To communicate user insights more effectively, use the framework of pain relief
Show, don’t tell, how your design relieves user pains to influence decision-makers
Designers often suffer from the last-mile problem when communicating user insights.
A last-mile problem is the struggle to solve the last and most expensive part of a delivery process. For instance, a package might cost $2 to go from a warehouse in India to your local post office, but $20 to go from the post office to your doorstep.
Designers struggle with similar problems. They do great work understanding users, problems and design solutions. However, they often fail at this process's last and most crucial part: communicating these insights to stakeholders.
An easy remedy for this is to frame your problem as pain relief.
Understanding pain points, “So what?” and why it matters
To understand why pain relief works, we must understand ‘pain points.’
This is business jargon for issues customers experience when using your product or service. Whether a slight hiccup or a major deal breaker, these problems risk losing customers if left unresolved.
For example, a user getting stuck during the checkout process may be a pain point.
However, these pain points also help answer one critical question: “So what?” Understanding where customers struggle isn’t just about What users are doing; it’s about understanding Why it matters.
However, many designers struggle with this for one simple reason: they start in the middle of a presentation.
Establishing common ground (around pain) is important
It’s essential to remember that many in your audience are seeing user feedback for the first time.
It might seem obvious to you that “Y addresses X problem,” but you fail to realize that you’re the expert. In addition to being trained in UX, you’ve also spent days or weeks working with users and analyzing their data.
You must establish common ground for them; otherwise, they might not follow or understand your presentation. At the same time, providing too much background can bore your audience.
The best solution is to start by focusing on the pain point. Many persuasive frameworks, such as the Problem-Agitate-Solution framework, ensure that the problem (and pain point) is as well defined as possible.
However, I recommend Jeff White’s practical UX storytelling framework, Context, Struggle, and Transformation, which can be used in daily work.
To relieve pain, focus on Context, Struggle, and Transformation
Jeff White, former Senior UX Designer Lead at Amazon, has a simplified UX story framework that he’s used to present to Jeff Bezos and other executives ~30 times.
It consists of 3 questions:
Context: Where’s the pain?
Struggle: Why is it a pain, and what’s at stake?
Transformation: How does your design change/solve this problem?
This framework, focused on pain relief, is a tried and true communication technique to influence stakeholders to make the right decision. Here’s how you might lay things out.
Context
Your struggle with context probably involves keeping things brief. You want your problems to be thoroughly understood, but you don’t want to bore your audience.
Here are some techniques you can use to keep it short:
Provide a recap of what happened last meeting: Summarize what happened last time to get people caught up to speed
Make users relatable: Use quotes, anecdotes, and testimonials to have your users speak for you (briefly)
Use metaphors/analogies: Describe the problem using familiar mental models that don’t require too much explanation
After that, you can move on to the struggle.
Struggle
At its core, the struggle is about creating tension. It’s about discussing the problem after giving context and answering, “So what?”
After all, if stakeholders don’t care about your problem, they won’t care about the solution. Here are a few recommended techniques for doing this:
Define the problem with familiar language: The most powerful way to speak to business-minded members is to define the problem using terms they understand. For example, if your stakeholder is concerned about product adoption, saying, “Users encountered Problems X, Y, and Z, which likely affect Product Adoption.” gets people interested.
Use data, if possible: Pairing the above statement with Data is a powerful motivator. For example, highlighting Analytics that show we have poor Product Adoption rates with the above example is an even more powerful motivator.
Use competitors (if possible): If you don’t have data, another way to do this is to compare you and your competitors side-by-side. If your current design is visually worse than a competitor's, this often motivates your team.
State the consequences of inaction: Change is hard, but many teams are unaware of what may be at stake unless you spell it out. Providing a statement that spells this out can also be a powerful motivator.
Once you do this, we can move on to the transformation.
The Transformation: The ultimate goal of any design
One of the things that you must keep in mind is that any design solution that you want to implement is, at it’s core, a transformation.
You’re going from a poor user experience to a better one and (hopefully) transforming negative experiences with the product into something much better.
Many designers show their final design solution or recommendation here but must remember one critical step: relating the design solution to pain. In this case, a design solution isn’t just a visual update; it’s pain relief.
Here’s how to do that:
Focus on Outcomes, not Process: Businesses don’t care what you do. They want to see what this design solution will achieve, so don’t waste time describing “What you did.”
Don’t describe the UI: Similar to the above point, don’t describe visual elements they can see. That’s, again, not what they care about.
Use annotation with design: Annotate the design solution to show how certain elements or solutions address the major pain points you mentioned.
Provide a statement on Why a Design Solution is good: While some design solutions may be obvious, some are not. In plain terms, tell them why a design solution or recommendation is good.
Doing this can help your team understand where you’re coming from.
Pain relief is a trillion-dollar industry for a reason
One of the hardest things designers often encounter is that your team sometimes doesn’t see what you do.
When you interview users, you gain a wealth of insights, behaviors, observations, and more. However, we often need help going the extra mile to explain why that matters to the team.
This is why framing your design recommendations as pain relief is an easy way for your business to understand the problem and why they should follow your solution.
Nobody likes to be in pain, your users most of all, and communicating not only why they’re in pain but how to fix it is a way to turn stale user findings into something that drives action.
So, if you’re struggling to convince your team, try framing your design solutions as pain relief. It might help more than you realize.
Kai Wong is a Senior Product Designer and Creator of the Data and Design newsletter. His book, Data-Informed UX Design, provides 21 small changes you can make to your design process to leverage the power of data and design.