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

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Anticipating the questions clients may ask and preparing answers to address their queries will help you explore your decisions further and articulate them better. For example “Yes I understand what you’re saying”, “Yes there are definitely ways we could improve this” or “Yes I agree we need to solve this problem”. It’s our responsibilities as designers to recognise these insights and encourage forward trajectory — not get hung up on a particular idea or goal that’s since been abandoned.

However I do find myself more mindful when I attend meetings or discuss my solutions with an engineer. I realised that I tend to swing between number one and two, occasionally touching briefly on number three.

This logic flows together and makes it possible for us to present our reasoning in such a way that it will communicate the very best response. Tom packed a lot into an hour, somehow balanced speaking with questions and exercises, and we all took away some great exercise templates. ll learn how to get support from people who have influence over the project with the goal of creating the best user experience.

I know I will reference the learnings time and time again, so what better to do than put them in a place we both can reference? Using sketches, wireframes, and mockups helps you illustrate your decisions in an easy-to-understand way. 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. Articulating design decisions is a key soft skill for designers that fosters understanding, trust, and successful partnerships in the design process.How do you respond to a suggestion you don’t agree with, or a question you don’t know how to answer?