Are you in the complex world of product design or user experience? You wrestle with creating impactful designs and with influencing decisions at your organization. You might be a seasoned leader with years of experience or a junior designer eager to carve out your path and make a big impact. But, the journey is full of hurdles that go beyond the technicalities of user experience or product design.
This post caters to individuals who are at the crossroads of design and organisational dynamics and aim to wield influence to make a positive impact. Have you ever found yourself wondering how to advocate for your design among differing opinions? Or, how to navigate corporate politics to push your design ideas? If so, you're in the right place. I cover not only the 'what' but the 'how' of making your voice heard and your work recognised. I turn abstract principles into practice to improve the products you work on and your professional outlook.
In this post, I'll share insights from my experience and from reading "Influence" by Robert Cialdini. This post marks the second part of a multi-part review through the lens of my own journey.
Product design, or User Experience, is a nuanced field. Everyone seems to have an opinion about your job. So, a significant part of your role, whether you like it or not, is about standing your ground and influencing others. Sometimes this is straightforward, but often, it's anything but. I started my career about 20 years ago. Organisational dynamics were always in play, but I either failed to identify them or hesitated to influence them. When I did, my efforts were informal. Now, I strive to grasp and apply the principles of influence to assist companies in crafting exceptional products.
"What the Freedman and Fraser findings tell us, then, is to be very careful about agreeing to trivial requests. Such an agreement can not only increase our compliance with very similar, much larger requests, it can also make us more willing to perform a variety of larger favors that are only remotely connected to the little one we did earlier."
Once, I aimed to persuade my boss to approve a redesign of the company's homepage. My pitch was simple: "It will be cheaper and faster" than other projects he had in mind. Despite my advocacy for usability testing, I bypassed my usual process to propose a cosmetic uplift. He agreed. After completing the task, he began requesting more, more burdensome tweaks. This escalation of small changes evolved into incorporating untested features, one after another. This experience, a classic demonstration of the "foot-in-the-door" technique. What felt like an early victory, guiding the project toward a user-centric outcome, later became a plethora of untested designed assumptions. However, it also showed how minor agreements can turn into significant, and unexpected commitments.
"Deutsch and Gerard found that, by far, it was the students who had publicly recorded their initial positions who most resolutely refused to shift from those positions later. Public commitment had hardened them into the most stubborn of all."
In that same company, statistically significant data clashed with the entrenched "mobile-first" ethos (depicted humorously in my blog post "Overcoming Design Dogmas with Data"). The company's public commitment to mobile-first design led to the dismissal of the clear evidence that suggested that most of our users preferred desktop transactions. This rigidity, can serve as an example of how difficult it can be to pivot, even when faced with contradictory evidence. Yet, the real challenge lay elsewhere...
“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” - Emerson
I've often criticised empty buzzwords, as noted in my 2015 post "Buzzword Culture." Many agree these terms, rather than adding value, merely occupy the minds of too many industry "leaders." A particular interaction with a company leader, who often repeated the phrase "you've got to earn the right," stands out. Reflecting on this while planning this post, I realised the absurdity of the statement. The idea that we haven't "earned the right" to conduct usability testing or strategically leverage our expertise to benefit the company, represents a harmful adherence to consistency, favouring pragmatism over growth.
"Although consistency is generally good, even vital, there is a foolish, rigid variety to be shunned. It is this tendency to be automatically and unthinkingly consistent that Emerson referred to. And it is this tendency that we must be wary of, for it lays us open to the manoeuvres of those who want to exploit the mechanical commitment consistency sequence for profit."
This brings me to the critical importance of questioning our commitments. As leaders and designers, our influence begins before we even join an organisation. Asking the right questions during interviews, such as the company's commitment to data-driven decisions or how it handles data contradicting long-standing beliefs, can establish a foundation for a balanced dynamic. This early commitment to good design practices ensures we can wield influence from day one. Recalling the executive's phrase "We've got to earn the right," I now find myself questioning, "What right must we earn, and why?" and considering whether this mindset hampers our professional conduct.
"The only way out of the dilemma is to know when such consistency is likely to lead to a poor choice."
But what if you find yourself in an environment already steeped in such rigid consistencies, as I have on many occasions? Is all hope lost? Absolutely not. It's never too late to start influencing change. Take the boss from the homepage redesign, for example. When I joined that company, I desperately needed the job. He offered me a role that got me through tough times: to push pixels without much thought, a role I accepted with gratitude. Yet, I couldn't resist working in a more meaningful way; I'm passionate and resourceful at user-centric design. So I gradually introduced a more thoughtful approach to design. I started with suggestions like "How about we try this, and if it doesn't work, we'll drop it?" Eventually, we found ourselves conducting a more impactful, collaborative and mature design practice. These processes improved the quality of our product outcomes.
Influencing change is a delicate dance that requires patience, timing, and the strategic use of our political capital. Influence, much like design, isn't about grand reveals. It is built on the subtle, thoughtful layering of small gestures and commitments.
In the corporate world, a product designer's journey is not only about user-centric design or pixel-pushing. It is a journey of influence and persuasion too. We can be more thoughtful, and impactful with product design by doing keeping these 3 concepts in mind. Recognizing the power of small commitments. Understanding the potential rigidity of public stances. Valuing strategic influence from the start. Commit to walk these paths as leaders, not just as designers. Let's guide our products and shape our organisations' cultures with ethics, wisdom, courage, and a focus on the future.
