Khal Weir

The days of competing on price or features is over. Prices can be beaten, features copied. To truly stand, your product must be well designed and offer a rewarding experience.

Not all companies fully grasp the importance of design yet. Sure, they hire some designers and throw around terms like UCD and UX; but more than often it is without understanding. Working at one of these companies can be frustrating, you feel you’re there as a wireframe monkey or simply as a ‘geek that can draw’ to prop up and impress potential clients.

This lack of understanding isn’t the fault of our client or colleagues however, it is ours. As designers we need to pitch the benefits of design effectively and build this understanding.

As you’re reading this, chances are you’ll know that design research is critical to the success of a project. Sadly, this relatively new approach is difficult to communicate especially in a company or industry where it’s benefits are yet to be widely proven. It is time consuming and the output is minimal and deceptively simple looking, building a set of three A4 sized personas could take months of multifaceted research. 

Often the ‘faster horse’ story or the fallacy that Apple don’t do user research is used as an argument against design research.  You’ll face blank faces when you suggest a persona project or ethnographic study and you won’t get budget or time to conduct the research you want to do.

So, what can you do? 

Designers are passionate about their work, but are generally meek and vastly outnumbered by project managers, developers, sales and stakeholders. We need to share this passion for design and our vision for crafting a great experience with the rest of the company. 

• Get the client or team involved
  This is my favourite technique and can be very effective. If your process is visible, it can be better understood. Invite stakeholders to design studios and persona building sessions. Get a sketchboard going on the wall, have the team play with paper prototypes, perform user testing sessions with every department.


• Use their language
  Every department has their own language, spend time listening and get to know their lingo. Stakeholders seek ‘ROI’, Marketing want ‘engagement’, developers understand processes. Know your audience and when explaining a design or concept use their own terminology and jargon. Outside of our little circle, design speak sounds wooly and wanky so let’s keep it to ourselves, k?


• Use appropriate tools to communicate
  Your client may roll their eyes at a persona, but love a video sketch. Again, this comes down to knowing your audience and presenting your work in a way it will be best understood. Experiment with different methods until you find something that clicks.

Most importantly, even if insufficient time or budget has been allocated or your work is frowned upon find a way to complete the research you feel the project requires. Get creative and make compromises to conduct whatever valuable research you can. Your designs and the project will be better for it and you’ll have the evidence to support the benefits of design research in the future. 

More reading :
Cennydd Bowles and James Box’s Undercover UX
Adaptive Path’s Subject to Change : Creating Great Products & Services for an Uncertain World