3

Understanding Relationships

I don’t like that man. I must get to know him better.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

BEFORE WE GET INTO THE DETAILS OF LISTENING TO AND TALKING TO OUR STAKEHOLDERS, I want to take a moment to look at the relationship. The single most important thing you can do to improve communication between you and your stakeholders is to improve those relationships, earn trust, and establish a rapport that will speak more for you than the words that come out of your mouth in a meeting.

So much of life and work is built around relationships. It’s not just who you know; it’s the quality of those relationships, too. If we’re going to be effective with communication, we begin with the relationship. We need to see the world through the eyes of the people who have influence over our project. We have to get in their heads, find out what makes them tick, and use this information to help us approach them in a way that’s productive and valuable for everyone.

What’s ironic to me is that UXers are so good at putting the user first, at garnering empathy for and attempting to see the interface from the perspective of the user. Yet, we often fail to do the same thing for the people who hold the keys to our success. We think carefully about the users of our applications but less so about the stakeholders on our projects. Let’s apply these same principles to the people we work with so that we can create a better product together. We need to take the time to understand our stakeholders. More than that, we need to engage with them on a personal level and improve the quality of our interactions. The same care and detail that goes into demonstrating user interactions also needs to be applied in our interactions with stakeholders. When it comes to relationships, you are truly an interaction designer!

The purpose of this chapter is to take a step back from the process, before we get bogged down in a cycle of meetings. We begin here, with a high-level view of our stakeholder relationships so that we can approach them in the right way. In order to do that, we need to:

See them as human

Everyone has other things going on that we simply cannot predict.

Create shared experiences

Finding common ground is important to earning trust.

Develop empathy

Get to know their viewpoint so intimately that we’re driven to action.

Ask good questions

Understand how their interests outside of the office affect their perspective.

In addition to getting to know our stakeholders, it’s important to look at the individuals on our team and work to improve the quality of our communication by:

Identifying influencers

Based on what we already know about their role on the team, we can understand the values that drive their reactions to our work.

Building good relationships

Simple things can go a long way in establishing rapport: be yourself, do stuff, and give stuff. Communication is easier in good relationships.

See Their Perspective

To know how to approach people and respond to them, we must first see their perspective. We have the opportunity to learn to speak their language, to get to know them better, and to keep our project on track. It’s not easy, but we can get a better sense for where people are coming from when we remember they’re human, find common ground through shared experiences, develop empathy for their viewpoint, and ask questions that give us insight into their world.

SEE THEM AS HUMAN

The trouble with people is that we’re all so unpredictable and yet so incredibly predictable at the same time. Often the people in your meetings are dealing with things, in both their personal and professional lives, which are more important to them than your current design project. People are too busy (or at least they think they are). “I have too many things going on right now,” or “I have to get to another meeting,” or “I’ve got to make this deadline.” Whatever the case, a lot of people you need help from are not always focused on the thing you want them to be. More than that, their attitudes and responses to your work might have more to do with the things happening outside of this meeting than what you’re showing them.

Before we go any further, stop for just a minute and think about the people on your project. Call to mind their faces, names, and even their role in the company. Now, pause and consider this: each one of them is a unique individual. Each person is a human with feelings, emotions, and a past that speaks into their present every single day. They all have relationships outside of work that include friends, spouses, parents, and children. When they’re finished with your meeting, they’re going to go visit their mother in the hospital. One of them has to shuttle his kids to an athletic game. And someone else on your team will go home to an empty house, lonely with nothing but the TV for company. Despite the fact that we spend so much time together during working hours, all of these people’s most important relationships are somewhere else.

We can’t pretend to ever really know what’s going on inside their heads, but we can take the time to realize that the way they respond to our ideas and work might have (or probably has) nothing to do with us at all. There are just too many other factors, distractions, and problems in the average person’s life for us to ever assume that the thing we want from them is the thing they care about. In psychology, the concept of attribution describes how people see one another, and specifically, how we understand other people’s behavior. Interestingly, most people tend to see other people’s behavior as a reflection of their particular personality traits, whereas we see our own behavior as being primarily situational. You see, we already have an unfair view of our stakeholders’ reactions. It’s natural for us to believe that their personality (“They’re not a designer”) is what causes them to disagree with our solutions, but that’s not true.

