Why Designers Aren’t Understood — Smashing Magazine

As designers, especially in large companies, we often feel misunderstood and underestimated. You may have to fight for your users every day, explain yourself and defend your work. It’s unfair, exhausting, painful and frustrating.

Let’s explore how to present design work, Explain design decisions and get stakeholders on your side – and speak the language that other departments understand.

As designers, we may be a little frustrated with the language that often dominates business meetings. As Jason Fried has noticedCorporate language is full of battle metaphors. Companies “conquer” the market, they “gain” attention, they “target” customers, they “destroy” the competition, they want to attract more attention, make users “hooked” and increase “lifetime value”.

Designers, on the other hand, don’t speak in such metaphors. We talk about how to “reduce friction,” “improve consistency,” “empower” users, “help and empower” users, “meet” their expectations, “close the gap,” “develop empathy,” “understand user needs,” and design an “inclusive” experience.

In many ways, these words are the exact opposite of the metaphors commonly used in corporate environments and business meetings, so it’s no wonder that our beliefs and principles might feel misunderstood and underestimatedOne way to solve this problem is to be careful about the language you use for the big meeting. In fact, it’s all about using the right language.

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Speak the right language

As designers, we often use design-specific termssuch as consistency, friction, and empathy. However, for many managers, these attributes don’t align with any business goals at all, often leaving them completely confused about the actual impact of our UX work in real life.

A way out that changed everything for me is Leave the UX vocabulary at the door when I walk into a business meeting. Instead, I try to explain design work from the business’ perspective, often rehearsing and testing the script in advance.

When I present design work in a large meeting, I try very thoughtful and strategic in the wording I use. I won’t talk about creating “buzz” or getting users “hooked.” That’s just not me. But I won’t talk about reducing “friction” or improving “consistency,” either.

Instead, I tell a story.

A story that visualizes how our work helps the company. How the design team translated business goals into concrete design initiatives. How UX can reduce costs, increase revenue, grow the business, open new opportunities, create new markets, increase efficiency, expand reach, mitigate risk, and increase word of mouth.

And how we will measure the enormous impact of our work.

It is usually divided into eight sections:

Goals ← Business goals, KRs we want to achieve.
translation ← Design initiatives, iterations, tests.
Proof ← UX research data, vulnerabilities.
Ideas ← Prioritized by an impact/effort matrix.
Design work ← Flows, features, user journeys.
Designing KPIs ← This is how we measure/report success.
Pastoral ministry ← Risk management, governance.
Future ← What we think are good next steps.

Key findings

Companies rarely understand the impact of UX.
The UX language is overloaded with ambiguous terms.
Companies cannot support confusing initiatives.
Leave the UX language and UX jargon at the door.
Explain the UX work through the Business objectives lens.

Avoid “consistency”, “empathy”, “simplicity”.
Avoid “cognitive load” and “universal design”.
Avoid “lean UX”, “agile”, “archetypes”, “JTBD”.
Avoid “stakeholder management” and “UX validation”.
Avoid abbreviations: HMW, IxD, PDP, PLP, WCAG.

Explain how you will measure the success of your work.
Talk about Business value, loyaltyAbandonment.
Demonstrate risk management, compliance, governance.
Refers to cost reduction, efficiency, growth.
Introduce accessibility as an industry-wide best practice.

The next time you go to a meeting, Be careful with your words. Translate UX terms into a language that other departments understand. It may not be long before you get support from everywhere – simply because now everyone can clearly see how your work helps them do their jobs better.

Useful resources

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