Presenting Projects: 101
#41: About communication and stakeholder management
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Communication as one of the most essential skills in a designer's work
Things to remember when presenting your projects
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Presenting Projects: 101
Even the best-designed project has little chance of success if it's poorly presented to stakeholders and decision-makers. To successfully showcase your projects, you need to know how to present them effectively and how to communicate their value to the people who decide whether your project gets approved or if you end up with a long list of unnecessary revisions.
Communication is key
As a designer, you work daily with a large number of people across various teams. Sometimes, these are senior-level individuals or your clients. You are in constant communication with them, exchanging and gathering information, justifying your design decisions, and giving and receiving feedback.
Effective communication is crucial not only during your daily work but also when you need to present your designs and defend them when things don’t go as planned. Without strong communication skills, you won't be able to successfully ‘sell’ your designs. You might have great ideas, but without the right communication, you won’t convince your team or decision-makers. The ability to clearly convey information and justify your decisions is key to ensuring your designs are understood, appreciated, and implemented.
What should you remember when presenting your projects?
Be prepared
First and foremost, to successfully present your project and secure stakeholder approval, you need to be well-prepared. But what does that really mean?
Understand who your audience is. It could be executives, marketing teams, product managers, or simply your client. Each group has different priorities, varying levels of understanding (including what UX even is), and different levels of familiarity with the project. This means you need to tailor your language, data, and presentation style accordingly. Have solid data and arguments ready to justify your design decisions, whether through analytics, user feedback, research findings, or best design practices. Well-supported decisions enhance your credibility and help you communicate more effectively.
Before your presentation, thoroughly test your materials both technically and substantively. Make sure everything works as expected and that you won’t get lost during the presentation. If it’s an important meeting, consider practicing in advance, even in front of a teammate, to gather valuable feedback. Avoid using terminology that only designers understand. People from different departments may be present, so it’s crucial to make your presentation clear and accessible to everyone.
Ensure that only the most important elements are visible on your screen, eliminating unnecessary distractions that could divert attention from your design or lead to unnecessary questions. When sharing your screen, hide irrelevant content and focus on what truly matters. Using a well-prepared prototype is a great approach. More on that later in the article. Be mindful of the content within your designs. Avoid adding elements that might cause confusion or raise questions. Choose text and images carefully, ensuring they align with the client’s brand and context. Never use materials from competitors, and make sure everything you present is relevant and appropriate.
Invite the right people
When organizing a meeting, it's important to invite only the appropriate people who truly need to be there. There's definitely no sense in involving everyone possible. Uninterested individuals may disrupt the meeting or become irritated by being present at a meeting that doesn't concern them, which can negatively impact future relationships and the achievement of the meeting's objectives.
For more business-related decisions, prioritize the product manager and key decision-making stakeholders. Consider whether all managers and other decision-makers are necessary for your meeting and only invite those who are essential. If the meeting is, for example, for gathering feedback on feasibility, it's better to focus on inviting developers. Also, remember to inform the invited participants in advance about the agenda and the purpose of the meeting.
If you're starting to work on a new product or with a client, it might be worth inviting another person from the team who is already known to the stakeholders and has a positive reputation. This person can support you in crisis situations and boost your authority, especially if it's another designer who can back up your design decisions during critical moments.
Make the proper introduction
When presenting your projects, you shouldn't jump straight into showcasing them to stakeholders, as they may not be fully aware of the context. Start by communicating the purpose and your expectations for the meeting, whether it's for gathering feedback or presenting a final solution that requires formal approval. Next, provide the project context and the problem you're solving. If this is an iteration, it's worth reminding everyone of the reasons behind the changes.
For example: “The research we conducted showed that 40% of users abandon the registration form. We've made changes that should reduce the abandonment rate. Today, I'll present the redesigned registration form and would like to confirm whether we can move forward with implementing the proposed solution.”
Talk about benefits and business language
Designers often focus on the visual aspects of a product, which can steer the presentation in the wrong direction. Instead of evaluating the project's effectiveness and the benefits it brings to the company and users, meeting participants may fixate on aspects that are not only subjective but also far less important. To connect with stakeholders, you need to speak their language—the language of business value.
Focus on the user experience, not just the interface. Explain how your solutions impact workflows and user satisfaction. Present the business context and clarify the value your project delivers, showing how it supports key business goals such as conversions, retention, and cost reduction. Demonstrate how your project aligns with the company’s strategy and business priorities, using numbers and facts. Concrete statistics are far more convincing than subjective opinion.
Show multiple versions
People like having options and not being forced to use only one available solution. If you think your presentation might not go as planned, presenting alternative versions of your design can be a good approach. It also shows that you’ve considered other possibilities, which will be positively received. However, if this isn't a team meeting for gathering feedback, avoid presenting completely different concepts. The focus should be on details within a single solution. Drastically different concepts will likely create too much confusion, shifting the discussion toward comparing them rather than achieving the meeting’s goal.
Showing multiple versions can also help demonstrate how you made decisions, what solutions you considered, what you rejected, and why. For example: “We tested two versions, one with a single-page form and another split into steps. The second version increased conversion by 12%, so we recommend it.”
