Gary Schroeder

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You need to know how to make friends

Web design is all about divs and semantic markup and CSS and Photoshop, right? As far as the technical skill of the craft goes, yes. But there’s another crucial component to deploying a successful web project, a component without which your project will forever live on your team’s development server with nowhere to go. You need customer buy-in. In addition to hearing how you propose to handle the problem, the person or group that hired you has to feel heard by you.

Michael Hawley outlines the solution to the designer’s challenge in his article “5 Ways to Be Persuasive in Your UX Work.” his main thesis is that in order to be successful  as a UX [or general web] professional, you need to know how to be persuasive. Here’s the Reader’s Digest version of what Hawley has to say.

Be Likeable

Persuading others is much easier if they like you.

Be the Subject Matter Geek

You need to establish your credibility and having the ability to explain and rationalize design decisions helps establish that credibility. It lets your customer now that your recommendations aren’t simply coming from nowhere. Sound principles of your profession are just that. They’re the result of the work of thousands of professionals who came before you. You’re not just “winging it.” (Well, maybe sometimes you are, but you get the point.)

Be Empathetic

By their nature, user experience professionals are empathetic toward users. To be persuasive, you need to apply this same empathy to team members who you are working with.  Basically, you need to acknowledge the customer’s point of view and not steamroll them with all of that design wisdom in your head.

There Is No I in User-Centered Design Team—Okay, Maybe Just One I

Your real goal should be getting your perspective heard, then generating consensus and making smart decisions that take all perspectives into account. One way to play a uniting role is to remind people of the ultimate goal. For example, in a meeting, if you restate the goals of the meeting, or in an email, if you reiterate the top-level goals of a project, others will see you as someone who is interested in the best interests of the group. Language is important in this regard. As much as possible, try to say we rather than I.

When All Else Fails, Go Subconscious

If you don’t agree with an idea that someone has proposed, don’t argue directly against it. Instead, offer another idea. It’s the old principle of making the customer feel like your idea was really theirs to begin with. Win-win.