The Sacred Art of Design-Fu: How to Win Arguments With Stakeholders and Move the Product Forward

Jeff Erickson

In this world of A/B testing, agile, and iterative development, it can be hard for a designer to get big design changes through to the final project. Product managers and engineers often push back on the scope of our designs, hoping to not rock the metrics boat. This is great if you’re optimizing a product to a local maxima, but as designers we want to jump ahead to the next hill. If your company’s process pushes you to minimize variables, how do we as designers push the product to the next level? By designing ahead, creating allies, and working your way through stakeholders one at a time, or, more simply: by learning the art of design-fu.

Punch Through the Wall

You know that scene in most Kung Fu movies where the master tells the apprentice to visualize punching through the wall to hit with his maximum force? Do that. Design your feature three iterations ahead. This will maximize the impact that your proposal will have on your audience. People love seeing the future, and you can use this to your advantage. Every argument starts with placing a stake in the ground, and designing ahead of the curve forces your opponent to place their stake much closer to what would be your first iteration. At the very start, you’ll already have your opponent on your side, fighting for the first step towards your goal.

Use Your Opponent’s Strength

At this point your opponent is already thinking about the possibilities of where the design can go. Encourage them to continue down this path. Remember, their idea is just the first step of your idea—you’re already a third of the way there. Oftentimes, because they’re starting from the same spot that you did, they will ask questions that may have already occurred to you. Use this to your advantage. Show them how the final design answers every one of their questions. When they push back and tell you that the full solution is too big of a step or too much work, you’ll end up on your second iteration. Skadoosh! You’re two-thirds of the way to your third iteration, and your stakeholder still thinks we’re talking about iteration number one! At this point they are no longer an opponent, they are an ally: They helped you get to this point.

Make it an Uneven Fight

Invariably, you have more than one stakeholder to convince. Let’s use our new friend to our advantage. You now have twice the fighting power. But if you have more than one more opponent, don’t go thinking that you’ve already won. Have you ever played the video game Katamari Damacy? It’s a game where you roll around a ball, collecting objects one at a time to increase your mass. At this point your idea has a pretty low mass. Keep the ball rolling and pick up stakeholders one at a time. Do this by repeating steps one and two—every new stakeholder will pull off a smaller and smaller chunk of your original idea, but once you have three or four allies, no one opinion is going to be able to significantly affect the course of your design.

You now have a solid design vetted by everyone who had a stake in the project. Build it. Measure it. Break free of the local maxima and get to the next hill to climb. Go forth and design, young grasshopper.

Jeffrey Erickson is a UI Designer at Yammer. Together with his Australian Shepherd Bogie he roams the land in search of treats, toys, and candy.