Articulating Design Decisions

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Great Designers Are Great Communicators

Words: so innocent and powerless as they are standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

TRYING TO NAVIGATE THIS new reality that designers are at the fore-front of the digital product business can be a real challenge. We creative thinkers are now thrust into the middle of a process with business people, expected to be the experts on design, and then asked to tell everyone else what we think should be done. Like a fish out of water, we struggle to breathe. To make this mental shift and be effective in our new role, it’s critical that we understand just how important good communication is to design.

Too Many Cooks

Designing in this new reality called UX would all go really well if it weren’t for the fact that other people on the project might disagree with our decisions. Actually, they will!

There are now a lot of people who may know little or nothing about design, yet who have the authority to oversee and dictate our design practice. They have a vested interest in participating in the conversation, but they aren’t trained designers and they don’t have the same depth of knowledge in design or technology that we do. What used to be a somewhat obscure conversation between graphic artists is now open and available to many other players in the business.

What’s more, these people will often gladly admit that they aren’t the experts. They know that they ...