How to get stakeholder buy-in for user research: expert tips

We asked some of the most respected UX professionals the following question: How do you communicate the value of user research to stakeholders?

There’s so much brilliant, helpful advice here and we’d like to send a massive thank you to everyone who contributed. And if anything you read below helps you win over a stakeholder, feel free to give them a shout-out too.

Understand the why behind the pushback

Nikki Anderson, Senior UX Researcher | From A to B

“While there are different approaches to getting buy-in, there is one I find particularly effective in our field: performing user research on stakeholders by understanding the "why" behind the pushback, and then creating the MVR (minimal viable research) plan.

When a user gives you feedback during an interview, you ask them why they feel or think a certain way. Why not do the same with your stakeholders? The goal is to create an open space for both your stakeholders and users so you can facilitate a conversation filled with empathy and understanding.

Ask your stakeholders: "Why do you feel negatively towards user research?" "What happened the last time you did user research?" "What's your ideal timeline and approach for this project?" "What could be some ideal outcomes of user research on this project?"

Once you’ve identified the root of the 'no', you can begin to cater your MVR plan to addressing the concerns. It’s important to understand why stakeholders are pushing back on user research and uncover what business goals and metrics most important to them. Using that, you can then create a research plan that both mitigates their worries and shows how research can impact the metrics they care about."

Communicate the right message to the right people

Andy Budd, Managing Director, Clearleft

“There’s no one perfect way of communicating the value of UX to skeptical stakeholders. Some stakeholders are motivated by numbers, forcing you to quantify the benefits. You can do this by sourcing third party data, or running a small test to prove the results.

Other stakeholders are motivated by social proof, so you can demonstrate how other brands they look up to use these techniques. Some stakeholders need to see the effects on the team to really appreciate the value, which is where design sprints come into play.

Other stakeholders are all about finding operational efficiencies, so demonstrating how research can reduce waste and speed delivery may be your way in.

Much like UX design itself, there’s no one size fits all strategy, so you need to tailor your approach to both the audience and the problem at hand. The best advice would be to use your design thinking and storytelling abilities to communicate the right message to the right people.”

Torture your stakeholders with bad design

Elizabeth Chesters, UX Consultant, echesters.co.uk

“Empathy is a great tool. Not only is it useful for your job, but it’s useful for your stakeholders to understand what UX is. User experience can be difficult to describe. The only time you see UX is in a user’s face – but you need buy-in to reach that point.

When speaking to stakeholders get them to share their own terrible experiences. Ask them 'What apps do you not use – and why?' and I bet they’ll have their own experiences to share. Listen to them and understand their fears or myths around UX.

Then work with them to understand that your product may be putting users through the same terrible experiences. No one is willing to pay for a terrible experience, not even your stakeholders. This is a loss of money to them and this is where the UX resource helps.”

Provide tangible evidence

Katy Arnold, Head of User Research and Design, Home Office, UK Government

”At the Home Office, we’re approaching this challenge in different ways. One way is to show benefits that they understand. By being clear about the desired outcomes of a service, and finding ways to measure against those outcomes, we are able to provide stakeholders with tangible evidence of how well their service is really doing.

Often decision-makers don’t have the information they need in order to know what to do next. Providing them with data from measured outcomes meets a core need and can be a powerful way to make the case for a user centred, service-led approach to public service delivery.

Another way is to get better value for stakeholders out of the user research that we do. Documenting, storing and sharing user research badly, often means new teams have to start from the beginning every time. This is wasteful and makes it hard for stakeholders to see the value in what we do.

So we make sure we always create artefacts that are the most useful and accessible to other researchers, stakeholders and policy-makers across government. Storing and sharing these artefacts consistently helps to achieve better outcomes for users and increases the perceived value of user centred design amongst our stakeholders.”

Use storytelling to bring insights to life

Tarah Srethwatanakul, Service Designer & Researcher, Globant Consulting

“Identify your stakeholders and their business needs: at the start of a project, make the time and effort to understand who your different stakeholders are and what they need to get out of user research – whether that’s through a kick-off workshop or stakeholder interviews. You’ll then be able to involve them in the most relevant activities and tailor your delivery of user insights to their business needs.

Work in an embedded team: work alongside the people who would be most affected by your recommendations – that means taking them along to research where possible and exposing them to design decisions. When stakeholders are set-up to be part of the research and design process, they’re more likely to become customer advocates and you’ll unearth solution constraints more quickly.

