One of the most common complaints I hear from designers I know is that they’re not involved enough in making product decisions. The product manager - hopefully in collaboration with their partner engineers - calls the shots on what the roadmap will be, and design’s sphere of influence is limited to specific functional details of the feature.

This must be extremely frustrating for the designer! If I were in their shoes I’d hate it. Unsurprisingly, the design leaders in the team will want to change this pattern, and will advocate for design to make more of the decisions. But so often they go about this the wrong way.

You often see design leaders working with their teams to create ‘design roadmaps’ or ‘UX visions’ for the product. They are trying to plant a flag to say: “here’s what we think the future initiatives should be”. They expect that the pendulum of decision-making power can be forced to swing away from the PM and towards the designer. I’ve never seen this work.

Trying to propose alternative visions or roadmaps is the wrong approach because it sets the situation up to be one of disagreement; “I believe one thing and you believe another, let’s fight to see who wins”. Regardless of whether or not you win the argument, you’re only going to be left with increased tensions and bitter feelings.

To me, this is a failure of the design leadership. They are focusing inwards on what they feel they can control (running workshops with members of their own team only) rather than doing the hard work of engaging outwardly.

The people best qualified to make the decisions are those that have the most information and are closest to the problem and the work being done.

My proposal for any designer that feels left out of decision making is to get involved with the work. Get close to the customer problems, get close to the engineering work, get close to the realities of the business and the problems to be solved. Get close to the product manager.

Design leaders will not empower their designers by isolating them from the rest of the work. They need to get involved.