An unexpected response from the boss

A designer, anticipating a commentary for design she previously sent, suddenly gets the message which reads like this:"I don't like the placement of the main call to action button. Also, the whole layout looks crowded. Why the customer email is written in third person? And I expected our agent's voice to be female, not male!"

This is the typical feedback that designers get when they send their work for review with little or no explanation. What happened?

The designer likely assumed that stakeholders would interpret the design exactly as intended. Alas, this rarely happen: stakeholder goals, motivations and internal models of thinking are different than designers'. They rarely see the design from the same perspective as designers do.

The core issue is in the fact that many designers think that their job is only to produce design artefacts. However, this is just one segment of designers' job. When we step back and look at the big picture, a designer's real job is communication:

  • Communication with business stakeholders how the product generates business value.
  • Communication of the product value to the users
  • Communication the design decisions to the developers

Our design got misunderstood many times

As in previous example, designers are often surprised by how they misunderstand our design. They get many questions with "obvious" answers and requests for clarification where it's "unneeded". It's because the our design is subjective: We assume, incorrectly, that everyone will understand our design in the exact way we conceived it.

An even worse situation that can happen is the misinterpretation of our design, without providing the necessary feedback to us. As a result, teams often ship products that don't meet user needs and business goals because design ideas and rationales are not properly implemented.

Its also common for design managers to further explain your design to their bosses, which means that they interpret design in their own way. This is error prone and can lead to unsatisfying results. So the good idea would be that, whenever possible, present your design directly to decision makers.

Presenting: key skill in design

This is why presenting our design decisions is one of the most important skills in design. Be aware that not all these decisions are tied to design artefacts.

To be successful at communicating with stakeholders about our designs, we must always be able to answer these three questions about our work:

  1. What problem does it solve?
  2. How does it affect the stakeholders?
  3. Why is it better than the alternative?

Impulsive design paradox: when designers do not think about their decisions

There is no "automaticity", "gut feeling" or "impulsiveness" when designing. Every design decision has its reasons. Design is not spontaneous: we think that we "intuitively" know what to put where, but it turns out it is a learned skill.

Designers lacking the ability to explain why they did what they did end up on the losing side of the argument. They are forced to make changes they disagree with simply because they were unable to clarify their design decisions, designing impulsively and making excuses such as: "I saw a similar approach in a competitive product", "these are established design patterns", "others are doing the same", "the boss ordered me to execute design like that" etc.

The most effective way to communicate design decisions

Conventional methods to convey design decisions are preparing clickable prototypes, doing product "real estate" tours inn design review meetings or storing design artefacts in standard team collaboration platforms. Apart from those techniques, I argue that video is the most effective way to communicate our designs.

If you ever need to explain your design artefact to someone, do it in video format with your own narrative. Show your approach to solving that problem. Talk about the reasons why you chose a certain design direction. Do it as you are presenting in person. At the end of the video explain clearly what do you need as a response. Ask for feedback, review, comment or a critique.

As a reminder, the bad way to present your design is to do "product real estate tour", which means talking about obvious things shown on the screen; rather, the designers should explain how their design decisions contribute to the overall product, to the business value and to the users.

The advantage of video is that it is universal. It easily conveys the story and communicates ideas. It is a great substitute for an in-person presentation since there is no need for yet-another-scheduled meeting. As a plus, the stakeholder would be able to review it asynchronously, when they are ready.

The preferred approach? Continuously working with stakeholders

The ideal workflow between development and design teams is a constant collaboration throughout the whole product lifecycle. When involved from the beginning, the developers will properly understand product goals, what the core idea is, what the motivation for a feature is, how it impacts the business and the users. From the business side, stakeholders get a sense of how the product will communicate its values to the users. This product development setup rarely leaves space for missed expectations.

The constant need for presenting design is even reduced when the product collaboration is constant, because developers and business stakeholders are aware of the every of design from the start. This is a nice side-effect and also a great time-saver for every member of the team; there is no need for back and forth messages, strict design reviews and similar rituals that can postpone product shipment and reduce its quality.

Throughout the history of digital product development, product leads developed various methodologies to improve communication between teams. Daily standups, pair programming, user stories, kanban boards, sanity checks, pre- and post-mortems and retrospectives are examples of these techniques. What is common for all of them is that they enforce team collaboration through artificial ceremonies, making it feel unnatural and compulsory. But when the work together is practiced from the beginning, there is no need for the introduction of rituals - the relationships are built naturally.

The most important component of design is communication. If possible, do it on a daily basis with the whole team, and the need for separate design presentation is reduced to the minimum. If you strictly need to present your design, remember to first communicate your rationales and design decisions and then show the design output. The best way to do that is in person, but if that is not possible - do it using video.

Further Reading

Continue reading