Bring user needs to life: it’s valuable to have a list of user needs, but stories are what stick in people’s minds. Use quotes, photos, video or audio clips to bring your insights to life during playbacks so that stakeholders have tangible and emotive stories to share when discussing product or service improvements.”

Sell the value of UX

Trista Rowan, Sr. UX Researcher / Designer

“I use three primary methods to create buy-in with stakeholders. When new to a project or team, conduct key stakeholder interviews. This is an opportunity to learn more about the product or service and the users, but it also helps you establish a relationship with the stakeholder.

Understanding what’s important to stakeholders – what motivates them – is very important so you can better sell the value of UX to that stakeholder. In addition, including stakeholders in every stage of the research process is critical. Include them in research planning, invite them to sessions and the debrief afterwards.

Finally, be very conscious of timelines and budget when proposing research projects; flexibility is everything!”

Do one project really well

Harry Brignull, User Experience Consultant, brignull.com

“If you’re a practitioner having to regularly explain UX to stakeholders, you’re likely to be in an organisation with a low-to-middle level of UX maturity. So instead of thinking about how to deal with it at an individual level, you should think about how you can move your organization forward as a whole.

The thing about UX research and design transformation is that it involves a shift in the power dynamic within an organization. Sometimes entire departments need to change the way they do things. Sometimes you need to train a number of people.

If you try this as a mid-level practitioner or a middle-manager on your own, you’ll probably meet resistance and annoyance. You need very senior executive sponsors to make that kind of change happen. Exemplar Projects are very good at helping an organization know “what good looks like” and in getting the executive sponsors that you need.

Do one project really well in your organization. Engage in collaboration, discovery, user research and iteration. Show how a good process can deliver amazing results. The rest can follow.”

Improve something that’s related to a stakeholder’s current focus

Jared Spool, Founder of UIE, Co-founder of Center Centre

“You can’t convince a smoker to quit smoking. They need to just decide they’ll do it. On their own. When they are ready.

It’s the same with executives. Neither I, you, nor anybody else can convince an executive to invest in user experience. I haven’t met someone who could pull this off in all my years, but they could exist. Even so, I don’t believe a presentation will change their views.

What can you do instead of a presentation? You can find out what your executives are already convinced of. If they are any good at what they do, they likely have something they want to improve. It’s likely to be related to improving revenues, reducing costs, increasing the number of new customers, increasing the sales from existing customers, or increasing shareholder value.

Once you start talking about what the executives are already convinced of, it becomes easier to get them to make investments. How will your better user experience increase revenue? Decrease costs? Get new customers?

Talk in their terms and you’re no longer trying to get them to change their focus. You’re playing directly into their main field of attention.”

Full text can be found Jared M. Spool’s post ‘Why I can’t convince your execs to invest in UX‘ Reprinted with permission.

Stakeholders are your users too

Elizabeth Parvin, Sr. UX Researcher / UXR Practice Lead | Bullhorn, Inc.

“Just as we think about UX for the end-user, we should think about UX for internal clients in how they experience our research.

How might their past experiences affect their disposition with current state research? What feeds into their expectations? Do they want or need reassurance that the research is properly or effectively being navigated?

– Formal & informal meetings – don’t underestimate the power of 1:1 relationships with stakeholders.
– Ask for their input/thoughts.
– Give updates, show enthusiasm or invite them to your product team meeting in which you discuss the research planning.
– Have them observe a research session.
– Invite them to participate in a research session themselves.

I once had the GM at a company sit in as a participant. His participation increased his excitement and interest in the research initiative and also generated more trust in the methodology. Note: I would only suggest this with a senior executive if you already have some rapport with him or her.

If you think there could be hesitancy on their part in terms of the research plan, try to find out where that hesitancy lies. Share the benefits of the research, long and short-term, and explain the rationale behind the research approach. Make it clear you would like to address their concerns as best you can. They are your client.

If a question that can be answered by research is weighing heavily on them, acknowledge this question and explain how the research will directly or indirectly help shed light on the answer.

Remember, if you aren’t confident in the value of the research, why should they be? And if you aren’t confident in its value, ask yourself why. Research can always be done just for the sake of doing research. Avoid at all costs this line of reasoning with yourself and your team. Do not overpromise but set their expectations appropriately and optimistically.

