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

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It helps them better align their design decisions with business goals and ensure every design decision serves a business purpose. As a result, designers gain better clarity about the client's requirements and objectives of the design project.

By contextualizing your design choices in this way, you can demonstrate the rationale behind your decisions. We'll discuss the topic and do exercises together to reinforce the ideas and allow you an opportunity to practice in a low-risk environment. Whether a client wants to revisit a certain design decision or designers want to reflect on their choice, these records serve as ready references. In his book “Articulating Design Decisions”, Tom Greever, design leader, author, and speaker, talks about the importance of clearly communicating and justifying design decisions to clients and team members.Additionally, developers can benefit from learning practical tips to improve communication with designers and stakeholders. Tom suggested we practice the art of pause — introducing a moment of silence in our speech to open up the floor for others to chime in or share their suggestions, then listen with intent. Articulating Design Decisions” has quickly become one of my favorite design books that I’ve read during my career.

This instills a sense of confidence in clients about the designers’ capabilities and expertise, building trust and credibility. It is important to listen to your stakeholders in these meetings to establish trust and to actually hear them out. Starting with the "why" before delving into the "what" and "how" ensures that you begin from the base, which is the root problem.

Well-documented design decisions act as a record of information that the design team can leverage for similar projects in the future.