Articulating Design Decisions: Communicate with Stakeholders, Keep Your Sanity, and Deliver the Best User Experience

Product Information

For example “Yes I understand what you’re saying”, “Yes there are definitely ways we could improve this” or “Yes I agree we need to solve this problem”. My eyes and ears are wide open, scouting for opportunities to improve the process or communicate better with my team. This logic flows together and makes it possible for us to present our reasoning in such a way that it will communicate the very best response. To do this, we have to design our design meetings better by setting the appropriate context, optimizing for memory, removing distractions, anticipating reactions, and bringing in other people who can help. For all the key decisions, we document and explain how it impacts the user experience and makes users’ journey easier.

O’Reilly members get unlimited access to books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers. As a result, designers gain better clarity about the client's requirements and objectives of the design project. It’s beneficial for two people who share the same vocabulary to discuss their work and make each other better. Greever mentions it often is beneficial to present both near and long-term visions to executives to keep excitement up about the future but show you understand the short-term constraints.Using sketches, wireframes, and mockups helps you illustrate your decisions in an easy-to-understand way. As creatives, Aufait UX has firsthand experience when it comes to the varying perspectives of people on the same design rationale.

Without a clear understanding of why you are making something or solving a problem, it's difficult to make informed design decisions. To effectively articulate design decisions, it's important to be confident in your choices, but also open to feedback and willing to collaborate with others. By documenting the design decisions and the reasoning behind them, designers can create a reference point for the future. When you clearly articulate the problems that you are seeking to solve, you build context around why certain design decisions were taken. Moreover, it gives reassurance to clients that their product is in good hands and they will get the best results for their investment.It is important to listen to your stakeholders in these meetings to establish trust and to actually hear them out.

Nidhi is a UX designer at Aufait UX, driven by a deep passion for creating engaging, informative, and inclusive designs that deliver exceptional user experiences.Clear communication fosters a collaborative approach and ensures that everyone is aligned toward a common design goal. While design expertise can help designers succeed in the first part, the second part requires more than just design prowess. You and your team will be able to ask questions, contribute to the discussion, and participate in exercises.

The meeting ends, not with collaboration, but with grumbling compromise and, often, a crippled user experience. While you must prepare to defend your design decisions, it's equally important to acknowledge that there may be better solutions that can refine the design. This means that you may have an incredibly innovative and problem-solving design, but you may not get the support you want or need because you can’t speak about the design or the reasoning behind it in an effective way. ll learn how to get support from people who have influence over the project with the goal of creating the best user experience.

Starting with the "why" before delving into the "what" and "how" ensures that you begin from the base, which is the root problem. Articulating Design Decisions” has quickly become one of my favorite design books that I’ve read during my career. By demonstrating confidence in your design choices and backing them up with evidence, you can establish a compelling case for your ideas and inspire confidence in your clients. Clear communication of design decisions is key to building trust with clients and ensuring team alignment toward a common goal. In meetings where designs will be presented, it is a good idea to anticipate reactions/objections and create and bring alternatives.