And, if there is already primary or secondary research that makes a strong case for your research initiative, share those findings – making sure the data is engaging and easily digestible for your stakeholder audience.”

Point at previous successes

Gerry Gaffney, Director, Information and Design

“I think we need to communicate both the need for UX, and its value. We can demonstrate need most effectively by having stakeholders observe real-world interactions. Whether this is direct observation or audio or video recording, poor UX will often be glaringly obvious. Well-presented analytic data can also be powerful.

It’s important to consider what stakeholders value, and how UX can tie into that. Corporate goals may have ‘hooks’ that you can attach to UX. A goal to create a good work environment, for example, can be a hook for improving internal systems. A goal to maximize sales can be a direct driver of a push to minimize purchase abandonment rates.

Being able to point at previous successes can be very effective, whether they are within the stakeholders’ organization, or in similar or competitive situations.

And of course the best projects and organizations have UX as a fundamental consideration; their stakeholders don’t need to be persuaded of value. If possible, work for them!”

No quick and dirty path, sorry

Samanta Shi, Sr. UX Researcher | Equinox

“Getting stakeholder buy-in can be especially hard if UX is new to your company, and especially if your executives haven’t yet familiarized themselves with the benefits of conducting UX research.

There is no quick and dirty path here. Simply put, as a UX researcher, it is your job to demonstrate the advantages of conducting user research. Here are some tips that will help you on your journey of getting stakeholder buy-in:

Thoroughly understand the problem: Make sure to step out of your comfort zone and talk to anyone who has insight into the scope and landscape of your problem. Interview your stakeholders, not just your product manager. Understand their priorities so that you can align your research goals with them.

This way, they will see that their needs are directly addressed through this research and will be more inclined to approve. Your research should be assisting the top priorities of the company.

Conduct market research: Show your stakeholders that you have already done everything that you can with the information that’s already out there. Show them how you will use this information to inform your extended research.

By using already existing information to guide your research, you will be able to dive deeper. For example, use market research to guide your hypotheses and interview questions.

Don’t be afraid to do some data analysis: Do you have access to a database with performance metrics, insights into user behavior? Query it, or work with a Data Analyst to query it together! Well rounded UX researchers don’t just focus on qualitative data.

How might your company’s quantitative data help inform your research? By pre-emptively investigating the quantitative data, you will be able to answer the following questions: What problems are left unsolved; what questions are left unanswered by our quantitative data? This also shows why the qualitative element is important, for example, “we know that conversion rates went down, but we don’t know why, and in order to design a better solution, we need this kind of insight”.

Show them what you will get out of the research: While building empathy is important, this cannot be the only reason. Show your stakeholders why they need to spend $500, $1,000 or $10,000 on your research project. For example, how will the insights you gather lead to a more useful and usable product? How do UX metrics convert into business KPIs? Will your conversion rate increase by 0.5, 1, 2, 10x?

Also consider if you have worked on any other products where usability testing and/or user research has already led to a successful product improvement or A/B test? If so, mention it in your proposal.

Define the deliverables: Okay, so you estimate that your research will lead to a 5x improvement in conversion rate. Great! Now, what evidence can you provide? Show them that they will have access to videos and summaries of insights with meaningful charts. Outline that the team will create prototypes that will be tested and iterated upon, which will then lead to the final product.

Manage their expectations: Summarize. Synthesize and analyze the data so that they can see digestible content and quickly make informed decisions.

Have a concrete plan and provide a well-researched, detailed budget: Your plan should provide a scope. Show them that you are not trying to tackle too many things at once. What is your hypothesis, your problem statement? (Use the 'How might we…?' method!) Consider what will make this research successful. How might you fail? How many users do you need to interview? Why is this number sufficient? What does your interviewing team look like? Why do you need 1, 2, 4 people to conduct this research?

Also explain the need for materials, digital and/ or physical. Plan for no-shows and delays. Provide a cheap, average, and expensive option for services or platforms that you might need. Highlight the pros and cons of each. Make a recommendation for using one and explain why. Make sure your budget is comprehensive and detailed (your CFO will care about this).

However, don’t forget to make a synthesized recommendation. This will be the slide that they pay attention to and if they have questions, your more detailed slides will have the answer.”