Was your colleague short with you in the hallway about the new interactions you made? Maybe she’s dealing with some issues in her personal life. Did that guy in your last meeting throw you under the bus and blame you for a problem that he was actually responsible for? Perhaps he’s feeling pressure from his boss. Has an executive ever shown up and declared that everything had to be changed? It’s possible he just came from a meeting and his budget was slashed. Stakeholder reactions to our design work often have an underlying situational explanation that we might never know about.

I will never forget the time when a manager came to our team late in the day with an emergency request. Suddenly, everything we were working on had to be stopped so that we could put together some concepts for a completely new, different idea. He was aggressive and rude, out of the ordinary. The only explanation was that it had suddenly become a high priority. I tried to understand the situation, but it just didn’t make sense nor did it line up with what we had agreed on previously. We did our best to appease him and shifted focus to this new thing, but then a few days later he dropped the project and told us to go back to our original work. Later, I found out that he had lost one of his biggest contracts and was on the verge of missing his financial goals near bonus time. This new project was a last ditch effort to make something happen, but he would never have told us it was because of his own bonus.

Of course, it wasn’t appropriate for him to treat our team that way just because his own financial incentives were on the line, but that’s not the point. The point is that there was something else going on that we didn’t understand at the time. And actually, there are always other things going on in the room that you will never know about. There are always things that are influencing people’s behaviors that we are not privy to. And there will always be things that we simply can’t predict. Always. The more often you remember that, the better off you’ll be.

Our job as articulate designers is to recognize just enough of that reality so that we can talk to the people that we work with in a way that pushes past all the extra distractions and gets down to the core thing we need to know to be successful. We need to recognize that the way people react to our work may not have anything to do with us or our designs at all. So, as often as you need to, stop, take a look at the people around you, and remember one thing: they are human.

CREATE SHARED EXPERIENCES

Our inability to see the perspective of another person often results from a lack of shared experiences. We simply don’t have enough in common with the other person. Why do some people seem to get along better than others? Why are we immediately drawn to some people, but not others? It’s because we have something in common with them. When we have shared experiences, we have something to talk about. When we don’t have anything in common with another person, it’s nearly impossible to talk to them. Everything we think of falls flat. However, everyone has something in common with another person; this is why the weather is such an easy thing to talk about. And although the weather is a perfectly fine experience to share, if we want to understand our stakeholders, we need to be willing to go deeper than that.

That’s not to say that we should dig into people’s personal lives. Actually, there are plenty of ways in which we can create shared experiences with other people on a professional level. It can be something as simple as going to lunch together or grabbing a drink after work. It doesn’t matter what you talk about: work, life, or the TV show you watched last night. The point is that you’re removing yourself, your ego, and the pressure of the minute-to-minute business of work. You’re out of the office—out of your usual context and experiencing something with this other person that you would not have otherwise.

Many companies organize team building and informal gatherings of employees for this very reason. But, if that’s not built in to your culture, you can make it happen on your own. Other ways of creating shared experiences include going to a conference, volunteering at your company’s annual charity, or asking that person’s advice. “Hey, I was thinking of buying a telescope for my kids and I know you’re into astronomy. What would you recommend?” Finding ways to create connections with other people is an important step toward understanding them.

THAT’S SO JOSH!

I will never forget how drastically my relationship with and approach toward a colleague changed after I had a shared experience with him. Josh was in a similar role to mine, but in a different department. As a result, we used a lot of the same shared resources and our paths would cross on projects occasionally. My impression of him was that he was a troublemaker: he was unorganized, inconsiderate, and not respected within the organization. It was especially difficult to work on a project with him because I knew he would have lots of different ideas, and those ideas always seemed as if they were just creating extra work for me. He was my nemesis. But by chance, one year we both ended up working at the same conference. We drove together, about three hours one way. We stayed at the same resort, which happened to be a paradise of relaxation. And we spent every day out of our usual context setting things up, talking to people, and eating most of our meals together. Very quickly, I got to know him through our shared experiences.

Almost immediately, my opinion of Josh changed. From then on, his suggestions were innovative! He was no longer inconsiderate, but just a little busy and less mindful of the details. “That’s so Josh!” Nothing had changed, except my own perspective of him and our shared experiences. From then on, it became much easier to work with Josh and get his buy-in on projects simply because we had those shared experiences. In fact, he became one of my greatest allies.

