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

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You and your team will be able to ask questions, contribute to the discussion, and participate in exercises. Articulating Design Decisions” has quickly become one of my favorite design books that I’ve read during my career.

However I do find myself more mindful when I attend meetings or discuss my solutions with an engineer. Articulating design decisions is a key soft skill for designers that fosters understanding, trust, and successful partnerships in the design process. Be open towards taking on feedback and suggestions, but challenge others by asking them “What problem are you trying to solve by suggesting this?

As creatives, Aufait UX has firsthand experience when it comes to the varying perspectives of people on the same design rationale. 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. With good communication and evidence to support our decisions, we turn challenging situations into opportune scenarios for emphasizing our expertise and building strong relationships with clients. 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.

Articulating design decisions is a crucial soft skill for a designer to be effective and successful.

As a product owner I value business goals and want to know how this is solving the business problem, so I should ensure that I outline how this solution will achieve that.

I took a mental note and scribbled these down in my notebook with the intention of embracing these more into my process.It encourages you to analyze the thought process and reasoning behind your decisions and gives you insights on how to present the information to the client most effectively. Much of the content is the same, but the activities and level of interaction is limited by the online format. One of my peers was talking about how the engineers working on her team were uninspired by her designs and frequently asked questions about them until she mocked up the long-term vision. 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.

Anticipating the questions clients may ask and preparing answers to address their queries will help you explore your decisions further and articulate them better. 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. When presenting design decisions, it's important to use real-world examples and to show how your design choices will improve the user's experience. It helps them better align their design decisions with business goals and ensure every design decision serves a business purpose.One suggestion in particular that I found interesting was the suggestion of writing user stories for your internal team. The meeting ends, not with collaboration, but with grumbling compromise and, often, a crippled user experience. Moreover, it gives reassurance to clients that their product is in good hands and they will get the best results for their investment.