Let them see for themselves

Chris Callaghan, UX and Optimization Director, McCann Manchester

“The best way for stakeholders to understand the value of UX is not necessarily to ‘communicate’ it to them – but to let them see it for themselves.

Involving stakeholders from the outset enables them to see all parts of the process and to go on the journey with you. The role of the UX practitioner in this instance is to facilitate the user centred design process and to create engagement within the organisation.

Whether its gamestorming, customer journey mapping, having stakeholders observe usability testing, or running collaborative design sprints – the important thing is to let stakeholders see the value for themselves.

If you can’t involve stakeholders and your only option is to show them, then videos of real people struggling to turn into customers is a very powerful technique. There’s nothing worse than watching traffic you’ve paid for fail to turn into a lead or revenue because of a usability issue or failure to address an anxiety.

If you need to be persuasive with your communication, then make sure you use your stakeholder’s language – this might be talking in terms of reducing cost, increasing revenue, or demonstrating the ROI. Find their levers and reframe your argument to fit their view of value. Help them to see the benefits in their language.”

Have empathy and convince with data

Astrid Paris, UX Lead, Launch Interactive

“Having empathy for users won’t get you very far unless you also have empathy for the business. Make the case for UX research and design by tying real-world, current customer pain points to the organization’s bottom line.

Is there a high volume of support tickets around a certain area in your product? For SaaS, look at registration flows, user login frequency, paths through the system, and feature usage.

Two good cases for conducting UX research are understanding why users aren’t converting to customers and whether certain features should continue to get love. For enterprise software, are there trends in questions asked during pre-implementation customer training sessions? Places where customers are consistently getting stuck? For e-commerce, keep an eye on shopping cart abandonment rates.

Put a monetary value on UX issues. Time-to-resolution on support tickets, trial conversion rate, subscriber churn rate, time spent explaining to new customers the workarounds to use your bad UI, customer costs in time spent creating internal SOPs (standard operating procedures) to document that bad UI, time spent refactoring code for dead-weight features. Time = money.”

Speak their language: ROI

Jon MacDonald, Founder and President, The Good

“Communicate value in terms of ROI. Great UX reduces customer service overhead, lowers customer acquisition costs, increases average order value and customer lifetime value, and of course helps convert more of your existing traffic into buyers.

These are all UX metrics that ensure a measurable ROI from marketing initiatives.

Budget holders and other C-level executives love ROI, and communicating a clear return on UX investments helps to get them on-board as stakeholders.”

Respect your stakeholder’s experience, time and perspective

Aleksandra Melnikova, Experience Design Director, Radley Yeldar

“Embrace your audience’s perspective: When trying to pitch UX to stakeholders, many are coming at it from their own perspective and own perception of value. This is understandable as our own frame of reference is always the most easily accessible one. As an experience designer, you design products with people in mind, so why not consider your audience needs in this instance? Teams have their own KPIs, so think about why they need to listen. Investing in understanding the business and learning to speak this new language will enable you to compose a relevant story.

Respect your audience’s time: our time allowance in communication varies, from a short discussion in the elevator to a two hour presentation to the board – be ready to look at your own discipline through macro and micro lenses, switching the pacing and density of your delivery when necessary.

Make experience design the narrative: when you see a human being it does not occur to you to question whether they need a skeleton to function. Similarly, make sure experience design is an integral part of your narrative, seamlessly flowing from business considerations into experience strategy and user experience design, through to the final output whatever shape that takes.

Don’t be your own worst enemy: the most common mistake I see is UX professionals decreasing their own value by focusing on tactical deliverables rather than understanding the bigger picture. When UX gets diminished into ‘that wireframing bit’, very little can save it in terms of demonstrating value in the eyes of the business. UX is systems thinking – psychology, research, empathy, analysis, logic, creativity and modelling of new and better worlds – it’s imperative to elevate your presentation to show the many sides of this practice.”

Create an interdisciplinary team

Nicole Armbruster, Senior UX & Usability Researcher, MA Psychology | Founder UsercentriX

“Always create interdisciplinary teams consisting of various areas such as design, development, support, project management and management to ensure that all perspectives and research questions are covered and addressed.

This brings the added benefit of ensuring that all opinions, research questions and goals for the (re)design are aligned within the entire team. It also helps bring consensus about the overall goals and to uncover any issues. Another benefit is to stimulate curiosity about the perspective of other users.

