Key Insight
Different stakeholders evaluate design through fundamentally different lenses - understanding their primary concerns lets you frame decisions in language that resonates.
Key Points
- •Executives care about business impact, ROI, competitive advantage, and strategic alignment
- •Product Managers focus on feature scope, timelines, user stories, and roadmap alignment
- •Developers evaluate feasibility, implementation effort, technical debt, and system architecture
- •Marketing teams prioritize brand consistency, messaging clarity, and conversion rates
- •Customer Support sees user confusion, common pain points, and ticket volume
- •The first question to ask is "What are we trying to accomplish?" not "What deliverables do you need?"
- •[FIGURE - Stakeholder motivation map] Shows: Diagram mapping different stakeholder roles to their primary concerns, success metrics, and communication preferences. Teaches: Different stakeholders evaluate design through different lenses-tailor your message to their priorities. Reproduce as: Interactive stakeholder persona cards with concern filters.
Guidelines
- ✓Research the business context before presenting: know the goals, constraints, key decision-makers, and success metrics
- ✓Prepare for common challenges like "I don't like the color" or "make the logo bigger" by understanding the concern behind the request
- ✓Tailor your vocabulary to your audience - executives want ROI language, developers want technical rationale, PMs want user story alignment
- ✓Identify the real decision-maker in the room and understand their success criteria before the meeting starts
- ✓Map stakeholder motivations: what gets them promoted, what keeps them up at night, what metrics they report on
- ✓Build a stakeholder communication plan early in the project - don't wait until the review meeting to figure out who cares about what
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