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

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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. We'll discuss the topic and do exercises together to reinforce the ideas and allow you an opportunity to practice in a low-risk environment. Responding to design feedback requires you to form your words in a way that will yield the best response by staying focused on the goal of the meeting: to get support and agreement to move forward. It helps them better align their design decisions with business goals and ensure every design decision serves a business purpose.

When we bring alternatives to the table, it shows that we have considered several options and gives us the space to explain why the design we are pitching is the best.One suggestion in particular that I found interesting was the suggestion of writing user stories for your internal team.

Be prepared to defend your design decisions, but also be open to feedback and willing to make changes if necessary. In his book “Articulating Design Decisions”, Tom Greever, design leader, author, and speaker, talks about the importance of clearly communicating and justifying design decisions to clients and team members.Clear and effective communication of design decisions conveys how well the designers have understood the business requirements and the effort and thought process they used to arrive at the solution. I realised that I tend to swing between number one and two, occasionally touching briefly on number three.

By articulating the design decisions emphasizing its purpose, we showcase our intent to resonate with clients and users alike.

Half the time, I’d show up would spend 30–60 minutes trying to figure out why I was there in the first place.