When research questions are documented in research plans and interview manuals, every team member can see the goals and add any questions they may have. This helps to ensure buy-in from everyone involved.

Ensure that team members are invited to view the research sessions (e.g. by broadcasting the usability test or interview to an observer room or by sharing highlight videos of the most important issues in the report). This will show everyone the power of actual user feedback and will open the team to this additional, important perspective.”

Show them how UX is simply common sense

Jonas Downey, Designer, Basecamp

“I consider UX to be intrinsic to the design process – it’s a fundamental ongoing concern, not a separate thing you do in isolation.

With that in mind, the easiest way to make an argument for UX is to show concrete examples. Outside stakeholders don’t always have deep knowledge of design processes, and UX is an abstraction that can be tricky to understand (even for seasoned designers.)

So you need to show them why UX matters – and a lot of times it’s simply common sense. Fight for clear copywriting, shorter or smoother UI flows, and more time for research and testing. Then explain why those things will drastically improve your product or business.”

Further reading: 3 copywriting tips that will immediately increase your conversion rate.

Show concrete results, not processes

Doug Collins, UX Engineer, Denver UXer

“For any change, people want to know what’s in it for them. They care less about the process that you took to arrive at a decision and more about what the end result will be for them in particular. For internal stakeholders, this means being able to prove a dollars and cents change or a clear competitive advantage. For our end users and clients, it means being able to show how your proposed solution will benefit them personally, either by time or cost savings.

You’ll also need to be able to speak their language. Different groups – and individuals within those groups – have different sets of community jargon and preferred communication styles. UX professionals are no exception, and too often we fall into the trap of trying to communicate everything, including value, in our own terms and style.

Your language should never be a barrier to your message. Be careful to eliminate UX jargon and design speak from your value propositions, and adjust your communication style to that of your audience.”

Provide a clickable prototype

Luis Rodriguez, UX Designer, Teknolog IO

“On a tactical level, nothing beats a clickable prototype of an idea that’s based on user research or that aims to solve pain points because it looks and feels like the ‘real thing’… there’s a certain amount of power a stakeholder will personally feel when they actually go through an app or other digital product and they feel part of the UX process (this can lead to buy-in for usability testing which is super cool!)

However, to get to that level of engagement requires a strategic approach to communicating the value of UX, primarily gaining their trust, which for me has meant finding out what their stressors are (these can be external or internal to the project) and proposing UX activities or methods that can shed light on, or sometimes solve, their hesitancies.”

Show results

Hugo Froes, UX Strategist and Evangelist, hugofroes.com

“I’ve found that the easiest way to sell the value of UX is by showing results. Actual data that supports my arguments. I usually achieve this using two techniques:

1. I bring the stakeholders into the workshop environment and make them part of the process so they can see the value for themselves and be a part of it.

2. By making sure the objectives and KPIs are set-up properly so that when things start moving forward, we can understand the impact.

In the past I’ve had to make some calculated risks below the radar to achieve some outcomes that could be presented to the stakeholders. My go-to option to get the conversation going though is Peek from User Testing. The feedback from a real user helps every time.”

Earn their trust

Rachel Hungerford, Senior Design Researcher | Microsoft

“The key to getting stakeholder buy-in is to earn their trust.

Take the time to deeply understand their explicit and implicit needs and motivations.

One approach I’ve taken in the past is to first address stakeholders’ burning questions. Once I’ve proven myself as a beneficial partner, I’ll have more credibility when pitching ‘big picture’ topics.

It’s important to clearly demonstrate the value the research will bring to your stakeholders through using their terminology and speaking to their motivations.”

Focus on what stakeholders already care about

Paul Boag, User Experience Consultant, Boagworks Ltd

“To be honest, I don’t even bother trying to convince stakeholders of the value of user experience. People are too wrapped up in their challenges to worry about the user.

Instead, I focus on what they already care about. That might be increasing sales, winning work, reducing cost or any number of other things.

Creating a better user experience can help with most business problems, so that is where I focus – on meeting stakeholder needs by creating happier, more engaged users.”

Play the same game – only better

Sherryl Tarnaske, Chief Experience Officer, Focus21

“Traditionally, stakeholders receive reports filtered through the writer’s operational, sales, engineering, or marketing lens. The interpretations are framed to align with a departmental agenda, as opposed to the customer success metric.

