UX FAQ #3: What is Design Rationale and How to Present it?
Communication skills are often ranked high among a UX Designer’s skills and qualifications. Instead of merely presenting wireframes or prototypes, a UX Designer should articulate a story to connect her design decisions with reasons, facts, thoughts, and arguments.
It is all about answering WHY
“A design rationale is an explicit documentation of the reasons behind decisions made when designing a system or artifact.”
I feel the general definition given by Wikipedia (see above) can also apply to the context of UX or Product design. It is all about answering WHY, and sometimes you also need to explain WHAT and HOW. Specifically, why you make a design decision (A design decision can be as big as organizing the user flow, creating a web page layout, or as small as picking colors or fonts.), what is the justification for it, and how it relates to the project/product goals.
Design Rationale helps ensure that UX designers are being intentional with all of their actions and decisions, which can further increase the potential of product success. By articulating design rationale, designers are aiming to convince team members (PMs, developers, other designers, etc.), stakeholders and clients to accept her designs or solutions and foster agreement. That’s why people say a good designer must be a good communicator.
To present Design Rationale to internal and external stakeholders, a UX designer should go beyond only walking audience through her design process.
Dos
During a design review or an interview, it’s always worth allocating enough time to relate design decisions to key findings taken from the previous step of the design process, and explain what led you to the next step. Here are some tactics that I have learned from my working experience (dos):
- Start with introducing the design problem, the target users, and give a high-level overview of the solution
- Highlight the key messages without going into all the details, describing what questions you aimed to answer at each step, what methods you’ve chosen and why, and what are the insights that inspired your design (later you should be able to relate your design decisions back to your reasoning)
- Frequently used messages as the justification of design decisions include: prioritized user needs, business goals (like NPS or market differentiation), branding, research data (e.g user testing or validation results), basic design principles, etc.
- Limitations and compromise can also be a good justification. In the real world, we often make tradeoffs and have to prioritize user needs and features
- Before demonstrating the final prototypes, it’s a good practice to propose one key concept and 2–3 alternatives in the form of pros and cons respectively, which can make your thought process more visible and emphasize that the final solution is better than alternatives
- Always ask yourself ‘why’ should you include/exclude an option and what is the expected outcome by doing so
Don’ts
When presenting design rationale to internal and external stakeholders, a UX designer should create a structure and logic to her solutions, and avoid indulging in the design details. Here is a list of don’ts that you should be aware of：
- Present merely prototypes without explaining the rationale and benefits behind your design
- Design decisions are disconnected from your previous findings, or designs are contradictory to user needs or business goals
- Always articulate your design decisions in the same way and don’t modify the content to accommodate different audiences or occasions (e.g. Marketing people care more about consistency of brand VI, but UX design principles may not be a convincing reason from their perspective)
- Say “I like the idea…” Never use your personal preference as a reason. It is common for designers to make decisions intuitively, but it doesn’t mean the decision is rootless. At its core, it is your experience or others’ successful practice that help you make a choice with certainty.
Wrap up
Hopefully, now you are confident to back up the design decisions you made and communicate that clearly to your stakeholders. It is not only for getting agreement, but also a mindset practice. When you move through the design process, being intentionally and purposefully will take you where you need to go.
Links to some other UX FAQs:
References:
