In the beginning, I failed to realise that other designers, copywriters, product owners, developers, delivery managers will be the first people I would need my design to convince and be usable for – they’re your first users.

1. Fellow designers: these are people whom you share your insights and designs with the most, they are the people that are on the same wavelengths as you.

2. Stakeholders and product owners: whether you like it or not, these are the gatekeepers of your design — they are arguably the most important people you need to convince in the process of designing.

3. Developers, delivery managers & QA: depending on your organisation, these group of people can either be a breeze to work with, or the most frustrating as the culture determines their respect for the product. Thankfully, I’m in an organisation which takes pride in their design and development practices.

I will address communication approaches with each of these groups separately; overlaps of these communication styles is to be expected. Communicating my design and ideas effectively is still a skill I am developing and honing as I work on more projects.

In this post, I will address communicating with designers.

Firstly, communicating with designers should be straightforward as they have similar intentions, which is to create the most usable and aesthetically designs. However, there are a plethora of ways which one can design an interface, so how do we effectively communicate our intentions?

What I find useful is, when sharing designs, position yourself as a first time user, and always assume that your audience is experiencing it for the first time. (This applies to anyone seeing your design for the first time)

It helps to frame the scenario, it enables people to view the problems through a similar lens. This can be done through a user flow diagram — this gives your audience a roadmap of what to expect in your design.

You can guide your audience through through a user flow diagram — this gives your audience a roadmap of what to expect in your flows. Highlight screens which consists of key decisions and interactions for your audience to make a mental note.

It can be tempting to jump straight into explaining the fancy features and flows you have designed — but if there’s no context of the problem you are solving, then it’ll only lead to more confusion and questions.

Based on the screen, try to expand any drop downs or provide examples of inputs which are required by your user to paint a fuller picture on what you intend the user to accomplish. This way, you can validate the legibility of your labels and copy.

Once the context is understood, you can share your design ideas and iterations — remember not to get too attached to your design as you may come off as defensive towards opinions and suggestions.

Document and share any considerations or limitations your design may have. This could be gathered through your product requirements, design system restrictions or your past experience working with a similar feature.

Sharing ideas are the best way of getting more, it signals to your team that you didn’t design in a silo, and have analysed different perspectives.