As UX professionals, we see boondoggles in every hour spent crafting this prose of promises without end-user input. So how do we paint the proverbial elephant in the room for stakeholders to recognize? We play the same game – only better.

We look for ways to check alignment for organizational success metrics and customer experience feedback. We’re vigilant in our research and listen to similar pain points in the journey from all sides. We use feedback from current, prospect and previous customers independent of the organizational bias to understand what success looks like.

Then and only then, do we use our findings to add a compass layer of how closely the organizational success metrics align with customer success metrics.

Use the conversation to expand the current perspective mapped to customer insight and data then collaborate to define a new pathway to success. Help them be heroes within their organization by working with you – not against you.”

Be unconventional

Cyril Rouhana, Senior UI/UX Designer and Team Lead, Label Engine

“Dealing with stakeholders with different backgrounds is hard. And trying to communicate what UX is and its value is even harder, that’s why sometimes, you must use some unconventional methods!

Educate: a dedicated internal slack channel is where I frequently post design and UX related articles from my regular readings. The channel is open to anyone in the company to join and give feedback. In addition, a bi-weekly workshop around UX basics and how to incorporate it into every day tasks.

Communication: sharing new wireframes or UI as prototypes with links so anyone in the company can check them prior to weekly hangouts where I discuss everything with the main stakeholders and give/get feedback.

Everything needs to have a purpose: train your stakeholders to know WHY you did something by explaining to them that everything has a purpose and delivering that purpose.

Informal get togethers: a stakeholder might understand your point of view better after a glass of wine or a pint of beer. I’m not saying that it’s a THING, but sometimes people are more open to new ideas in informal settings.”

See their point of view

Jessica Lovegood, UX Consultant, Booking.com

“The most important thing is to speak in their language. There is no use explaining it in a way you or another user experience designer would understand, you must use your UX skills to see things from their point of view, just as you would do with a user.

What is it that they want to achieve out of the work you’re doing? What is their current perspective so that you can move them towards a place where they understand the value more? How do they talk about their own results?

Speaking to them in a manner that creates the least amount of friction is key, therefore understanding the context of their current knowledge and what they’re used to is essential.

When you design something you consider what the user needs, how to get them to their end goal and make it enjoyable along the way – so that they feel the value of whatever you’ve designed. Why not do the same for your stakeholders?”

Don’t lecture, instead coach and mentor

Franco Scaramuzza, Director of UX & UI, Core10

“In order to effectively communicate the value of UX to stakeholders and decision makers it is best to actually apply UX strategies to the communication. Who is the audience? How technically versed are they? How long is their attention span? What are their goals and key trigger points?

You will lose your audience if you talk too much about technical details or over simplify. By carefully choosing analogies to which the audience can relate, I help them to draw their own conclusions as to why attention to detail, understanding the audience and overall research are so important.

These are not necessarily tangible deliverables but they will guarantee a holistic experience across multiple channels and media. This will increase the comfort level the user, client, consumer or customer has and therefore have a beneficial impact on the business goal.

I try not to lecture but rather coach or mentor. I believe the Socratic method is more effective than a lengthy presentation that (almost forcefully) tries to convince the stakeholder. Once your audience is educated about the value of UX, they will not only understand it but also promote it for you to others.”

Prove the value

Jon Warden, Head of Product and UX, Haymarket Media Group

“In my opinion, there is only one way to communicate the value of UX to stakeholders, and that is to prove its value. Either in the data, or in ROI or in another measurement metric. Stakeholders, especially those that are focused on financials – and most are – want to be shown financial reward and return on their investment.

Creation of core objectives and how you go about delivering those objectives is extremely important before a project is initiated. What are we doing, and why; thereby setting the right metrics by statements of intent. Example: ‘we want to increase user registrations by +20%’ is an outcome statement. The UX process if successful will be measured on that statement of intent. And that is how you prove the value of ‘good’ UX.

There are multiple ways of doing that, be it guerrilla testing, a lean UX process, fail fast hypothesis of assumptions, launch and learn. All valid examples of UX techniques. There is no one right way to do UX, but the process should be baked into what a company, team, or product is trying to achieve. The idea is to create UX based on those objectives and then measure based on those outcomes. Done successfully then this proves (and communicates) the value of UX to stakeholders.”

