I'm a product designer with a front-end background (Rails, Swift) trying to deepen my understanding of domain modeling.

I see domain models as a shared foundation between product, design and dev. But I don't see it happening on teams, ever. It helps me understand what's possible, anchors feature flows in what's possible, avoids over designing.

So why aren't more product teams collaborating on ERDs? Sometimes when I ask for a schema or ERD to get oriented, I get blank stares. Are there different ways developers think about data modeling beyond ERDs?

Is collaborating on the domain model a good entry point between design and engineering? What does that collaboration usually look like in your org?

Would love to hear how others approach this, especially from engineers who work closely with designers, or designers who’ve gotten better at it over time.