Master Design Meetings Like a Pro: 3 Essential Steps for Driving Meetings as a Senior Designer

Take Your Meeting Skills to the Next Level: A Step-by-Step Guide for Junior and Mid-Weight UX Designers. If you’re looking to drive impactful meetings with confidence, then look no further. In this guide, we’ll cover everything you need to know to run effective meetings like a pro.

“The difference between a good designer and a great designer is in their ability to not only solve problems with design, but to also articulate how their solution solves it in a way that’s compelling, fosters agreement, and gets the support needed to move forward.” — Articulating Design Decisions

Step 1: Define the Purpose of the Meeting

Before you schedule a meeting, it’s essential to spend some time defining its purpose. Start a Figjam and outline the meeting’s goal and what you hope to achieve.

Ask yourself the following questions:

1. Why are we having this meeting? What is the purpose of this meeting?
2. What do I want to get out of it?
3. Most importantly — what kind of feedback do I need from my audience? Is it design feedback, enhancements, design sign-off?

This is critical for the success of a meeting. It will help you understand what YOU want to get out of the time allocated and, as a result, help you drive a focused meeting.

“The key to being articulate is to understand both the message you want to communicate as well as the response you want in return .” — Articulating Design Decisions

Answer these questions clearly at the start of every meeting — this will help you drive a focused meeting and ensure everyone is on the same page.

Step 2. Set expectations

Start of the meeting

When meeting with stakeholders, start the call by setting expectations.

Make sure you:

1. Remind everyone of the goal of the project or design (based on your responses to the questions you prepared before the meeting)
2. Summarise the previous meeting’s outcomes (if relevant) & explain where we are in the process
3. Explain the type of feedback they can provide

During the meeting

Often, our stakeholders see a need that isn’t being met with our designs, and they may express it with a suggestion that isn’t the right solution.

Therefore, if a stakeholder suggests a new solution or idea that hasn’t previously been discussed, ask them:

• What problem are you trying to solve by suggesting this?
• What are the advantages of doing it this way?
• How will it affect our goals?
• Where have you seen this before?

Tip💡: Before the meeting, add the previously discussed producy / design goals at the top of your designs, so that they’re accessible throughout the meeting. If at some point in the meeting you are asked to add new features or make changes, take the team back to that section and ask: what goal are we trying to achieve by doing this?

Step 3. Summarise what was discussed

Sometimes, it can be easy to leave the decision-making up to other team members who may have stronger opinions and hope that they will make the right choice.

As the designer, it is your responsibility to lead the design conversation. Finish the call by summarising what was discussed during the meeting and then try to move it towards a close. To achieve this, use the phrase: “What happens next is…” to help set clear expectations and guide the team towards the next steps in the design process.

You can use these magic words after you’re done collecting feedback “What happens next is…”

You can also add a simple question at the end — this is a rapid way of gaining a response and a positive outcome. For example: “What happens next is that we will spend some time reviewing and auditing the current product, we will put together all our thoughts in a Figjam and we will then schedule another meeting to shareback this work with you. In terms of timelines, do you have any in mind?”

Tip💡: Document your design rationale at all times

During your design process, it’s essential to document your thinking and rationale behind each decision so that you can refer back to it during a meeting if necessary (for example, why you chose one layout over another).

There are 3 questions you should always try to answer when reviewing/amending your designs:

1. What problem does it solve? What people problem are we trying to solve?
2. How does it affect the user?
3. Why is it better than the alternative?

I hope this article was useful 💡 If you have any other tips, please share in the comments! 🙏🏼

For any designers who want to learn more on how to articulate their design decisions, I recommend reading the book “Articulating Design Decisions, by Tom Greever”.