You don’t need to go on a road trip with stakeholders to create shared experiences. Finding that common ground can be as simple as pointing out something interesting in the hallway on the way to a meeting. You might notice that they have the latest mobile device, are wearing a brand you like, or have a souvenir from Paris on their desk. Anything you can do to explicitly call out common ground between you will go a long way toward reminding everyone (yourself included) that you have common interests. We are more than just pixel pushers. We are people. Often, the only thing keeping us from developing good relationships is ourselves.

DEVELOP EMPATHY

Empathy is a big buzz word in UX. If we can develop true empathy for our users, we’ll build better applications. But what about our stakeholders? We need to empathize with them, too, if we really expect to get through to them.

Empathy drives behavior. It is so much more than just understanding another person or seeing their perspective. It’s the ability to actually share in their feelings and experience so much that you have to help them: to get to know their viewpoint so intimately that we feel their pain. Empathy is what drives people to defend civil-rights injustices. It’s the reason why we have events to raise support and awareness for causes such as cancer. It motivates us to care so much about the challenges of another person that we’re driven to action. Empathy is the ultimate form of understanding.

Developing empathy for our stakeholders means attempting to look at our project from their perspective so that we’re no longer defensive and protective of our own ideas. We realize their reactions and suggestions are based in a reality that, for them, is more important than our own. When you have empathy for stakeholders, you not only understand their perspective but you’re actually driven to action; you want to make changes to your designs because you feel their pain. You see the urgency of meeting their needs and want to do something about it. That doesn’t mean that you do anything and everything they say. It simply means that your priority for communicating with them has shifted from a position of defense to one of solidarity. You still might disagree on the solution, but at least now you’re better prepared to talk to them about your choices. Having empathy for our stakeholders is important to establishing a foundational mindset that will allow us to form the best possible response to their feedback, as we will see in Chapter 6 and beyond. We cannot expect to listen to and respond to their feedback without first empathizing with their situation.

LEADING WITH VISION

I once worked with an executive who was very much a visionary thinker, but we were building a basic minimum viable product (MVP) for the first release. At the first couple of meetings, he was underwhelmed by our basic functionality. He knew the constraints of the project, but we needed him to be on board to get his approval. He was always present, but never very excited. In the process of working with him, I tried to see our project from his perspective. As an executive, he always had a high-level, 30,000-foot view of everything going on, yet we were showing him a minute detail that might only be a small blip on the radar of this product. He was looking toward the end-game, a massive release with fanfare, but we were focused on this intermediary step, the here and now.

So, from that point on, I chose to bring two different mockups to each meeting. One was this baseline MVP, which was modest and simple. The other was an innovative, no-limits picture of awesome that we would never be able to pull off, at least in the short term. But I was able to hold his attention by keeping both concepts in front of him. I was able to lead our conversations with this incredible vision of a preferred future, while also showing and getting approval for the thing that would allow us to take a step in that direction. He could see where we were going and so he was more likely to approve our MVP.

I could not have been prepared with this approach if I wasn’t able to empathize with his position. It took more work on my part, but it was worth it in the long run because it meant keeping our designs moving. He trusted us more because he could see our vision. Actually, I’ve found that it’s often a best practice when working with executives to show both what’s possible in the short term and what’s preferred for the future. This approach creates a buzz that keeps everyone excited and makes it more likely that they’ll agree with you. We’ll go into more detail about the importance of designing for vision in the Chapter 13.

ASK GOOD QUESTIONS

Seeing the perspective of our stakeholders requires a lot of patience and work. It’s not something that comes automatically; it takes time and practice. Some people are naturally good at seeing other people’s perspective, but the majority of us need to be very intentional about it. You should learn to view things from the perspective of your stakeholders in the same way that you would with users of your application—by asking questions. If we want to see our stakeholders as human, to create shared experiences, and develop empathy for their situation, the best thing we can do is to just ask.

My brother-in-law, Lars, is one of the most interesting people I know. Everywhere he goes, people like to talk to him. What’s funny is that he doesn’t seem like a very outgoing person. His personality is a little reserved, he’s careful when he speaks, and he never talks too much. Yet it seems as if people are drawn to him. When people see him, they stop to talk. If they spot him across a room, they’ll seek him out. Why? It’s because Lars is really good at asking questions. People love to talk to Lars because Lars is good at getting them to talk. You leave a conversation with Lars feeling like you just met someone who was really smart, interesting, and was intensely interested in the mundane details of your life. He’s a great conversationalist not because he’s good at talking, but because he’s good at asking questions. Talking to Lars makes me feel smart and that makes me want to talk to him more!

