git where developers can see them in full context.
So using Livecycle, your team will be able to clearly collect UI/UX feedback from everyone, and avoid unnecessary tickets and emails. The whole process becomes transparent and collaborative (for both technical and non-technical stakeholders).
It takes just a few minutes to set up, and at no cost. We're available and happy to help and answer any questions and also to tell you about our upcoming rollout of an SDK...
Thanks for these insights. I think this is a great approach. The question is, how to best facilitate these short/demo reviews without creating too many context-switches and interruptions for everyone. We're actually working on a platform that tries to solve this (https://livecycle.io/) by generating instant, collaborative PR preview environments. So the kinds of reviews you describe can happen async and in context.
Do you think this approach would work to facilitate the reviews you outline here?
I'm talking about products intended for devs, developer tools. I'm asking about ways people found for getting early adopters to try it and provide their feedback.
Thanks! Do you think it would help if you had a live preview environment that came with every PR, so you could better understand the context of the changes you are reviewing?
I agree 100%. The question is how to facilitate this collaboration/compromise between developers. We've actually built a developer collaboration platform called Livecycle (https://livecycle.io/) that lets developers collaborate/comment on a live PR preview environment. Do you think this could help with the pain point you are describing?
Thanks! Do you think it would help if you had a live preview environment that came with every PR, so you could better understand the context of the changes you are reviewing?