# Why Is Tying Business Impact to Design Work So Hard? **URL:** \ **Category:** Proving biz impact\ **Tags:** design-impact\ **Created:** [December 16, 2025, 3:20pm UTC](https://forum.zurb.com/t/why-is-tying-business-impact-to-design-work-so-hard/437 "2025-12-16T15:20:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![ben](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex034/user_avatar/forum.zurb.com/ben/32/442_2.png) [@ben](https://forum.zurb.com/u/ben)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2025, 3:20pm UTC](https://forum.zurb.com/t/why-is-tying-business-impact-to-design-work-so-hard/437/1 "2025-12-16T15:20:25Z")
I ran a survey that captured people with similar product careers (e.g., product leaders, UX designers) and filtered it down to design leads. Most of them highlighted that their worst pain point was being unable to create business impact. ![Helio Report 2025-12-16 at 8.05.50 AM](https://canada1.discourse-cdn.com/flex034/uploads/helio/original/1X/20863bb9a79f2b3d55cabb1d5f43cef0bda82e2d.jpeg) Designers themselves had a somewhat similar perspective. Their worst pain points were building the wrong thing and building products that don’t convert (thus, business impact). ![Helio Report 2025-12-16 at 8.12.54 AM](https://canada1.discourse-cdn.com/flex034/uploads/helio/original/1X/dbd186011eb868fa13bffe653792f530141e3c37.jpeg) This leads me to the question of: What makes tying business impact to design so difficult? And what fields have an advantage- who could designers could take inspiration from? ---
**Author:** ![MoData](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex034/user_avatar/forum.zurb.com/modata/32/1182_2.png) [@MoData](https://forum.zurb.com/u/MoData)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2025, 1:23am UTC](https://forum.zurb.com/t/why-is-tying-business-impact-to-design-work-so-hard/437/2 "2025-12-17T01:23:06Z")
Love this @ben! Can you drop the link to that survey? ---
**Author:** ![Bryan](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex034/user_avatar/forum.zurb.com/bryan/32/448_2.png) [@Bryan](https://forum.zurb.com/u/Bryan)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2025, 2:20am UTC](https://forum.zurb.com/t/why-is-tying-business-impact-to-design-work-so-hard/437/3 "2025-12-17T02:20:13Z")
Building on your thinking Ben, I reviewed 10 recent LinkedIn posts and Reddit threads to understand where design struggles to create impact. Here are the patterns that stood out. - **Design is framed as execution, not risk detection** Appears most often. Design is treated as delivery work rather than as a way to surface risk and problems early. - **Early warnings are discounted because they arrive before data** Problems based in intuition are ignored because they show up before metrics, making them easier to dismiss. - **Qualitative feedback is mistaken for subjectivity** Designer input is treated as opinion rather than informed signal grounded in system knowledge. - **Design intuition lacks a shared language of proof** Designers see problems but cannot translate them into evidence others trust early enough to act. - **Teams optimize for launch, not durability** Work is approved based on shipping, not whether it will scale, convert, or hold up over time. - **Risk is discovered too late in the process** Issues surface after launch, when fixes are more expensive and politically harder. - **Design feedback creates discomfort without protection** Designers raise concerns before failure is visible, leaving them exposed without backing. - **Designers see system-level problems others cannot** Designers notice breakdowns across flows and systems that are invisible in output reviews. - **Teams lack an early-warning mechanism** There is no shared way to capture, validate, and act on early signals, so warnings rely on personal credibility. - **Design value is misunderstood as polish, not foresight** Design is judged on surface quality instead of its ability to prevent failure and reduce downstream risk Which translates into something that might sound familiar: “Why are we finding this out now?” “I don’t want to reopen this unless there’s clear data.” “I get the concern, but I don’t know how to justify acting on it.” “We hit the date. We’ll deal with issues after it’s live.” “That feels like an opinion. Do we have anything more concrete?” “No one flagged this earlier. Where did this come from?” ---
