Tips to effectively communicate your work

As UX researchers or designers, one of the most critical parts of our jobs is to communicate our work effectively, and it’s not easy as we usually have to share it at multiple levels and different moments.

There have been times when I was successful and others when I did the complete opposite when communicating my work. I have learned some communication basics from both experiences that I’ve been using to succeed. For most of the time, at least 🙂

For these communication basics to work, some things must be guaranteed first:

1. You know who you should involve.
2. You know how your company or client operates (biggest goals, weaknesses, strengths, etc.).
3. You know your biggest competitors, and you are aware of the biggest threats.

Who is your audience

Commonly you have to speak to different audiences when working on a project. Here are some example audiences and what their various missions can be:

• Other UX Researchers or Designers: work to make user interactions with the company and its products as pleasant as possible by identifying and removing problems and making the interfaces visually appealing.
• Product managers: define and work on a specific product strategy and development. Their ultimate goal is that the product is successful.
• Project managers: work with different teams to define a project timeline and guarantee that all the needed resources are available.
• Developers: they are frontend and backend developers that work on building the products. They worry about the quality and integrity of product code.
• Business stakeholders: typically have a less siloed vision of the company and work on achieving high-level business goals (revenue goals, etc.).

When communicating with different people, it’s essential to understand what is on their agendas, what they want to accomplish as part of their jobs and how your work can help them. If you can do this, chances are higher that they care about your work and contribute positively to it.

Know what to communicate at each moment

When I talk about communication, it also implies listening, not just speaking. In my opinion (and others), being able to listen to our users and stakeholders actively is an essential skill of UX researchers and designers.

So if you divide your project into three phases:

1. Planing
2. Doing the job
3. Follow up

In the first phase — Planning — I use it primarily to listen to different audiences. To get to know who they are, their agendas, how my work intersects, how we can collaborate, etc. This phase is about setting up the context and uncovering needs, so make sure to ask the right questions.

The second phase — Doing the job — is about having them engaged and participating in the process. I typically set up following up sessions, write a status email with the most significant findings from time to time, or share them on a dedicated Slack channel.

The third phase — Follow up — it’s where I communicate the results from my work and follow up with their application to products.

Know who to involve at each moment

Once you have identified your audience, you must know when to involve who. Product managers are typically involved in all stages. They are fully dedicated to that product, and their inputs are relevant during the planning and follow up steps. The nature of the work is collaborative, and it’s essential to have them on board.

Business stakeholders are usually very busy, so I typically need to be more mindful of their time. It’s important to listen to them at the beginning and communicate the results in the end. Involving them in the “doing the job” can be tricky as they are so busy. But it’s crucial that they attend some interviews with users. So I usually set up a shared calendar with the sessions, and before each session, I send a reminder on a Slack channel I have created for that purpose. When convenient, they attend sessions, and I don’t spam them with calendar invites.

Tell a story

You are probably a bit tired of reading about storytelling, but it works. To different audiences, you can tell the story from different perspectives so that it speaks to them.

For example, to fellow UX researchers and designers, I might want to be more detailed in describing the methodology and the findings I uncovered using more technical language. They will understand, accept, and even learn from it and use it in their work.

For product managers, I must show them how my work will or is helping them with making their product more successful.

As for business stakeholders, they want to understand how my work is or will impact the business goals.

You might argue that this takes a lot of work. And you’re right. It takes. But in the end, when you want to get things done, it pays off because you have buy-in from the people involved.

One aspect that you have to care more about with all audiences, except perhaps with a UX audience, is that you have to have sound reasoning behind the methodology. Suppose you choose to interview ten people. You have to be able to explain why ten people and why interviews. Some people can be picky about this, so you must present it clearly, avoid technical language, but apply it strategically to give you some authority in the subject.

Effectively communicating our work is something that we improve with experience and by knowing who we work with. We must apply as much effort into this as doing the job because if we don’t get the buy-in and support from our team, it is so much more challenging to get things done. So when you start a new project, also ask:

• Who should I involve?
• What’s the best way to communicate with these people, and at what moments?

And work on a communication plan.

This article was originally published on the Service Design College network.