Tell a story
When presenting a project, it’s important to talk about it in the right way. Simply showing screens and mentioning the benefits isn’t enough. People tend to remember and engage with content much better when it’s told as a story. A well-told story creates an emotional connection, helps convey the context, and makes design decisions feel more natural.
Make sure your story has a clear structure. It should include the user, the challenge or problem they face, and the solution. Instead of listing dry facts, walk your audience through the user’s journey in your project—what challenges they encountered and how you solved them. For example: “Imagine a user logging into the app for the first time, unsure of what to do next. In the old version, they abandoned the onboarding process. But in the new version, we guide them with a simple walkthrough, and engagement has already increased by 18%”.
Go for prototypes
Often, when presenting our designs, we limit ourselves to single, side-by-side views in Figma. Many people may struggle to understand what they’re actually looking at and will have trouble connecting these individual views to comprehend the complete solution. Creating a prototype makes it easier to understand what’s happening on the screen. These aren’t isolated, static views, but a simulation of a working product.
If the solution involves multiple, interdependent screens, a prototype gives a more complete picture of how users will navigate between them. Even simple solutions often require several screens to show everything that changes during interaction. With prototypes, it’s much easier to demonstrate various interactions on the same views, rather than showing many very similar screens, which can also increase cognitive load.
Prototypes are also very helpful for developers, who can better understand how the product should behave. They can also be shared with meeting participants so they can familiarize themselves with the solution and use it, allowing them to better empathize with the users of the solution.
Learn to communicate your decisions
How you justify your design decisions has a huge impact on the effectiveness of your presentations. If you clearly present your reasoning, you’ll reduce the number of questions and requests for changes based on stakeholders' subjective opinions. Well-supported decisions increase the chances of success because when stakeholders understand why a design looks a certain way, they are more likely to accept it.
Never make decisions or justify them in a presentation with arguments like 'because it’s better' or 'because I think so.' These types of explanations are easy to challenge and can weaken your credibility as a UX professional. Every design decision should have a strong foundation. Refer to user research, analyze data, follow best practices, and align your choices with business goals.
For example, “Testing showed that this navigation layout helps users find key features faster' is a much stronger justification than 'Because it looks more modern”.
Have answers to questions
It’s very likely that questions will arise after presenting your project (and often even during the presentation). Some of these may catch you off guard, but others can be anticipated. Stakeholders may have many questions regarding the decisions you made during the design process, so you should be well-prepared and have answers to their questions. This will help clear up any doubts and help them understand why the design looks the way it does and why it's an effective solution.
If a question surprises you and you don’t have an answer, simply say that you need to check and will get back to them with an answer. This is much better than improvising. Keep the data you based your decisions on handy so that you'll be able to share it quickly if needed.
Be open to feedback
Not every meeting will end in success and immediate approval of your project. Very often, stakeholders will have a lot to say about your designs, and not necessarily things that don’t make sense. First of all, put your ego aside. You can't blindly stick to your project, dismiss every feedback you hear, or take it personally.
Show that you're open to feedback and discussion. This doesn't mean accepting every suggested change without question, but stakeholders need to see you as someone to discuss with. Otherwise, you will always have trouble communicating with them. Feedback from stakeholders can be very valuable. They have knowledge and a completely different perspective than we do, one that product teams often don’t have either. It's always worth reviewing the information they provide and analyzing it.
If stakeholders question your design, ask exactly what raises their concerns and why. Remember to always base your discussion on data and justify your design decisions. Stakeholders may have different opinions. Be open to discussion, but don’t let the conversation turn into an uncontrolled brainstorming session.
Finally, remember that it's not always worth fighting for your point, even if you're right. Sometimes, it’s simply better to implement the proposed changes if they don't concern critical areas.
Follow-up after presentation
After a meeting where you presented your designs, regardless of the outcome, it’s a good practice to follow up. Summarizing the key takeaways in an email is useful to ensure everyone is on the same page. Outline what was agreed upon and what the next steps are to help prevent forgetting about the decisions made. If any additional decisions are required, specify what decisions need to be made, who should make them, and by when. If additional meetings are necessary, make sure to organize them and invite the appropriate people.
TL;DR
Tailor your communication to the audience and support decisions with data.
Present your project as a story: introduce the user, their challenge, and your solution.
Use prototypes to demonstrate interactions and user experience, not just static screens.
Justify design decisions with user research, data, best practices, and business goals.
Focus on business value, emphasizing user experience and measurable benefits.
Invite only essential participants to meetings, prioritizing key decision-makers.
After the meeting, send a summary with key takeaways, next steps, and assigned responsibilities.
Visual Feast
This is a new segment of Fundament where we showcase pure visual craft. Each week, we feature a talented designer's profile and recent work.
Wanna be featured next? Tag arkadiuszradek on X (Twitter).
Dominik Tyka
This week’s choice is Dominik Tyka, a talented product designer based in Kraków, Poland. Dominik has a meticulous eye for detail. Visit his Dribbble page for fantastic examples of his motion graphic work.