Business analysts in many organizations are being shouldered to do more than just requirements analysts and research. BA’s are being tasked to take the requirements they have documented and create a UI to support them. This puts them at a bit of a disadvantage because they are being asked to perform activities they might not have the necessary skills to accomplish, or have little interest in doing. However, just because they might not have the design skills, or even the interest, it doesn’t mean they can’t come up with great concepts.

One advantage a business analyst has is the deep understanding of the business and technical requirements a particular feature, or set of features, need to support. The question still remains how can you instruct them to use their well of great information and create a well designed UI to support it?

My solution is to encourage the activity of sketching rather than dropping right into tools like Visio. Getting them to sit down with a pad of paper, or a printed out framework, and illustrate their ideas opens up possibilities that using pre-defined shapes in Visio discourages. As a designer, it helps me out by using their sketches as a baseline for a design that fits into the overall process and it ensures that all of the requirements have been met. In the end, getting other members of the project team to get away from the computer and illustrating their ideas out in a visual manner new and innovative ideas can easily be explored. Designers can take these sketches, expand on them, and do what I like to call ‘Making Magic Happen’.