**Author:** ![ben](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex034/user_avatar/forum.zurb.com/ben/32/442_2.png) [@ben](https://forum.zurb.com/u/ben)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2025, 3:09pm UTC](https://forum.zurb.com/t/why-is-tying-business-impact-to-design-work-so-hard/437/4 "2025-12-17T15:09:38Z")
Here’s the survey [Helio | Hooks Report](https://my.helio.app/report/01KC0EX0TFMBBSTAMTF9PD0NK2) ---
**Author:** ![Bryan](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex034/user_avatar/forum.zurb.com/bryan/32/448_2.png) [@Bryan](https://forum.zurb.com/u/Bryan)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2025, 7:32pm UTC](https://forum.zurb.com/t/why-is-tying-business-impact-to-design-work-so-hard/437/5 "2025-12-19T19:32:37Z")
Used this as a prompt to write a post on the topic- expanded on the idea of Intuition and how this needs to play with UX metrics for business impact. > **[Designers see user risk before the data shows up. Their intuition is a gift....](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/bryanzmijewski_designers-see-user-risk-before-the-data-shows-activity-7407860788021018624-3yoi)** > > Designers see user risk before the data shows up. > > Their intuition is a gift. It is also their Achilles heel. Hunches are not the kind of thing stakeholders want to risk their careers on. They want proof. And yet, somewhere along the way, leaps of... ![turn-intuition-into-design-signals](https://canada1.discourse-cdn.com/flex034/uploads/helio/original/1X/90e9539406d6e31539851a5b2fd76b243df66e6f.png) ---
**Author:** ![nathaliesmith](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex034/user_avatar/forum.zurb.com/nathaliesmith/32/443_2.png) [@nathaliesmith](https://forum.zurb.com/u/nathaliesmith)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2025, 10:30pm UTC](https://forum.zurb.com/t/why-is-tying-business-impact-to-design-work-so-hard/437/6 "2025-12-19T22:30:30Z")
LOOOOOVE! I don’t think the problem is that designers aren’t trying or aren’t measuring things. It’s that design signals and business outcomes rarely get talked about in the same language. Designers look at clarity, usability, confidence. The business looks at conversion, revenue, retention. The gap shows up when no one clearly meshes these two worlds. Granted, its hard, _and_ I think acknowledging that its a challenge is the first place to start. ---
**Author:** ![ben](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex034/user_avatar/forum.zurb.com/ben/32/442_2.png) [@ben](https://forum.zurb.com/u/ben)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2025, 10:49pm UTC](https://forum.zurb.com/t/why-is-tying-business-impact-to-design-work-so-hard/437/7 "2025-12-19T22:49:06Z")
I honestly think that it’s just really hard, and not in the standard design culture. Business is brutal, users are stubborn, and everyone is a bit narcissistic (all humans are). It takes a bit of extra pressure and dedication to get there, and it’s hard to know if it’s even worth the push (from their perspective). ---
**Author:** ![ben](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex034/user_avatar/forum.zurb.com/ben/32/442_2.png) [@ben](https://forum.zurb.com/u/ben)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2025, 10:52pm UTC](https://forum.zurb.com/t/why-is-tying-business-impact-to-design-work-so-hard/437/8 "2025-12-19T22:52:10Z")
All of these feel like output vs outcome problems. Communication and trust are super key to influencing most of these areas. Great finds @Bryan ! ---
**Author:** ![Bryan](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex034/user_avatar/forum.zurb.com/bryan/32/448_2.png) [@Bryan](https://forum.zurb.com/u/Bryan)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2025, 4:30pm UTC](https://forum.zurb.com/t/why-is-tying-business-impact-to-design-work-so-hard/437/9 "2025-12-21T16:30:34Z")
> [@ben](#): > > Business is brutal, users are stubborn, and everyone is a bit narcissistic (all humans are). This is a great observation. It’s the reason so much of what we create fails. Aligning design impact with business results isn’t a straight shot and requires understanding human behavior. I love this stuff, so I thought it would be interesting to dive into more research. Here are five areas that Glare needs to address: ### 1. Humans overtrust intuition in complex systems Daniel Kahneman and Gary Klein have great research on intuition (a core strength of design). ![rainbow-spongebob](https://canada1.discourse-cdn.com/flex034/uploads/helio/original/1X/6572157d4b43777eb772101a5fa0ccc48f048bab.gif) **Daniel Kahneman** - Describes intuition as fast, automatic thinking built from pattern recognition. It feels confident, but it only works well when the environment is