Confidence is hard to gain as a designer. Here's what can help

How to gain confidence to present your design ideas

Photo by Anna Shvets: https://www.pexels.com/photo/woman-covering-her-face-3851244/

Within the first five minutes, I could tell my colleague's user research presentation would be ineffective.

It wasn't because they hadn't done good work. I’d seen them do a great job. However, they didn't appear to be confident in making design recommendations.

I get it. It can be intimidating to stand in front of your boss (or your boss's boss) and tell them they need to do something.

However, failing to do this results in ineffective presentations because you change the nature of your research.

Exploratory vs explanatory, or why the process is ineffective

First, let's explain the two types of potential user research.

Exploratory research is about exploring problems and conducting deep research to gain understanding, clarify concepts, and generate ideas.

On the other hand, explanatory research explains the causes and consequences of a well-defined problem.

The mistake many unconfident designers make is that they present explanatory research like exploratory research. Why? Because it's easier to avoid drawing conclusions.

These designers will:

• Talk about broad insights instead of specific fixes

• Talk about potential design recommendations, but never recommend a specific option

• Use loose categories like "Critical Priority" to lump issues together (I've seen a designer present 12 "critical priority" issues)

• Have no opinion about any possible design solution

• Etc.

While designers shouldn’t try to order their team around, being confident enough to have recommendations and opinions is often the difference between ineffective and compelling presentations.

As Jeff White, former UX Lead at Amazon, says,

UX Designers need to do two things really well:

1. Design good stuff
2. Get people to agree it’s good

That’s it.

That’s the job.

Your team often goes into these presentations looking for things to take action on. They don't need to know that 12 issues might be “Critical priority, " in a vacuum. They need to know the top 3 problems because they have resources to fix 3.

If you want to become more confident in presenting user research, you can use a simple UX story to help you out: your user is looking for pain relief.

The user is the main character, not you

One major fear that designers have about drawing conclusions is that they're afraid of being challenged. They're afraid that by stating their recommendations, they're opening themselves up to being belittled and mocked by stakeholders.

So, one of the most helpful mindset shifts is to realize that you are not the main character of your presentation. Your user is.

The presentation is about something other than how awesome you are, your fantastic design process, or your opinions about users' actions. You're just relaying what you observed the user, the main character, do and say.

Changing your mindset has several benefits. First, it can help you overcome your fear of being challenged.

It may be easy for stakeholders to criticize your process if you're conveying lousy news (i.e., "You screwed up your process"). However, it's much more difficult for them to challenge what the user said or did without looking ridiculous (i.e., "You picked the wrong users.”)

Secondly, and more importantly, it can force you to focus less on your design process. Process is one of the least effective ways of communicating user insights because it's often not what your team cares about.

Your team cares more about where their users are getting stuck and what to do about it.

Lastly, this point sets you up to quickly make some recommendations. While it’s important to relay what users say or do, it doesn’t help the team figure out what to do about it. Instead, this is a perfect segway into recommending specific actions.

All you need to do is touch on the other part of the framework, pain relief.

Pain relief, or how to focus your presentation

Pain relief is one of the most effective frameworks for user presentations, as it's just an extension of what you observed.

If your users struggle at specific points or with certain things, frame the situation in the context of pain.

Some user findings might be similar to a sore muscle, where it's annoying but not debilitating. Others might require our immediate attention, like a broken leg.

When you begin to think of user problems in those terms and with the idea that we might not be able to fix everything, it may help you figure out (and be more confident) how to get users to think about what matters most.

You may be confident you're doing the right thing when you do that.

Effectively communicating design requires a focus on users

Designers often face the last-mile problem when it comes to presenting insights.

You may do great work talking with users and collecting user feedback, but if you can't convince your team, it's the same as weeks or months of work going to waste.

However, the simple fact is that to drive meaningful change effectively, you need good design and good communication around the design recommendations you're proposing.

So, if you need more confidence as a designer, at least when presenting your ideas to others, realize it’s not about you. It’s about the journey and roadblocks your users encounter.

Kai Wong is a Senior Product Designer and Creator of the Data and Design newsletter. His course, Data-Informed Design, shows you how to work more efficiently and effectively as a designer by incorporating Data.