How to convince your leadership to invest in UX
Perhaps you’re a Designer who wrestles with a chaotic design system, or a Design Manager who struggles to center your company’s decision-making on the needs of users. You might be a Product Manager who’s frustrated with low product performance metrics, or a Head of Product striving to elevate the product experience to the next level.
All of these scenarios signal the need for a greater investment in design in your organization. You see the need clearly, but your leadership does not. So, how do you make the case for dedicating increased resources to design? In this article, we’ll walk through strategies for influencing your leadership to buy into your vision for a better product experience and recognize the need for a greater investment in design.
Leverage user research
In order to set the stage for increasing your organization’s investment in design, you’ll need to help leadership understand the needs of users and see how your product can do better at meeting user needs.
Interviews are a powerful method for building empathy with users. They enable you to hear directly from customers about their frustrations with the product and their desires to get more from the experience. By sharing interview findings or, better yet, inviting stakeholders to listen in to interviews, you’ll help leadership understand the challenges users face and move them closer to a commitment to action.
Other forms of research can also help tell the story. Usability studies can reveal the ways in which your current product is difficult to use or navigate. Concept research can expose users’ view of what your product is, what it can offer, and the ways in which that might differ from how it’s seen within your company. In addition to revealing challenges, research can also point to opportunities to improve or extend your product to attain greater success.
No matter the method of research you deploy, supporting your argument with research findings and involving leadership in the research process are powerful ways to help stakeholders see the need for a greater investment in design.
Visualize the potential
Our perception of what’s possible can place limits on what we achieve. In order to help your organization see the value to be gained from an investment in design, you’ll need to help them see beyond the constraints of current thinking.
Design sprints and workshops are a great way to build this vision in a collaborative way. They allow you to expose and challenge the assumptions held within your organization and move beyond them in order to imagine a better product experience. By including stakeholders from around your organization in a sprint or workshop, you will generate a stronger outcome informed by a diversity of perspectives, and you’ll have a built-in group of supporters who feel invested in your effort.
Prototypes, often generated as an outcome of a design sprint, can also be an impactful storytelling tool. Leverage them to expand your organization’s concept of what’s possible and build excitement around a re-imagined product experience.
Cultivate allies
In order to convince your organization to invest in design, you’ll need supporters. Look around your company for others who are directly impacted by a product experience that’s not as stellar as it could be, and band together to advocate for an increased investment in design.
Customer-facing roles are naturally aligned with the goals of design. For example, Customer Support has an intimate familiarity with users’ pain points in the current product. The Sales team understands what customers want out of the product and how potential customers think about the value it delivers in comparison to other products on the market. Utilize these perspectives to demonstrate the potential impact of design across pillars in your organization, and work together to show how an investment in design could drive the performance metrics for multiple teams.
Developers can also be great partners in advocating for increased investment in design. Work with the engineering team to understand the inefficiencies in their workflow and how they might benefit from a more considered approach to design. While a major redesign could take time to implement, it’s likely that an investment in design upfront could save developers extra cycles spent implementing a series of point solutions.
Gather data and make the business case
What value can your organization gain by increasing its investment in design? This is at the heart of what your leadership will need to understand in order to devote funding.
Will better design create a competitive advantage? Would an elevated product experience allow you to move into a more premium price range? Would a more considered user experience lead to better engagement with key features? Would an improved product experience drive overall growth?
It’s essential to try to quantify the potential gains a greater investment in design could generate, and also evaluate the cost of inaction. You’ll need this context to help leadership understand how the cost of engaging a design partner or hiring relates to the value these investments can return.
Go forth
Armed with compelling user research, an inspiring vision, a coalition of design allies, and an undeniable set of numbers that demonstrate potential impact, you’re ready to make the case to leadership to increase your organization’s investment in design. It will take time, so take heart when you inevitably encounter resistance, and know that your efforts will pave the way not only for a one-time investment, but also for a stronger organization as a whole.