Lars’ skill at getting people to talk demonstrates that we need to be better at asking people questions about themselves so that they feel valued and are comfortable talking to us. This approach to relationships and conversations will help us build a reputation that makes people want to talk to us more and, as a byproduct, listen to us more when it matters the most.

GET PERSONAL

As Lars has shown me, people love to talk about themselves. Even people who are more humble and less inclined to volunteer information still enjoy chatting about the stuff that’s important to them. So, take the time to know a little bit about each person so that you can begin to see that their life doesn’t revolve around work. Don’t ask yes/no questions, and don’t get so personal that you overstep normal social behavior. Keep it light, but let them tell you what they’re willing to tell. Questions like:

• What did you do this weekend?

• How was your holiday?

• Have you seen any good movies lately?

• So what’s new?

These questions are simple, open ended, and allow the person to divulge as much or as little as they’re willing. They are general enough to be safe with any audience and can create conversation to help you see their perspective. They’ll create a path for you to get to know them better and eventually ask more specific questions.

If you know they have kids, ask about their kids. Everyone will talk to you about their kids and it’s something many people have in common. The same goes for pets; people love to talk about their pets. I was having a one-on-one meeting with a stakeholder. While we walked to the conference room, I asked her if she had pets. She pulled out her phone to log in to the remote camera she had mounted in her outdoor cat enclosure. Conveniently, the conversation quickly turned to technology and the app that controls her camera. That naturally shifted to a discussion of the UX. Asking her about pets gave her something she loved to talk about and gave me an opportunity to demonstrate my own expertise in the process, earning some trust and respect regarding the project we were about to discuss. You never know how asking good questions will improve your relationships and help you to earn the trust you need to communicate about your designs.

OFFER YOURSELF

But it’s not a one-way street. You should also offer some information about yourself to get people talking. Find something that you’re interested in and ask them about it:

• I went camping this past weekend; do you like camping?

• We hosted my family for dinner last night; do you like to cook?

• I saw this great movie yesterday; have you seen it?

Offering people a glimpse into your own life is a great way to create a sense that they are just like you. No matter how they might respond to you in the moment, you may find that you have a lot in common. I was visiting a client in New York who offered to take me to lunch in his car. It was a small car, but I happened to notice that it had an upgraded exhaust system. I asked him about it because I am restoring a classic car myself and was curious about his interest in cars. I told him about my project and we started chatting about cars in general. That conversation turned into a story about him borrowing money to buy a plane when he was only in his twenties. He still owned that plane and loved to fly. I had been working with this guy for several months, but I had no idea he was a pilot! In fact, every time I talk to him now, he always gives me the latest update on flying because he knows I’m genuinely interested in his hobby. Revealing some of my own interests made it possible for us to establish some common ground.

GO PRO

But seeing our stakeholder’s perspective requires that we understand how they approach their jobs and our project, too, not just their personal life. So, it’s important to get to know how people think in our work-context, as well. Ask things like:

• What did you think of the meeting last week?

• How’s your work going on the other project?

• Do you have a lot going on this week?

If you find that you’re butting heads with the people in charge, it’s common that the stated goals or priorities for the project actually differ from the individual’s. In that case, I suggest being as direct as possible when trying to uncover people’s viewpoints and perspectives in situations where they can be difficult to read. For example:

• What’s your opinion on this project?

• How does this project affect your job?

• What is your priority for this project?

Allowing people to express what might be their own opinion or perspective gives them permission to deviate from the party line because they can speak freely without the pressure that they’ll upset the process or misrepresent the company.

I was having some difficulty with a manager who was pushing us on some priorities, and his suggestions seemed to conflict with our goal of improving conversion. I asked him how our project would affect him, and he told me that his highest priority was migrating off of the old platform as quickly as possible, because during the transition he was paying for the development of both. As long as both platforms were on his budget, he was under a lot of pressure. However, he never could have gotten approval to build the new platform if the stated goal hadn’t been improved conversion. So, although our official mandate was to increase conversion, his personal agenda was to replace the platform as soon as possible. Knowing that significantly improved our ability to communicate with each other on the designs and priorities for the rest of the project.

