The Conversations That Ship Products
Getting teams and stakeholders aligned around your designs.
Key Takeaways
Good UX work does not sell itself. You have to bring people along the story.
People support (and approve) what they understand, so you need to know your audience and what they care about.
Strong design connects user needs, business goals, and engineering feasibility.
You do not need to be loud to be persuasive. You need to be clear.
Intro
Have you ever shared a design project…
only to watch the room go quiet?
Maybe people nodded.
Maybe someone said, “That looks nice.”
But no decision came. Or worse, the feedback missed the point and left the team spinning in circles.
👋 Hey designers, it’s Rebekah, a Product Designer at Meta.
One of the hardest parts of being a designer is not the design itself. It is getting people to believe in it!
Today I’m sharing how I frame my work so it’s understood, supported, and moved forward.
Why ‘good UX’ is not enough
Most designers think:
“If my work is good, people will see it.”
But that is not how teams work.
People are busy.
They are thinking about timelines, risks, and business goals.
They are not living inside your Figma file.
That is why great UX alone is not enough.
Great product design sits at the intersection of user needs, business goals, and technical feasibility.
A solution that serves only one or two of these will struggle to succeed. The strongest designs create value for users, drive business outcomes, and are realistic for engineering to build.
The more your work aligns all three, the easier it becomes to gain support, build momentum, and get ideas shipped.
Start with the problem, not the pixels
One of the biggest mistakes I see is starting a presentation without proper framing and just showing the design.
The screens look nice.
But no one knows why they exist yet.
Instead, start here:
What is the user struggling with?
What is not working today?
Why is this important for us to fix?
For example:
“Right now, new users drop off before they finish setting up their account. They feel confused and unsure what to do next. This leads to fewer people activating and more people reaching out for help.”
Now people are listening.
Now they care.
Show how your design solves that problem
Once the problem is clear, your design becomes the answer.
This is where persuasion lives.
You are not saying:
“Here is my workflow.”
You are saying:
“Here is how we make things easier for the user.”
Walk people through it like a story:
Here is what the user sees first
Here is what they think
Here is what they do
Here is why it’s better
When you do this, your work feels thoughtful and intentional. People can see the ‘why’ behind it, and that makes it easier for them to say yes.
Connect it back to what the team cares about
Every team cares about outcomes.
Growth
Retention
Speed
Cost
Your job is to gently connect your design to those outcomes.
For example:
This design reduces confusion, which means fewer people contacting customer support.
This flow finishes faster, which means fewer users drop off before completing it.
This clearer layout helps people understand what to do, which means higher conversion.
This change removes friction, which means people are more likely to come back.
Now your design is not just nice.
It feels useful.
Before you present your UX work
Before you walk into a meeting or share a deck, make sure you can answer these:
Can I clearly explain the user problem we are solving?
Can I show how my design makes that problem better?
Can I explain how this helps the business or the team?
Can I show that this is realistic for engineering to build?
If you can do those four things, you are not just presenting. You are persuading.
Wrap up
You don’t need to be the loudest voice in the room.
You need to make it clear what people are saying yes to.
Good UX work does not sell itself.
You have to bring people along the story.
People support what they understand, so it matters that you know your audience and what they care about.
In the next article, I’ll explore UX storytelling for executive audiences and how to tell stories that help leaders quickly understand and decide.
If this was helpful, you can subscribe to Design Notes for weekly UX tips, tools, and templates.
You can also find me on TikTok @designwithrebekah for short, practical design tips.See you next time,
Rebekah 💛