It confirms much of our own research around these problems and why we want to create a framework to support design impact. The greatest challenge designers with communication comes from the business side.
“This research shows that product design is not just a craft or a career—it’s a complex system. Personal motivation often runs into structural barriers, and professional awareness alone isn’t enough for growth.
One clear takeaway: the problems designers face are systemic. They appear across regions, company sizes, and team structures—and they can’t be solved overnight or by individual effort alone.
Real change takes work on multiple levels: designers improving how they navigate their environment; leaders investing in healthier team dynamics; and the broader community creating space for open, honest conversations.”
I think the real question here is, do teams want to solve this problem? We hear about this a lot but what are teams actually trying to do.. to fix this?
Wanted to add this since I feel it’s relevant- I ran a survey that captured people with similar product careers and filtered it down to designers and design leads.
Most of them highlighted that their worst pain point was being unable to create business impact
Interesting that so many want to increase their soft skills like leading and presenting ideas when I see proving your business impact as being driven by hard data/metrics.
In my analyzation of 10 recent LI and Reddit threads about the challenges designers face, it make sense that being more persuasive and learning to present would help you overcome these top issues:
Early problems are dismissed as opinion
Qualitative input is labeled subjective
Design warnings surface before data, so they get ignored
Designers feel exposed when raising concerns without backing
But like you say, I don’t think improving presentation creates the most leverage for designers.
In our Glare assessment, creatives tend to over index on exploratory skills when guiding decisions. Analytical, operational and evidential decisions need proof, and most designers lack this piece (if you haven’t taken it, happy to review with you).
Bryan’s assertion here identifies the core issues:
Early problems are dismissed as opinion
Qualitative input is labeled subjective
Design warnings surface before data, so they get ignored
Designers feel exposed when raising concerns without backing
And Bryan’s chart is a good launching point. But it only gets us halfway there.
The other half is that businesses and products change over time. When a business is at startup level, the C-suite and Design suite is necessarily different than when that company grows and is at mid-size and waaayy more different when it is at enterprise. And how the products are built follow this pattern as well. Or they should. Many times, design leaders want to impose strict processes without taking into consideration where they are in the current company stage. Selling a process or feature which is either too late, or is too ambitious, won’t fly - no matter how slick or efficient it is- if it’s out of sync with where the company stage sits.
Designers would do well to take more business classes, and aspiring executives would do well to take some product design courses. Because it’s trust that needs to be built, not better design processes, or more sales cheerleading.
@MoData I’d argue that what we’re seeing in the pursuit of presentation skills is a symptom of the problem. They aren’t winning arguments, so they think they need to refine how they present their arguments.
This isn’t wrong, but they need to bring proof along with their reasoning. The feeling is that it’s just not available / attainable.
I find it curious designers self-assess as needing help “presenting ideas.” Safe assumption this is less about presentation technique and more about being trusted.
Few months ago, I was talking to a colleague that was struggling with classic designer struggles; not being taken seriously, viewed as a bottle neck, etc.
I helped him reframe his situation into a human centered design problem (dogfooding if you will) vs. his existential crisis. This made a big difference because one of the biggest obstacles was how personal it felt to him - which prevented him from detaching and being objective.
We created a design brief (problem statement, hypothesis, capture audience unmet needs, success indicators, etc.) as if he was going to hire someone else (key for more objectivity/detachment). It’s a little early to call complete victory, but his situation has notably improved.
“Safe assumption this is less about presentation technique and more about being trusted”
Absolutely the correct focus. Speaking from experience, designers gaining trust is paramount. Gaining trust with all stakeholders and especially the people who can checkmark the idea and research is the only way to get the work live.
This means designers need the soft (difficult?) skill of speaking in different business languages, which admittedly is where people view design as a ‘bottleneck’.
Piling on: I found building stakeholder trust starts with accepting that you probably haven’t earned the right to change the process yet. Instead of complaining that “no one gets design,” focus on your opportunities within the team’s current pace and priorities - and adapt. By proving your value within their existing constraints and priorities first, you earn the opportunity to propose better ways of working later. Tl;dr If you don’t adapt and deliver today, you’ll never get the opportunity to make improvements tomorrow.
Yes, we should take pride in our work, but it’s not an art project! Designers need to elevate the customer experience to drive revenues. It’s a business problem first.
Absolutely.
In Glare, trust starts with a clear understanding of what users are actually doing. Not guessing. Not assuming. Really knowing what is happening.
That understanding builds over time. Many designers stop at trying to render intent, which helps, but it often stays disconnected from what the business truly needs.
I believe product design is a two-edged sword that designers often use only one side (a mistake). As part of a business, our mission is to deliver strong results for the company through design; that’s a fact, and there is no question about it. But even though we can achieve or influence good numbers, the other part of our success is our ability to present and speak all the languages within the company so that those numbers can have a more significant impact and not just good numbers for our bosses or us.
If you want to build a career in design strategy, you need to be able to sell an idea, negotiate, and, above all, gain territory. And if you can do this with solid numbers to back you up, then you nailed it.
There is no one side or another; designers will change if they decide to develop their full potential, creativity, and strategic thinking.
Agreed. This can be a hard truth for many designers. Some end up believing they need to work around the business to do the right thing.
When that happens, they get stuck trying to convince the team to focus on users in isolation from the company’s goals (and mostly in their concepts… not even in their explanations!).
This tension creates friction, weakens trust, and often undermines the impact of the work itself.
The swing in the other direction is just as damaging. Designers start listening only to stakeholders, and the focus on the user starts to disappear. That, too, erodes trust and leaves the work without a clear foundation.
@Bryan , thank you for sharing the report. It really resonates with what I’ve been feeling, and it helps to know those feelings aren’t unfounded.
Slight tangent, but it’s made me think about a related question that feels even harder to answer now than it did a couple of years ago: how can the financial impact of design be quantified (value created or cost incurred)? Design specifically, not product decisions overall. Metrics alone don’t always seem to give a clear answer.
Still, having a clearer grasp of the numbers tends to strengthen the negotiating position, and it generally makes communication with stakeholders a lot easier.
Yes. It’s not a straight shot, and that’s what Glare helps teams do. Align. The goal is to build confidence with design teams. It’s our mission to help people see the change necessary to make this a possibility.
To go from user needs to business goals (and ultimately to a business result), we’ve broken these challenges into 16 blocks that help articulate the value of design. Each block adds more credibility and strength to the design signals teams create. Design impact is felt when these align.
We’re excited to open this up further and get people involved in the effort, since it’s not a small undertaking. The headwinds are strong, the strongest with product and designers themselves… so showing this work takes effort.
Reading this thread again… here are some ideas to explore to make a bigger impact.
Stop treating design impact as something you explain after the work. If impact only shows up in decks after you do stuff, it will always feel indirect and debatable.
Start defining impact before decisions are made. This means going into meetings agreeing up front on what change we expect in user behavior, understanding, confidence, or risk, and how that connects to business outcomes.
Use UX metrics as shared design signals. Metrics are not there to prove design was “right” in a dashboad. They exist to align everyone across design, product, and leadership while decisions are still cheap to change!
Nice, love the idea of establishing the impact of design changes early, especially setting stakeholders up to understand what business metrics will be affected the most!