Again, the point of asking questions is to get the other person to talk to you about what’s important to them. You just want to understand more about their perspective so that you have a better sense for how to respond to them, when needed. That’s how you create an awareness of the other person’s viewpoint and set yourself up for a better relationship, better communication, and better success in creating the best user experience.

Identifying Influencers

Now that we’ve considered the best ways of seeing our stakeholder’s perspective, let’s look at the kinds of people who influence our projects so that we can tailor these approaches to them.

Every project has a variety of people who influence its outcome. To keep it simple, let’s assume that there are only three main types of people who you need to understand:

Team Influencers

The people on your direct team

Executive Influencers

The people who oversee your project

External Influencers

People outside of your team

Depending on where the person sits in relation to you, it can be difficult to get to know them well enough to understand them and their perspective. But our job is to identify these people and seek to understand them as best as we can.

TEAM INFLUENCERS

People who are within your immediate influence are the people you see and interact with every day. This probably includes other designers, developers, and project managers or product owners. It can be more difficult to work with these people on a regular basis simply because, well...you have to work with them on a regular basis! However, the benefit is that you have plenty of opportunity to learn about them, find out what makes them tick, and tailor your approach to them in a way that appeals to their needs.

Healthy companies have healthy teams, and so your work with this group could feel like hanging out with friends on a daily basis. Unhealthy teams have difficult people and relationships that make it hard to accomplish much at all. Most of the time, I find that there’s a mix of team dynamics: there are people you most identify with and who will come to your aid. And then there are some people who you don’t understand or who have difficult personalities, and you need to learn to handle them better. Whatever the mix on your team, the goal is to find ways of understanding them so that we can better communicate with them.

In general, your team is the best source of people who can help you on your project. You have daily opportunities to pour into these relationships for the benefit of the user experience. The more time you can spend with these people describing solutions, communicating value, and establishing a foundation of vocabulary, the better off you’ll be as far as creating a culture that follows your lead on important UX decisions. It is hard work because you have to put on your game face every day and find ways to lead, even if you’re not the leader. Your team influencers are your most important allies.

EXECUTIVE INFLUENCERS

The people outside your immediate influence, but who have a stake in and influence over your project are the executive influencers. Most commonly, this is an executive or manager who oversees your team, perhaps one or two levels removed. This is the boss: the person whose approval you most need. On small teams and in startups, this might be the CEO, whom you also work with in close quarters. In larger organizations, it’s a manager or VP, and you may not have regular access to them. Either way, these people are the most important people on your project. Without their final approval, you can’t get what you need to be successful. In many ways, communicating with these people is the primary purpose of this book.

Hopefully there isn’t more than one or two major executive influencers on your project. The difficult part about understanding this group is that we don’t usually meet with them often enough to easily size them up and understand their perspective. They are probably busy, late to your meeting, short and to the point, and may not have much time or brain space to devote to your carefully thought-through presentation. In this case, you have to use keen observation in every meeting, get to know the people who know them (like an administrative assistant or direct report) and do your best with the limited information you have. In short, you need to figure them out and respond to them almost instantaneously. Over time, you’ll develop a rhythm that can add to your bucket of understanding and help you communicate with them.

EXTERNAL INFLUENCERS

A third group of people, who matter less to your day-to-day decision making but who can also help or hurt your efforts, are the external influencers. This group lives in a different part of the organization, probably unrelated to your work or project, but they may have the ear of anyone in the other two groups and speak into your project via proxy. Often, we may not even know who the external influencers are because we only hear about them secondhand. But just as often, they are people who have access to and/or use our project and therefore have an interest in seeing it become the best it can be.

These might be people in accounting and finance, IT, customer service or call-center employees, or HR, depending on the kind of app you’re building. They could be people outside the organization, too: a spouse, friend, or former colleague of an executive influencer. It’s not uncommon for people in meetings to say things like, “I was showing the app to my friend in accounting and he seemed to think the button was not obvious enough. He didn’t even notice it until I pointed it out to him!” They then expect that we should make design decisions exclusively on this anonymous person in accounting. Even worse is the external influencer who is deemed to be part of the user base for the product. “I was showing it to my wife because she’s part of our target audience and she didn’t like the grid view at all. She thinks we should default to the list view instead.” Now you have to find a nice way to tell this person that not only is his wife wrong, but she’s not even part of our user base either! It’s no small challenge, for sure.

