Chapter 10. Building Consensus

UX designers often find themselves in the middle of everything and everyone. Therefore, you should prepare yourself to convince a room full of people that your design is right. And have reasons to back it up.

In the previous lesson, we learned about gathering requirements from important people in your company.

But you also have to bring your own information to the discussion. Other people might disagree with your design, and if you can’t back it up, why should they believe you?

As a UX designer, you need to have reasons to support your design before you design it, and you have to be able to defend your choices.

You might have to prove that you are right!

Know Your Craft

Good research, good theory, and good data are persuasive. Build agreement among stakeholders by doing good research, having a solid understanding of the users, their problems, and the goals, and by taking the time to explain important ideas to stakeholders when they don’t understand.

And always be the first to suggest an experiment when something is truly subjective. You’ll learn more about that in the next lesson, Psychology vs Culture.

If you don’t know, you don’t know.

DO NOT LIE ABOUT UX. EVER.

If you don’t know the answer to a question, admit it, and say you will find out.

There is no room for bullshit in UX.

UX is widely misunderstood, and if your bullshit turns out to be false, the rest of us will want to leave a horse head in your bed. (Not good.)

Lying in UX makes us all look bad. Your ...

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