consistent, practice is repeated, and feedback is immediate. - He draws a line between high-validity and low-validity environments. UX, product strategy, and markets are low-validity by default. Patterns shift, feedback arrives late, and signals are noisy. - In low-validity environments, intuition drifts toward overconfidence unless it is corrected by real feedback. **Gary Klein** - Has shown that strong intuition is not about comparing options. Experienced people act quickly by recognizing patterns and mentally simulating outcomes. - His Recognition-Primed Decision model explains why good decisions often look instinctive. They are built from repeated exposure to real situations and clear feedback. - The overlap is simple. Intuition works when it is trained. Without feedback, it feels strong but stays unreliable. - Here is his book on intuition, [The Power of Intuition](https://books.google.bi/books?id=QaRAoNp_h7gC&printsec=frontcover&hl=fr#v=onepage&q&f=false) Basically, intuition becomes reliable only after repeated exposure to valid feedback. UX metrics supply that missing feedback loop. ### 2. Ego and motivated reasoning distort judgment Lots of research on “motivated reasoning” shows people favor information that supports their prior beliefs, status, or identity (aka cognitive bias) ![homer](https://canada1.discourse-cdn.com/flex034/uploads/helio/original/1X/53ebce5970e6fd5c3c12f99013f5b5db570b91a6.gif) This shows up in business as: - Executives defending sunk costs - Teams overvaluing their own ideas - Stakeholders dismissing early warnings as “subjective” Organizational psychology has shown that **externalized evidence** reduces defensive reasoning (need to find sources here). Metrics work not because they are perfect, but because they shift debates away from identity and toward shared reference points. ### 3. Users are predictably inconsistent ![bad-decisions](https://canada1.discourse-cdn.com/flex034/uploads/helio/original/1X/ee8168975568f44125cf37cd51adc72550ed2633.webp) Behavioral science repeatedly shows that users: - Say one thing and do another - Rely on heuristics - Resist change even when alternatives are better Richard Thaler argues that people are not perfectly rational. We are biased, impulsive, and often favor short-term comfort over long-term benefit. Because of that, single user observations are noisy and easy to misread. Real understanding comes from patterns across many small signals. **That is why aggregated UX metrics beat anecdotes, without replacing qualitative insight.** ### 4. Measurement improves intuition over time There is strong evidence that **measured feedback trains intuition**. Psychologist **K. Anders Ericsson** studied elite performers across domains like medicine, chess, music, and sports. His core finding was simple. ![measure](https://canada1.discourse-cdn.com/flex034/uploads/helio/original/1X/d58261ac9847ef3de4ddd68dbad79698b0761a67.gif) Expert intuition is built through **deliberate practice** , which always includes: - Clear goals - Repeated exposure - Immediate, measurable feedback - Correction over time Which translates to: - Novices rely on rules - Experts rely on intuition - Experts only become experts through tight feedback loops UX metrics act as a feedback loop. Over time, teams make better decisions AND they develop better instincts. I hypothesize that UX metrics reveal where intuition actually works, and show where new patterns can emerge. Without feedback, people repeat mistakes while becoming more confident. With feedback, intuition becomes calibrated. ### 5. Systems thinking backs this up In systems, intuition without measurement creates unstable loops. Small biases compound. Errors hide until they are expensive. Hard to see early in the process. ![systems](https://canada1.discourse-cdn.com/flex034/uploads/helio/original/1X/043620628e5c89d6a4f4b33da0c66309eed4ca86.gif) Measurement introduces a type of damping (which designers potentially dislike). However, it does not remove human judgment… this type of constraint stabilizes it. * * * So… back to your assertion @ben. Love @Helge’s thoughts! - Business is adversarial - Humans are biased - Users are inconsistent In my experience, UX metrics succeed not because people are rational on teams, but because they are not. ---