Stakeholder Values

I tend to see people in different roles as individual people and try to avoid creating stereotypes in my head based on their job title. Everyone is unique, and you must consider them in different ways no matter what their role. Although that’s true, our stakeholders’ viewpoint of our project is still influenced significantly by how they spend their time and energy every day. To the extent that it’s possible, let’s look at some of the more common roles on the team, what the people in those roles value, and what that means for our approach. This is just a starting point to help you understand how different roles will affect people’s perspective of your project and what you can focus on when working with them.

EXECUTIVES OR MANAGERS

It’s no exaggeration that executives and senior managers have a lot on their plate. But it’s less about being too busy and more about brain capacity; they’re constantly switching between completely different topics, projects, and challenges. Walking into your meeting might even be disorienting if they can’t remember where you last left off. Your job is to bring them up to speed as quickly as possible, present your solutions, and solicit their feedback. They want to know that you’ve thought about it and have made smart decisions that align with their vision for the organization.

BECAUSE THEY VALUE...	YOU SHOULD FOCUS ON...
• Concise information • Growing the business • Solving problems	• Getting to the point • Accomplishing goals • Describing the solution

DEVELOPERS OR ENGINEERS

Working with developers can be one of the most challenging relationships for designers, simply because they think so differently about our projects than we do. Developers are usually looking at a backlog of bugs and enhancements on the one hand, and a roadmap for future development that’s bigger than they can manage on the other. They tend to be more analytical, so they don’t even “see” some of the UI details you’ve designed. They may even be concerned with “over-designing” something that they think is not worth the extra effort. Your job is to help them see the value in everything you’ve done so that they’re excited about the end result, while also demonstrating that you understand the effort involved.

BECAUSE THEY VALUE...	YOU SHOULD FOCUS ON...
• Building it once and minimizing rework • Efficiency and maintainable code • Understanding the effort involved	• Understanding all of the use cases up front • Maximizing existing scope and reusing UI patterns • Communicating the value for the users or business

PRODUCT OWNERS

If your organization is large enough to have a dedicated product owner, working with them will be one of the primary things you do. The great news is that product owners tend to want their products to be the very best they can be, so they’re usually one of our greatest allies and get really excited about all the creative designs we can produce. Taking direction from a product owner is challenging, though, if they don’t have a good understanding of design, what’s technically possible, or if they have an unclear vision for the product roadmap.

BECAUSE THEY VALUE...	YOU SHOULD FOCUS ON...
• Innovation and creativity • Meeting business goals • The big picture, long-term roadmap	• Finding new approaches to solving problems • Connecting your designs to the business objectives • How your design moves them forward

PROJECT MANAGERS

Most projects will have a project manager, even if this is a combination of people from other roles. This is the person in charge of ensuring the project stays on track, on budget, and on time. They like things like Gantt charts, deadlines, and meetings. Your job with PMs is to be sure they always understand where you’re at in the process, alert them about any concerns as soon as possible, and allow them to negotiate between everyone else to get stuff done.

BECAUSE THEY VALUE...	YOU SHOULD FOCUS ON...
• Deadlines and staying on schedule • Managing scope and budgets • Keeping everyone in the loop	• Possible efficiencies of reusing design elements • Managing expectations on any changes • Updating them on your progress

MARKETING, CONTENT, AND CREATIVE

I hate to put all three of these roles into the same category, but there is plenty of overlap in these roles from the perspective of a designer. Only the largest companies will employ separate people for each one of these roles. The point, for designers, is that there are people who will be concerned more with the content, look and feel, and copy of your application. There may be branding guidelines, style guides, or a defined design language that drives most of these conversations. Your job is to already be aware of these requirements, find out what the standard content and copy is, and incorporate it into your designs as early as possible.

BECAUSE THEY VALUE...	YOU SHOULD FOCUS ON...
• Brand consistency across the organization • Consistent voice in copy and messaging • Creating a product that provides value to customer and is sellable	• Creating styles that match the brand or communicating any differences • Ensuring that the copy you use is already approved, or if it deviates, why • Specific value proposition in features or microinteractions

Stakeholder Stories

Writing user stories is a popular method for designers and developers to understand their users, but have you ever written a story like that for your stakeholders? As we seek to understand the people we work with, perhaps it will be useful to write out stories so that we can understand the project from their perspective. Here are a few examples to get you started.

