Speaking about your UX work
By: Leslie Mack
Tags: User Experience, User Experience Design, Design, Product Design, User Research

Illustration by Leslie Mack

Early on in my UX career, I worked with two very different types of UX role models. One spoke up in every meeting and design critique and carried all the conversations with boisterous confidence. It was amazing to watch them work the room to advocate for the user every day. I also worked with someone who on the surface seemed very quiet. What I learned over time with my second role model was that they waited for key moments to have input and when they spoke the room fell quiet.

All of this is to say, we all don’t need to communicate the exact same, but finding the right balance and confidence is key to communicating effectively in any situation.

3 Keys to Developing You

As UX professionals there are 3 main development areas. Two of these are considered soft skills:

UX Design/Research Skills

Communications Skills

Attitude Towards Problems

Today I want to focus on the soft skill of communication.

Often when we are starting our careers, we focus heavily on external communication or learning to speak with users during user studies. This is a necessary skill to develop, but understanding how to communicate with an internal audience is equally important. Sharing your learnings with your organization can be equally as daunting as finding them in the first place.

It Starts with Understanding

To communicate effectively with any audience, we need to understand the big picture first. This typically comes in the form of understanding:

Business Goals

Technical Constraints

Any Data and Hypothesis gathered (internal and/or external)

User Stories and Use Cases

These can be gathered over time leading up to a project or during a kick-off meeting. However they are gathered, they will allow you to speak about any project with ease when you fully understand the problem space.

Take Ownership

Strong communication is achieved with confidence in your work! Take ownership of your design choices, whether based on research, UX patterns, or internal business needs.

During the project, consider at every directional shift “Why did I make this decision?” Keep notes with your work so that you can connect the dots later for internal stakeholders or leadership.

Know Your Audience

You need to be able to communicate the meaning of your UX deliverables and research to a variety of audiences. In order to do this well, you’ll need to understand their jargon, listen to their concerns, respond to and address questions in a clear way, and explain your ideas and views in the same manner.

Make your presentation (formal or informal) relevant to them. For example, you can speak about how the design will increase a user’s delight with other designers but that could result in blank faces from developers or product managers. Or you could be showing internal stakeholders the latest and greatest design you have been working on, but without speaking to the current interaction rates of a feature that presentation may fall flat.

Don’t Be Afraid

If you feel strongly about a design or project, express those findings/concerns to make your case to internal stakeholders if you are met with push-back. If you made a decision based on data, research, business goals or technical limitations, defend those choices. Industry best practices and UX patterns can also be great reasons to push-back on certain internal feedback.

Even if ultimately it is decided to go a different direction you at least made your findings heard. We’re the advocate for the user’s needs.

When Presenting a Project

Why — Speak to the goals of the project. Set up the project by explaining why you are there to speak to them about it.

business goals or user goals

How — you’ve chosen to solve the problem and how you plan to test after launch. Give reasons as to how you chose to solve the problem(s) which could be based on:

research, industry standards, business standards, UX patterns, etc.

quantitative user testing or qualitative user testing

Summarize — state your hypothesis or what you expect to learn after user testing or the launch of a project based on your current knowledge of the problem.

By framing the presentation in this way you will help internal stakeholders give helpful feedback as to whether the design will achieve the stated goals.

Gather Feedback

Gathering feedback can be viewed as an art form all in itself. Here are a few tips to get you started. The key to not letting the conversation spiral is to attempt to guide the internal stakeholders to these 3 types of feedback:

Keep — likely to meet goals

— likely to meet goals Improve — unlikely to meet goals

— unlikely to meet goals Parking lot — address these at a later date or offline

These points can be captured as a group on a whiteboard or on stickies, or these can be your personal notes you walk away with. If you plan to parking lot something, let the room know you’ll follow up with that person or group.