Articulating Design Decisions: Communicate with Stakeholders, Keep Your .. Tom Greever

Table Of Content

• Articulating Design Decisions: Communicate with Stakeholders, Keep Your Sanity, and Deliver the Best User Experience
• A coast-to-coast yet short manual for designers and stakeholders to provide feedback, receive it and make sense of it…
• Review: Articulating Design Decisions by Tom Greever
• Chapter 1: Great Designers are Great Communicators
• Steers the design team
• Digital Experiences Are Real Life

Eighth chapter is basically a closing summary of chapters 6 and 7. It does however contain an extensive table of example messages used in very specific situations. Yet, I’d argue that without additional context and/or background behind each case, this ‘dataset’ is somehow unusable in building/ polishing your design articulation arsenal. O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers. Perfect for teams to watch and discuss the ideas in the book.

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

A prerequisite for a good brainstorming session is that the team be clear about the challenges they need to solve and the objectives they must achieve. When lead designers communicate this effectively, they steer the design team in the right direction. Articulating design decisions is a crucial soft skill for a designer to be effective and successful.

A coast-to-coast yet short manual for designers and stakeholders to provide feedback, receive it and make sense of it…

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You must be willing to embrace feedback and listen to them positively. By documenting the design decisions and the reasoning behind them, designers can create a reference point for the future. Whether a client wants to revisit a certain design decision or designers want to reflect on their choice, these records serve as ready references. Well-documented design decisions act as a record of information that the design team can leverage for similar projects in the future.

Tom Greever on articulating design decisions – O'Reilly - O'Reilly Media

Tom Greever on articulating design decisions – O'Reilly.

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Review: Articulating Design Decisions by Tom Greever

Executives now realize just how important design is, and they want to influence the process because their business is on the line. Likewise, designers have come to understand the value of creating an experience that is based on solving problems and backed up by research. As the web shifted and made it possible for us to sell our products, the focus was still on aesthetic with the addition of utility. As long as the website worked, management didn’t need to care too much about the details. We need an ‘Add to Cart’ button somewhere—I don’t care what the color is; what difference does that make? ” And in this world, as long as the stakeholders knew where to find the thing they thought was important, that was all that mattered.

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It is the lens they use to connect and communicate with their friends and family. It’s a powerful social engine that frames every modern conversation. And so it’s no surprise that the details of how the interface works elicits strong reactions from people who perceive it almost as an intrusion into the way they live their lives. For the first time, people who previously barely noticed the design of their favorite website now are obsessed with the smallest interface details of other apps.

It helps them better align their design decisions with business goals and ensure every design decision serves a business purpose. The final product thus meets clients' vision and requirements in all aspects. It’s not only physical products that have transformed our understanding of the value of UX within the organization.

In this article, we discuss the need for good decision articulation and some of the best practices. When designers were only communicating messages, companies didn’t need to micromanage a design process that was just meant to make the company look good. Executives were typically happy if the website didn’t look like crap, or at least that it looked better than their competitors. But for the most part, design was this other thing, over there, off in the corner. It was nice to have, we liked it, but we didn’t need to get involved much. To make matters worse, we may be the only people in the room without a specific, articulated justification for our choices.

Steers the design team

It’s important to know how the evolution of this term affects our ability to talk about our work with others. Of critical importance, however, is the shift that’s taken place in organizations from seeing design as merely a utility to being a fully engaged partner in the product development cycle. Similarly, web and mobile interfaces have transitioned from being only platforms for products to being the product themselves. All of these factors greatly influence design within companies, teams, and the minds of our stakeholders.

When our job was to make the company look good, it didn’t matter as much who got their way on the final design. Now that we’re solving problems that affect the bottom line, everyone has an opinion on the best way to solve it. Over time, developers, too, have come to see the value of creating a great user experience. They understand that better design can result in a better application, both for them to build and for the business. They’re on board to help us create the best possible experience, but they probably have different ideas about how to do it.

She had come from Proctor & Gamble and had a reputation for doing some great work. In fact, you probably didn’t want to mess with her at all. It was a little intimidating, but having passed all the other tests, I thought I had nothing to fear. Get a set of business-sized reference cards with a brief overview of the important principles in the book. Take O’Reilly with you and learn anywhere, anytime on your phone and tablet. There are also live events, courses curated by job role, and more.

Using sketches, wireframes, and mockups helps you illustrate your decisions in an easy-to-understand way. It improves the clarity and comprehensibility of communication and helps you convey your choices to clients with extra impact. The UI/UX design process is a lengthy one, fraught with pivotal decisions at every step. Articulating design decisions acts as a means for cross-examination and validation at each step, contributing to a quality final product. The author spends a lot of the book setting the scene for a meeting where design is critiqued and feedback is generated. I think that we’re going to quickly lose this model of design feedback.

Keynotes for team events and conferences - inspirational, practical talks for product and design teams. Clear communication fosters a collaborative approach and ensures that everyone is aligned toward a common design goal. This unified effort unleashes the full potential of the design team, paving the way for unparalleled creativity, and innovative ideas. Nonetheless shear amount of great quotes listed below, as well as, first-class chapters 9 and 10, should make you want to read the whole book on your own. If have 10 years of experience and you know it all, it’s still good idea to refresh your memory, maybe you’ll fish out something from the book that will work for you. Ninth chapter emphasise the fact that, the time immediately after a meeting is nearly as important as the meeting itself.

It’s not at all the same as talking to someone who doesn’t have the same level of interest in design. It’s not necessarily the right way to talk to a nondesigner. One of the valuable things about art school is learning to critique someone else’s work and to receive critique from others. When everything is subjective, it’s healthy to analyze one’s work in an environment where everyone is on the same intellectual page, as far as the subject goes. It’s beneficial for two people who share the same vocabulary to discuss their work and make each other better.

As such we understand the challenges in getting everyone on the same page and the need for articulating design decisions well. An open and receptive mindset is essential when articulating your design decisions. It is possible for designers to feel attached to their designs and get defensive when critical feedback is given. While you must prepare to defend your design decisions, it's equally important to acknowledge that there may be better solutions that can refine the design.