EXECUTIVES

• As an executive, I want to see what my team is working on so that I can provide a report back to upper management.

• As an executive, I want to provide feedback on the design of my products so that I can help you make them better.

• As an executive, I want to provide a vision and roadmap of the future so that my team can be excited about where we are headed.

DEVELOPERS

• As a developer, I want to build a solid application so that I can be proud of my work.

• As a developer, I want to write quality code so that I don’t have to deal with so many bugs or a lot of maintenance.

• As a developer, I want to understand all the requirements up front so that I can plan my work and maximize my time.

PRODUCT OWNERS

• As a product owner, I want to create the best possible product so that I can create value for our customers and for the company.

• As a product owner, I want to deliver new and creative ideas so that I can make an impression on the company with my leadership.

• As a product owner, I want to make a product that is simple and elegant so that people will want to use it.

PROJECT MANAGERS

• As a project manager, I want to meet with everyone on the team so that I can ensure that we’re on track.

• As a project manager, I want to cut scope so that we can stay on schedule and under budget.

• As a project manager, I want to plan carefully so that I can ensure that we have the time and resources we need to be successful.

MARKETING, CONTENT, AND CREATIVE

• As a marketer, I want to provide feedback on the product design so that we will have a product that is competitive and will sell.

• As a brand or content strategist, I want to ensure that all of our products communicate the same look or tone so that our customers have a consistent experience across the entire organization.

• As a creative director, I want to be involved in your project’s design so that I can ensure that it aligns with all of the other initiatives I oversee.

These are meant to be casual examples to make the point that each person on our team has a different perspective. We could probably write many more. You could take the time to write your own user/stakeholder stories for the people on your team, too. The more we can do to get into their frame of mind, the better we’ll be at articulating our design decisions to them.

Build Good Relationships

The overall lesson is this: communication is much easier in good relationships. Good relationships take work. In fact, building good relationships is a pretty basic and straightforward process—you get out of it what you put into it. So, let’s take a practical look at some things you can do to improve the quality of your relationships with stakeholders.

Technology has improved the speed at which we’re able to communicate, but not necessarily the quality. Text messaging and emails are incredibly useful tools for getting work done, but we need to be careful not to go to an extreme of limiting our capacity to communicate to a few hundred characters. It might be necessary for you to fire off a short response to people on your team for the purpose of getting it done, but don’t let that be the only way that they ever interact with you. Whenever possible, seek them out and have a friendly and casual conversation with them. This is more difficult when working remotely, but not impossible. Take the time to do the simple things that will help you to improve your relationships and, as a byproduct, your communication with each other.

BE YOURSELF

The best advice I can give you is to just be yourself around people. Too often, people are serious about doing serious work seriously. In an attempt to be professional, some people (maybe you) never let anyone see who they really are. We may put up fronts, never let our guard down, and always focus on work, work, work. This is no way to maintain a rapport with your peers and bosses. You need to show people you’re human and reveal your own personality, when it’s appropriate. There are absolutely times when we have to put on our professional hat and get things done, but there are also in-between times, break times, and coffee times when we can learn to be human with those around us. Finding that balance is important; people appreciate getting to see the “real” you.

DO STUFF

It’s also important to do things for other people to make them feel valued. Pretty much anything you do that is outside of the usual way your team communicates and relates to one another will make an impression on people that you care. Typically, this is just checking in with people regularly to see how they are. That might be stopping by their desk, inviting them to coffee, or leaving a note. Sometimes, just saying hello to someone for no reason at all is enough to express this. To take it a step further, ask if there’s anything you can do to help them. Any of the questions in the previous section would be a great fit here, but the key is to express that you’re on the same team and you care enough to ask.

When I’m visiting one particular client’s office, I always stop by Jennifer’s desk because I enjoyed working with her on a previous project. She’s almost never there, so I leave her a note to say hello on a Post-it. Later, I found out she had been keeping all of my notes stuck to her display because she appreciated them so much. On another client, I sometimes work directly with the CEO, so whenever I’m onsite I always walk by his office even if I don’t have an appointment. Once, he was in another conversation but he waved me over, stopped his meeting briefly, shook my hand, and thanked me for being there. Another time, I was reading an article that reminded me of a client I had worked for months earlier. I watched his online status for a few days to see when he was available and then sent him a short message with a link to the article. Even though we didn’t have an active project together, it was important for me to maintain the relationship. I want people to know that I’m there to serve them, to help them do their jobs better, and to make them successful at designing great products. Going out of my way to do these simple things helps me to express that to them and makes it easier when talking to them about design.