Show them something tangible

Llara Geddes, Head of UX, Beauty Bay

“When communicating the value of UX to stakeholders, it’s key to be able to provide something tangible. This both helps show value AND reinforces the message that UX ‘isn’t just design or wireframes’.

This ‘something tangible’ can take the form of data insight – showing where customers drop off in a funnel, providing analysis and a hypothesis around why that might be and, importantly, explaining the business impact, can be very powerful.

Tangible can also be user insight. Survey results or user videos (using a tool like WhatUsersDo!) can help encourage empathy and understanding in stakeholders, and seeing or hearing the pain that users experience on-site brings UX to life.”

Help them understand that UX is more than just visual design

Gary Coker, Director of UX, Clearwater Compliance

“The first step in communicating the value of UX is to ensure everyone understands its scope. Many stakeholders view UX as only aesthetics and visual design, and this contributes to their skepticism of UXʼs value. So itʼs critical to help them understand that UX is also interaction design, information architecture, content strategy, workflow design, user research, usability testing, language and front-end engineering.

Itʼs also helpful to ask stakeholders what they know about their users – age, education, context in which they use the product, features they use most or least? Teams that donʼt have UX integrated into their process will have a very difficult time answering these questions. When stakeholders understand what UX is and how it can directly meet user needs, they begin to see the value UX brings.

Finally, itʼs important to understand who the key stakeholders are, especially those that make budget decisions, and turn them into UX advocates. Use case studies that show not only that UX pays for itself by improving products but that great experiences also contribute directly to the bottom line by creating happy, loyal users who will promote products by word-of-mouth – the most valuable form of marketing.”

Use their own personal experience to help them understand users

Hila Yonatan, UX Lead and Freelance Strategist, HilaYonatan.co.il

“Communicating the value of UX is a common woe, which many professionals find themselves in a need to deal with, and it is often not regarded as an actual part of the job.

It is commonly agreed that tackling the issue from a financial standpoint is the easiest approach, but personally, I would go for showing the value and results. But how? Most often, I’d ask stakeholders to use their own product, and experience firsthand the various steps and the ‘journey’ of the end-user. From my experience, this turns out to be most convincing 

In other cases, for example in the absence of an actual product to use, I tend to display the flows with different branding, and ask for input. Often, changing the perspective helps achieve objectiveness, which leads to the conclusion that a change of the user experience (or just parts of it) is required.

So basically, I think that personal experience helps stakeholders see their products from the users’ angle, and understand the shortcomings of the overall experience. But most importantly, I think that the top priority is understanding the value their product can offer.”

Don’t show them how the sausage gets made

Jon Peterson, Lead UX Designer, jon-peterson.com

“When you think about trying to show stakeholders the ROI of UX, it’s easy to start with a comprehensive explanation of what UX does. Don’t! It’s a trap. Most of us don’t really know the full scope of what a doctor does with a blood sample or what a mechanic will do when we leave our car in the garage. What we do know is that the end result will be helpful. We’ll get an accurate diagnosis of why we’ve been sick or our car will come out of the shop running better. In other words, we see value because of the end result.

UX is the same way. Explain to your stakeholders how more intuitive designs will lead to more user engagement and hence higher conversions. Remind them that frustrated users probably won’t be repeat users and may even go over to the competition.

Point to companies like Apple that have built an entire business value proposition not on hardware specs or price point, but rather on ease of use and intuitiveness of the product. Just don’t focus on trying to show them how the sausage gets made.

Ultimately you have to show value to stakeholders beyond the theoretical. So that’s where analytics are so crucially important, not just to gain insight upfront but also to prove that the UX is actually getting better and delivering business value.”

In summary

Getting stakeholder buy-in will always be paramount to the success of your projects. The common theme with these expert examples is to build relationships and communicate well with your stakeholders, increasing the visibility of the benefits your team brings.

It’s no easy task but will be worth doing throughout your career. It’s work, but the more value your stakeholders see in user testing, the more they’ll invest in it and build a better product.

As your practical next steps, try implementing the following advice in your organization:

1. Get an understanding of the problems your stakeholders face and what they want to achieve
2. Create an actionable but flexible plan that includes what could be achieved with user testing
3. Include stakeholders in every stage of the research process, inviting them to meetings and sessions
4. Communicate your progress through continuous updates and highlight value using the metrics agreed on at the beginning of the project