3 things I learned about articulating design decisions

This article is written by Ella Dorfman, Senior Service Designer at the Home Office, United Kingdom.

• The problem: Effectively communicating design decisions with senior leaders and stakeholders.
• Why it matters: Good communication is what gets ideas through to implementation, making all the hard work worth it.
• The solution: Practise your communication, always prepare well for meetings, and find what works for you. Remember to start by listening, structure your communication well and always be yourself.

I’ve just read ‘Articulating Design Decisions’ by Tom Greever. This book is about how to convince senior leaders to back your work as a designer.

Don’t take yourself too seriously, even when you’re working on serious stuff.

Here are 3 things I learned:

1. Start by listening (and stop defending your work)

If you want your ideas taken seriously, you need to start by listening. Presenting work to a senior leader can be stressful. You’ve put a lot of work in and you want them to approve the work. This stress can manifest itself as defensive behaviour. The trouble is, acting like this doesn’t help bring people around and can even intensify disagreement.

Instead of defending your work, be open-minded and respectful of others' opinions. After all, there are often multiple solutions to a problem and you can’t be right 100% of the time. There’s always the possibility that the design could benefit from some alterations.

2. Apply structure to your communication

Even when prioritising listening, it’s important to be prepared to speak and have the ability to structure communications. This means being in control of your message and ready to explain the reasons behind a decision.

Think carefully about how you title a meeting with stakeholders, this is a great opportunity to communicate what it is you are looking to get out of the time together. At the meeting when presenting work, use strategies that optimise memory. For example, breaking up information and repeating key messages. When responding to feedback, master the art of the pause, taking a moment to think before formulating your response. If stakeholders are critiquing the work, make sure the conversation is always centred around evidence and research on what works. Don’t let the final decision come down to a subjective opinion.

3. Always be yourself

When it comes to communicating your design decisions the most important thing is to be yourself. Trying too hard to be anything else won’t be authentic or convincing.

Don’t take yourself too seriously, even when you’re working on serious stuff. Have confidence in what you do. Notice if a stressful situation is causing you to puff up or shrink away and find strategies to manage this behaviour. Have courage in your convictions whilst being willing to admit when you might be wrong. Try to speak with your own voice.

Final thoughts

The central premise of the book is that every designer should be able to set expectations, follow instructions and clearly articulate decisions. Bread and butter design skills will only get you so far and the real key to success is communication.

I highly recommend this book if you’re a designer or your role requires you to communicate regularly with designers because it contains a lot of helpful techniques for how to master healthy and fruitful communication around design decisions. Even though this book focuses on UX design in particular, many of the lessons are applicable to all design disciplines.

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