GIVE STUFF

Taking it a step further, relationships will be improved when you actually do things that show a genuine interest in people by giving them something useful or meaningful.

Handwritten notes

I sometimes send handwritten thank-you notes or cards to people after we’ve worked together. Not often, but occasionally. When all of our communication is electronic, a handwritten card is especially notable and always makes an impression. But don’t misunderstand me; I’m not much of a letter-writing person to begin with. I’m not the person who sent you a thank-you note for a wedding gift the same day that you gave the gift. I’ve never been that guy. This is a real stretch for me to remember to do, but I think it’s always valuable and I probably don’t do it enough. If you have trouble with something like this, set your goals low: write one hand-written note to a client or stakeholder every two to three months. Hopefully, that will help you establish a pattern of expressing your gratitude to the people you have the privilege of working with.

Simple, Inexpensive Gifts

Another simple way to build your relationships is to send simple gifts to people, when appropriate. These aren’t meant to be bribes, but just small tokens of appreciation to show the other person that you care. Some companies have policies about gift giving, so be sure you understand the environment and always use good judgment. But as a rule, giving a small gift is a great way to show the other person that you’re more than just a defender of buttons.

For individuals, the best gifts are the ones that show you listen to them. One of my clients was a hobbyist photographer, so I sent him a coffee cup that looks like a lens. To my client who loves to fly, I sent a license plate frame that said “My other car is a plane”—he still talks about it to this day and has offered me to fly with him next time I’m in New York. I gave a coworker who was getting married a humorous book about what bachelors need to know before the wedding. And my boss who had a reputation for always ordering a Jack Daniel’s with water got just that. I bought one bottle of each, designed a custom label for the package with the title “Joan’s Regular,” and had a friend shrink wrap them together so it looked like a real product. All these things were inexpensive, simple ways to let the other person know that I value them. The gifts were not generic, but tailored to something specific I knew about them. The sentiment was not in the gift itself, but in the thought I had put into choosing it. They knew I listened to them and understood something about them.

If you’re concerned about showing favoritism or if you’re not good at giving individual gifts, one simple way to give people a gift is to be the person who brings snacks or food. If everyone is groaning about an early morning meeting, bring breakfast with you. You can also put a communal jar of candy on your desk to give people a reason to stop by. Occasionally offer to make a coffee run for the team during the 3 p.m. slump. This way of giving gifts doesn’t favor one particular relationship, but it still shows people that you value them.

It might seem like focusing on stakeholder relationships has nothing to do with design. Cultivating good relationships is a great skill no matter what your job is, but it’s one area that I think designers can improve upon. Many designers expect their designs to speak for themselves, especially as it relates to user experience. “If your design requires an explanation, then it’s not very good.” As if you could expect to just hand your stakeholders some mockups and wait for them to give it a stamp of approval. It’s surprising just how much a good relationship can affect another person’s view of our work. Having good relationships really does make our designs more acceptable to the people who matter.

People may view us for the utility we provide, specifically related to our roles as designers. We are actually making something that they need, and they may, unintentionally, see our interactions with each other as the way to get things done. But when we don’t have that human connection, meeting with stakeholders can sometimes be downgraded to nothing more than an exchange of skills. The more we can show them that we’re people, too, the more value and stock they’ll put into our ideas, suggestions, and proposals. We’re not robots churning out stuff just to get a paycheck; we’re smart people with great ideas working together to create great products. Focusing on these relationships is more than just being nice and making sure people like us. It’s reminding them that we’re people, too, and that we can be trusted to create great solutions. Having good relationships will help ensure that this happens.

STAKEHOLDERS ARE PEOPLE, TOO

If we really expect to communicate effectively with our stakeholders, we need to use the same skills with them that we use in identifying with our users. We have to understand people by the roles and position on our team, recognize what’s important to them, and make a note of the best ways of approaching them. Part of this process involves remembering that they are human, that they have other things going on in their lives, or being intentional about creating shared experiences so that we change our view of them personally. Finally, developing empathy for stakeholders drives us to act and to want to position our approach toward them in a way that agrees with their needs, rather than our own. At the end of the day, a focus on building good relationships is the most important factor in establishing good channels of communication.