Since I started my career in Product and UX Design, I always face a challenge after I design sketch concepts or high fidelity prototypes for a new project. Group discussions are held with business stakeholders to define if that design solution is matching the business objective or not. Right after a repetitive cycle of design enhancements, another group discussions are held with technical stakeholders to define the project technical readiness. Both discussions are very challenging, you know why? because you are in a middle of “It is not the purpose of the project” or “What about this instead of that” and “This is technically not doable” or “It needs special handling and will take a lot of time”.

If you are feeling what I’m talking about, then this article is for you…

You need to know the triangle shape

The challenge begins away before than that, it begins with the mindset, as UX researchers and designers, we focus on the customer, our designs are customer centric and our mindset is customer advocate. However, it is not your design nor the customer will form the equilateral triangle, you will definitely lose the battles, because simply there is another purpose for that company to live for; its business value, and in other worlds they call it Return Of Investment (ROI) or Revenues.

The ultimate triangle should be equilateral and balanced between those 3; Business, Customer and Product. Your product will never succeed without customers, for whom you are going to sell it?. If there is no product, what will the company provide to the customer, it won’t be a company in the first place. And finally, if there is no business value or a business model, this company will never grow or move forward to be capitalized.

In real world this triangle is not perfected, it is always unbalanced, you might see priorities for one side over the others, typically like those variations below..

Diversity of company triangles across markets

Successful Product Designers are the ones who create the balance between the 3 poles; they influence customer needs, analyse business values and create solution in a form of a selling product!

Influence design maturity

To increase maturity, your role is clear and simple. It is going to be a two-way of communication; you are going to empathetically listen at times and you are going to speak scientifically other times.

Step 1: Before you start, think in 360

In order to influence your business or technical stack holders, you must first understand their roles.

Understand why business owners are analysing data (their business targets and values) and how they are analysing it and what other areas they tackle to reach their customers than the product (online marketing campaigns, communication strategies, offline targeting, etc.)

Besides, understand what technologies technical leaders are using to define the product, what processes and programing languages are being used to achieve their tasks and what essential protocols are there to connect systems together and create that ecosystem.

Once you start to know how they are processing their roles, you can easily understand their discussions. You are going to understand their design concerns and their solution inputs on your prototype without being frustrated or questioning what they are doing so. You will be surprisingly in their shoe and a lot understanding than you ever be.

Step 2: Be involved as early as possible, ultimately from the ideation phase

If you are the one who is going to be involved in customer research and product design, be there. Every step this project is taking forward from discussions, just be there and be involved in the communications. If you understand them, you will be lucky to involve the customer perspective and direct their solutions before it even comes to you to design it.

Step 3: Talk their language, but your solution

When you start giving your opinion, you have to talk the language they are speaking, numbers and impact, in order to convince them and influence your customer-centric design opinion. It comes with practice and more involving in business meetings and strategies. Be proactive and ask to be involved in any discussion you think it will help you understand the project more. The majority of the people will be so welcoming and will ask for your opinion as well.

Step 4: Build your opinion on research and numbers, talk logical and structural

If you have an opinion or you are asked for one, think before you speak, make sure that your opinion is based on researches you have read or statistics you previously have. The more structural you are talking based on numbers, the more likely you are influencing the audience and let them rethink their opinions. Moreover, they will strongly build a perception that your input is so effective and more needed in any further discussions.

In a nutshell, involve yourself more in research readings because subconsciously your voice will be more influencing by the time you speak.

Step 5: Proactively involve them and ask for their opinions

When you ask someone about his/her opinion, subconsciously you trigger in their minds that you care about them and you want to know what they think about what you shared, they feel important!

By this technique, you are going to win 3 benefits, the first one, is that you are going to bound the social communication and the teamwork spirit so they will be open to listen to you even if they disagree, second, it will show respect to them and will be more likely to involve you back, and third, you will know their opinion in each phase of design, so no more surprises and no more miss understandings.

Step 6: Be open for changes and don’t treat your design as your child

The most challenge I faced when I was in my beginner career life that I usually love my design to a level I don’t want to change a pixel in it. That stubbornness lead to a series of bad consequences with my business and technical stack holders, the perception that was taken on me is that I’m not helpful and delay tasks with no valid reason even I have one.

“This is project is not your child” —by Ahmed Kamal, my leader back then. I was surprised by how mind shifting those little words on me. There will always be changes in every step of creating any project, even after, the project will go for a cycle of enhancing and will change again and again.

Change is the like the cycle of life, things will keep on changing because there is always better, so be open for changes and accept it. Your role is to get the best out of it, to keep the balance and find a win win solution. Be the hero of the change, be understanding and proactive about it.

Step 7: Enjoy the journey

This is the most important tip, enjoy the journey of the project, each step you take will add to you; you are going to learn from other colleges and stack holders if you listened empathetically, you are going to make new friends, you are going to learn different point of views and have patience to accept them, you are going to win some battles and lose others with more understanding, you are going to be able to discuss big decisions and at the end you will definitely be a better version of a designer than you are now.

Also you can follow these 12 Principles of Highly Effective Product Designers in your day-to-day communications, it will definitely change your mindset.

As a designer, in any field, you will be working with people, they have different mindsets, they are different than you. You can’t simply convince them with your design opinion at the first they met you, even if you are the most experienced in that field, you have to do some efforts and some learnings to be really capable of influencing your surrounding ecosystem. It is going to take some time and some practices, but the result are worth the effort. Best of luck!

Thank you!

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How to influence design maturity within your community