Advocacy

Design leaders are champions of the design practice and the humans it serves. Being a design leader means advocating for design in all aspects of your organization, from hiring to product strategy to user research.

• Building Design Influence: Connecting design decisions to business outcomes, quantifying impact through metrics, participating early in strategic planning, and demonstrating how design reduces risk while increasing efficiency.

• Representing Users: Making user research accessible and actionable in strategic discussions, highlighting the costs of poor user experience, creating empathy through stories and demonstrations, and advocating for inclusive design practices.

• Strategic Partnership: Contributing to product strategy and company-wide planning, connecting design solutions to business goals, building relationships with key stakeholders, and sharing industry insights and trends.

• Education and Understanding: Making design thinking methods available to non-designers, creating shared vocabulary, demonstrating the value of user research through case studies, and making design processes transparent and accessible.

Effective design advocacy creates environments where good design is valued as a crucial driver of business success.