Articulating Design Decisions

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What happens when you take an industry full of creative, right-brained thinkers and thrust them into the middle of a product cycle with usability problems and business goals? Well, it’s no surprise that there is a disconnect between what the other stakeholders want to do and what the designer has so carefully crafted. Design decisions define the direction and outcome of design projects. Designers use research and data to validate assumptions and eliminate biases during the decision-making process. One of Tom Greever's main points in Articulating Design Decisions is that great design solves a problem, is easy for users, and is supported by everyone on the team (and that we often forget that last part). The skills Tom describes are aimed at learning from our stakeholders so that we can better understand their goals, and present design work that gets buy-in from everyone involved. As you'd expect from someone writing about this topic, Tom provides clear direction on how to develop these skills for yourself, and approachable examples that drive home how to put them into practice day-to-day. Clear communication of design decisions is key to building trust with clients and ensuring team alignment toward a common goal. Here are some practical tips to effectively communicate design decisions and gain client buy-in. 1. Start with the why In isolation, these decisions are somewhat straightforward. Designers can choose a trendy color palette and typeface to make a UI look cool, but how do these elements impact accessibility? What is the impact on performance, and how will interfaces change across multiple platforms?

As often as we’re justifying our decisions based on what we think needs to be done, we are also making a case for times when there are limitations that need to be taken into consideration. We can’t always do what our clients want, simply because of other factors that are beyond our control or because we’re trying to adhere to standards in design and programming. I’ve found three common responses for dealing with limitations: It’s not always simple. These can be the most difficult decisions to help other nondesigners (and nondevelopers) understand because the reasons are often highly technical. Stakeholders don’t like (or understand) these limitations and might even be put off by the prospect that you can’t do the same thing their competitor does. I imagine an executive pulling out his phone, showing you the way someone else does it, and then asking “Why can’t we do that?” But these limitations are real, and we have to help our stakeholders see the constraints so they can be part of the decision. “COMPLIES WITH A STANDARD” In some ways, there is an arrogance that prevents us from being truly productive with people outside of our own peers. We don’t always see the other stakeholders on our project as knowing anything valuable about design. We don’t trust their instincts the way we trust our own. After all, we’re the experts. We were hired to design things because that’s what we’re good at doing. Why should managers care? Can’t they just trust us to do our jobs?Intuition and experience are also great for collaborative design exercises–bringing diverse ideas and perspectives together to find the best solution. Imitation You absolutely have to be doing it from the beginning…We’re not accustomed to asking ourselves the right questions as we work.” Design decisions are an integral aspect of any design process. Each decision can be split into two parts –the decision-making, and the decision-articulating. While design expertise can help designers succeed in the first part, the second part requires more than just design prowess. It calls for effective communication and reasoning skills to be able to convey the thought process behind the design decisions to clients, stakeholders, and team members. What to say when the CEO is obsessing over a minute detail that isn’t relevant to the meeting’s purpose: Just as often, we try to optimize the primary use case by minimizing and limiting secondary or edge cases. For example, although any user is encouraged to maintain his account profile information, it is not the main purpose of the application. This informs our decision to put account management functions in a drop-down menu rather than a large call to action. Noting these justifications can help you keep people focused on ensuring that the primary use case is always optimized even in the face of other needs and features.

As mobile phone growth turned powerful smartphones into touch-screen super phones, our ability to interact with products and services on a regular basis shifted from being an intentional, arm’s-length, conscious choice to an automatic muscle-memory involuntary jerk of the wrist. Like social media, our devices are intensely personal and are becoming more intimate. Our interface with the world is no longer the machine at arm’s length. It’s the touchable glossy display that we always have with us. Always on, always connected, always shaping the way we see our world. As a result, universal understanding of the importance of UX has grown, too. Every software update introduces new ideas and elicits strong opinions from every user. This is why so many people have an opinion about your work. STARTUP CULTURE HAS CHANGED HOW PEOPLE VIEW DIGITAL PRODUCTSUsing data is really compelling to stakeholders. For that reason, it’s also important to recognize that looking at bad data will still yield the wrong choice, so we need to be really careful with this approach. What I mean is that data often tells us what the user did, but not why. We try to infer the why by looking at the what, and this naturally involves making assumptions. If we make changes based on a wrong assumption, we end up with a design that is likely to cause more problems than it solves. So, keep in mind that making decisions based on data can only be truly effective when taken as a measure of the project on the whole, in context, and without too many assumptions. For example, avoid saying “no” and instead frame your response more positive. Or being more specific in your responses—like saying “This idea is a great way to solve X problem” instead of saying “I really like X.” So go through each of your designs, look at the agenda for the meeting, and decide the best flow for presenting your ideas. In the same way that we create a flow for our users through the application, we also want to curate the flow of our design discussion. Now match up those needs with the people in the room. For each person, ask yourself: Based on what you know about the people you’re working with, you should be able to anticipate how they will react to your designs. In the previous chapter, we identified the influencers on our projects and called out some of their values and motivations. When we combine what we know about their perspective with the values they carry in their role, we can make some pretty good guesses about how they’ll respond to our designs. The good news is that most people are fairly predictable. That is, they tend to obsess over and react to the same kinds of things every single time. If you’ve met with them before, anticipating their reaction becomes much easier. It will take a few meetings to really hone in on how people are wired, but I’ve found that anticipating reactions is much more formulaic and predictable than you might expect. The problem with traditional image-based design tools is that they make poor prototypes. Designers are limited by what they can create and test–making it challenging to articulate design decisions and get buy-in.

I know it sounds crazy, but I really enjoy interviewing for jobs. I applied for just about anything and I said yes to every interview. It was a low-risk opportunity to practice talking about my work. Sometimes, I would go to interviews for jobs that I knew I didn’t want. Why? I enjoyed learning how to talk to people in those kinds of meetings and built up a vocabulary for discussing design with others. Once, I actually negotiated a salary for a web design job that I had no intention of accepting, simply because I wanted to see if I could get the manager to offer me a higher salary. He didn’t (in fact, he laughed at me), but it was exciting for me to push those boundaries and see just how skillful I could be at convincing him that I was worth it. With this practical video, UX designers will learn the principles and actionable methods for talking about … Secondly, I see value in applying the knowledge of good communication practices specifically to design meetings and really going into details of what might happen and how to deal with it.The organizational transition to understanding and valuing the UX of digital products is maturing. From these original attitudes and approaches to design comes a mutual understanding that a great user experience will create a great product. A great product will sell, be easier to support and maintain, and be good for the bottom line. These historical attitudes—the stereotypical personality types that create these roles in the organization—all come together for a single purpose: to create the best possible products. The way that we now realize we can create the best possible products is through design. The problem is that only one of these players is a designer. It can be difficult to know with certainty how a particular design will affect your goals, especially for smaller interactions that might not affect the overall use of the entire application. The point here is not to know with certainty. If we always knew with certainty what would definitely accomplish our goals, we wouldn’t need to even meet. You need to have confidence that your experience leads you to believe with all reasonable certainty that this design is at least one step of a larger approach that will take you where you need to go.