For user experience (UX) designers, it can be quite disheartening to put in weeks of hard work on a project, only to have the client question your approach and push back with numerous design changes. At first glance, everything may seem to be running smoothly with good communication and a clear trajectory for the project, yet you find your concepts being challenged. This situation leaves many design professionals puzzled and looking for answers. If you’re a UX designer seeking to build robust, lasting relationships with your clients, then understanding why clients might reject their UX design is crucial—and it’s seldom a result of their whims or moods. This piece is crafted for UX designers striving to gain their clients’ trust.
1. Lack of Client Inclusiveness Throughout the Design Journey
Designing a product is no walk in the park, and every UX expert is aware of the painstaking planning and creative efforts involved. Clients, however, may not share this perspective. They might see the UX process as simple as whipping up designs in tools like Photoshop or Sketch. A typical misstep in the designer-client relationship is failing to engage the client at each phase of the creative process. To navigate this, entrench your client in the UX journey. By doing so, your vision is more likely to resonate with them. Clients informed about the various phases—requirements capture, research, early prototyping, through to usability testing—are in a better position to appreciate the added value at each stage.
- Gathering Requirements: Engage clients deeply from the outset to capture their vision, define the features, and identify the users.
- Conducting Market Research: Armed with market insights and user preferences, you can better scope your design efforts and set task priorities.
- Developing Low-Fidelity Prototypes: Offering clients basic sketches helps convey the project’s direction without suggesting a finished product, setting proper expectations.
- Demonstrating High-Fidelity Prototypes: High-resolution prototypes serve to validate design concepts, offering a window into the user-friendly nature of the product.
- Administering Usability Testing: Deploying usability testing with high-fidelity prototypes allows design teams to uncover faults in a more natural user interaction setting, leading to pre-emptive fixes.
2. Misaligned Client Expectations
While there’s no shortage of guides for managing client expectations, these are often directed at executives and project managers rather than UX designers. But if the requirements gathering is complete and the client’s expectations are crystallized, the design team still has work to do. It’s beneficial to articulate why each project stage is important and how it adds value.
- Regular collaboration at each step ensures continuous design feedback.
- Unify your UX strategy alongside the client’s objectives.
- Ensure all updates and reports are reviewed when every stakeholder can participate.
- Justify any prototype modifications using evidence-based data linked to user needs and feature viability.
- Reassess priorities and address any potential risks from abrupt prototype or schedule changes.
3. Neglecting to Highlight Your Unique Expertise
UX professionals do much more than craft interfaces; they are in tune with the latest trends in design and marketing, have insights into user psychology, and excel in research. One pivotal research area for UX designers is UX competitive analysis, which compares your design’s strengths and weaknesses to those of your competitors’ and sparks innovative problem-solving ideas. Ignoring this aspect may lead to your client questioning your knowledge of their business landscape. To demonstrate the value of an in-depth competitive analysis, follow these steps:
- Identify Your Competitors: Choose benchmarks that reflect the quality and ethos of your product to accurately meet user expectations.
- Set Assessment Criteria: Choose those criteria that reflect your business challenges and are quantifiable.
- Construct a Competitor UX Feature Matrix: Create a document that presents a side-by-side comparison of your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses, offering valuable insight for your project.
4. Complexity in Your Prototyping
UX design literature is filled with discussions on the virtues of prototyping, a phase critical for experimenting with and vetting design solutions. Despite their importance, prototypes can still confound clients, particularly when small changes cloud their overall understanding. A successful tactic to avoid this confusion is the OOUX methodology, which focuses on defining system objects before their interactions. This offers a shared language for developers, designers, and clients, facilitating mutual comprehension. By establishing a system’s framework first, we can expedite the structural design process.
5. Incomplete Specifications Lead to Misunderstandings
While collaborative discussions on group chats or shared documents are invaluable, they can fall short if your design specification doesn’t stay updated. A well-maintained CTA inventory, as introduced by UX specialist Sophia Voychehovski and emphasized in the OOPEX model, outlines all system objects and their interactions, effectively serving as a visual model for fast-paced decision making and idea validation. This practice not only provides a clear visual reference but also supports iterative development and proper prioritization.
6. Your Design Lacks a Compelling Story
Storytelling has a proven track record in the success of mega-brands like Apple and Airbnb. In UX design, the storytelling framework is a relatively new but powerful notion. It enhances the user’s emotional engagement by portraying a product’s vision and connecting your concept with the client’s intentions. A design devoid of storytelling elements can leave a product feeling disjointed and uninspiring, thus falling short of client expectations.
7. Absence of a Coherent UX Strategy
Without a well-defined UX strategy, clients may become wary of your prototype, questioning its alignment with user behaviors and business objectives. A strategic approach based on empirical data, user needs, and business ambition can bring clarity to the design process. When UX strategy is integrated into project development, it incorporates client involvement, aligns business aims with design goals, and mitigates confusion in prototype stages with novel methods such as storytelling to heighten user connection.
Summing Up
Although UX has been a buzzword for years, the challenge persists in convincing clients of its pivotal role in product success. The path towards refinement in client communication is iterative—monitor reactions, adapt your methods, and prioritize empathy to enhance collaboration. Continuous self-improvement will ultimately be mirrored in the satisfaction of those you design for.
