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

Product Information

By documenting the design decisions and the reasoning behind them, designers can create a reference point for the future. 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 crucial soft skill for a designer to be effective and successful. Whether a client wants to revisit a certain design decision or designers want to reflect on their choice, these records serve as ready references. This book is for designers at any level that wants to learn practical tactics for articulating designs to stakeholders who may be less knowledgeable about design.

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.

I loved the examples he gives and the frameworks for better breaking down all the steps to having these complex conversations time and time again. The meeting ends, not with collaboration, but with grumbling compromise and, often, a crippled user experience. When decisions are well articulated by designers, clients understand the thought process behind each choice and the designers’ intent. It helps them better align their design decisions with business goals and ensure every design decision serves a business purpose.When articulating design decisions, we always present the logic behind each decision from the user's perspective.