Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium Luciana Albuquerque

Lessons I learnt discussing design with senior executives.

Beyond designing things, a big part of a designer’s job is discussing design with the client. The client often constitute of a group of senior executives with very limited time and design expertise. People who don’t necessarily have design as a priority, but have the power to make decisions. Typically someone who leads a company ‘outside’ the design industry. Like a CEO of a bank, or a senior executive in public sector, a retail chain, a energy company, etc.

Their business isn’t design, so they don’t necessarily ‘speak design’ — they just don’t need to. It doesn’t mean that they don’t care about it, but if you zoom out to see the big picture, design is just one of the many subjects they need to understand and take decisions about.

I’ve been actively minding and mapping my interaction with senior executives in the past year. This is a compilation of my learnings.

First of all: get to know your stakeholders and learn how to think like them.

In good UX fashion, treat your stakeholders like the users user: do everything you can to understand who they are and what matters for them. Start by mapping who they are, know their roles, their names and how they relate to and affect your project. As UX designers are more likely to deliver things in the digital space, usually the Chief of Marketing (or a senior exec for marketing and comms) and the Chief of Information Officer (or a senior exec for IT) are the ones we need to influence more, but map them all out and have a good understanding of who you should have in the meeting room and when.

Integrate design since inception.

Ideally, designers should be engaged to the process before the “we need an app (or a dashboard, or what can we do with beacons, etc)” sort of briefing.

I understand that designers often come to the party when the problem has already been shaped, but we should always try do to embed design in the board discussions before the project starts.

If you aren’t in a position to make this happen, you should at least map out who do you need to influence make this possible (if you as a designer don’t integrate design since inception, no one else will).

The Danish Design Ladder (with two added steps, adapted by Design For Business)

The Danish design ladder

As a reference, use the Danish Design Ladder (read more about it here) to get a sense of how the client approaches design.

Just by looking at it, you can probably see in which step your clients fits. If they are in the first two steps, you will obviously have a really hard time to integrate design since inception of any idea.

Run design reviews often (to the board) to engage them.

Showing how the design is progressing will make it easier for you to approve it later. Make the stakeholders feel engaged to the process soon and often.

Preparing these design reviews can be quite time consuming, but I find it to be extremely beneficial. You will be surprised how interested they will be in hearing about research and how their customers are perceiving their service / brand; or how excited they get when they see their corporate strategy reflected in a prototype of the future website. I heard from a CIO once said that the “design deliverables are the cool ones” (compared to financial performance, operational stuff, etc) — use this on your favour.

Don’t go into too much detail.

Showcasing design to the C-suite can be quite a lot more challenging than showcasing to your project team. The challenge is in finding the balance of how much they need to know (about the flow, or screen, or whatever the design deliverable is).

You’re the designer, so design is obviously your focus, but for senior executives design is ONE of their many responsibilities — together with whole bunch of things. Things like how to allocate budget to right priorities, changes in the operations, setting the strategy to the boarder firm, modelling the team culture, etc, etc.

You’ll need to adapt the speech to the audience. Communicate JUST what they need to know. Keep it high level and stay focused on what you’re trying to get out of that meeting/showcase. As much as you love that little cool feature, that user quote you got from the context inquiry, that smooth animation on the mouse over, these things are probably highly irrelevant to your audience right now.

It’s hard for a lot of designers because we are usually so passionate and involved. I must confess that I still catch myself doing this all the time.

Offer alternatives, but state your opinion.

As the project evolves there will be decisions to be made. Whether if it is deciding a design strategy, deciding a platform, defining how MVP looks… We often will need approval from the C-suite (or at least some of them) to keep moving.

You don’t want to come to the board with the Mr. Always Right mindset. You are the design specialist, but they are the industry specialists. Work collaboratively, they need to be involved in the big decisions — it’s ultimately their business and their money. Your job is to empower them to take the decision.

However, there are two main reasons why you should state your opinion:

1. They hired you (or the company that you work for) because they perceive you (or the brand you represent) as a trusted advisor.

2. Good leaders delegate. They are likely to turn the question back to you: “You’re the design specialist, what do you recommend?”. And if you don’t have an answer you probably shouldn’t expect them to have one either.

Which way?Be ready for the meeting:

Be ready for the meeting:

— Walk into the meeting with a few options. If you offer too many, it will be harder to get them to sign off on an option.

— Have clear pros and cons for each option and make them comfortable to discuss (don’t act like you have already decided for them).

— State when do you need the decision by and the consequences of delaying that decision. If it’s simple enough that you can decide in the meeting, just state it at start that the purpose of the meeting is discuss AND DECIDE (the design approach, the tool, whatever it is).

— Justify your opinion: “We have capacity and capability to do A, B or C. We believe that A is a better option because if this or that, yada yada yada”. Remember again that they have a LOT of others bigger and smaller decisions to make. Make it easy for them to chose.

One last (and silly) thing: bring treats to the meetings! Muffins, canapés, or just lollies… Whatever feels appropriate. Food sets the stage for a more chilled environment.

Conclusion

Understand who these executives are and what’s relevant for them. Remember that, for them, design is just one of many subjects they need to take decisions about. Engage them soon and often to avoid surprises on approval points. When engaging them, bear in mind that they don’t need to understand design as much as you do. Provide information enough to empower them to decide things from a strategic level. Show the alternatives and state your opinion — you are in a board meeting as a design SME, so be one.

Thanks for reading 🙂

Taking design to the boardrooms was originally published in prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Taking design to the boardrooms

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