**Author:** ![ben](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex034/user_avatar/forum.zurb.com/ben/32/442_2.png) [@ben](https://forum.zurb.com/u/ben)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2025, 3:22pm UTC](https://forum.zurb.com/t/why-is-tying-business-impact-to-design-work-so-hard/437/10 "2025-12-22T15:22:09Z")
Wow, amazing breakdown @Bryan ! > [@Bryan](#): > > Over time, teams make better decisions AND they develop better instincts. I hypothesize that UX metrics reveal where intuition actually works, and show where new patterns can emerge. > > Without feedback, people repeat mistakes while becoming more confident. With feedback, intuition becomes calibrated. Love this specific part. Growth without measurement isn’t growth (if that makes sense). You could be growing in the wrong direction! ---
**Author:** ![Bryan](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex034/user_avatar/forum.zurb.com/bryan/32/448_2.png) [@Bryan](https://forum.zurb.com/u/Bryan)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2025, 3:37pm UTC](https://forum.zurb.com/t/why-is-tying-business-impact-to-design-work-so-hard/437/11 "2025-12-22T15:37:11Z")
> [@ben](#): > > You could be growing in the wrong direction! That’s mostly wandering, lol. ![wandering](https://canada1.discourse-cdn.com/flex034/uploads/helio/original/1X/ad00ad04b2e795cf59e207e96795a33c2c2fad50.gif) ---
**Author:** ![MoData](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex034/user_avatar/forum.zurb.com/modata/32/1182_2.png) [@MoData](https://forum.zurb.com/u/MoData)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2025, 12:59am UTC](https://forum.zurb.com/t/why-is-tying-business-impact-to-design-work-so-hard/437/12 "2025-12-23T00:59:14Z")
Love what @Bryan said about design being seen as execution, not risk detection. I see the same thing all the time where we spot issues early through user feedback, but it’s waved off as opinion until live analytics prove the direction. ---
**Author:** ![ben](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex034/user_avatar/forum.zurb.com/ben/32/442_2.png) [@ben](https://forum.zurb.com/u/ben)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2026, 4:31pm UTC](https://forum.zurb.com/t/why-is-tying-business-impact-to-design-work-so-hard/437/13 "2026-05-25T16:31:41Z")
Absolutely love all of these @Bryan. A lot of these feed into the idea that understanding the user is key here, and doing everything that you possibly can (which I think all of the patterns that you highlighted touch on somewhat abstractly). > [@Bryan](#): > > “Why are we finding this out now?” > “I don’t want to reopen this unless there’s clear data.” > “I get the concern, but I don’t know how to justify acting on it.” > “We hit the date. We’ll deal with issues after it’s live.” > “That feels like an opinion. Do we have anything more concrete?” > “No one flagged this earlier. Where did this come from?” All of these feel like they come from not understanding the user well enough, or at least not doing the amount of work required to get there. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex034/user_avatar/forum.zurb.com/bryan/32/448_2.png) [@Bryan](https://forum.zurb.com/u/Bryan)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2026, 1:57pm UTC](https://forum.zurb.com/t/why-is-tying-business-impact-to-design-work-so-hard/437/14 "2026-05-26T13:57:37Z")
Gracias, my friend. I think with AI workflows, it’s about understanding how users fit into different parts of the process. Our recent Helio post starts to touch on these ideas: > **[Your users have the answers you need. Bryan Zmijewski argues that you just...](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/your-users-have-the-answers-you-need-bryan-share-7464687182335873025-8waT/)** > > Your users have the answers you need. > > Bryan Zmijewski argues that you just need the right way to uncover what they want, need, and do. UX metrics make feedback clear and actionable. Instead of guessing from conversations or hunches, metrics reveal... In my experience, there are different patterns to figuring out what users truly need… which is the foundation of design impact. - Without context or broader conversations, you’ll hear users say a lot of things. That feedback is helpful, but it still takes work to figure out what actually matters. - Watching people use products or services can be eye-opening. You start to see how people naturally try to accomplish things, where they struggle, and what they actually value. @Helge says that context and environment are key to understanding the situation here. - And while simply putting ideas out into the world can be expensive, the right learning cycles help teams learn quickly and reduce the risk of building the wrong thing. ![image](https://canada1.discourse-cdn.com/flex034/uploads/helio/original/2X/3/3a6e59dd4d9d1d86fe875e501cc16910aaa1a9c7.jpeg)