Do you often feel relegated to the role of an order taker in your design work?
This dynamic is something that designers commonly experience.
Stakeholders often bring designers into projects late in the game, after they have already framed problems and made key decisions. This timing limits designers’ opportunities to contribute meaningfully.
Over time, this dynamic makes the designer’s role reactive rather than proactive.
Many designers assume improving their craft will change this. In most cases, it doesn’t lead to the kind of impact they’re looking for.
Influence plays the most important role.
In a recent presentation, I broke down what actually changes this and how designers can start to shift their role in a practical way.
Jess Eddy
The concept of agency drives this shift.
When you embrace agency, you adopt an ownership mindset, develop a clear perspective, ask insightful questions, challenge assumptions, and take responsibility for outcomes rather than just outputs.
When designers operate in this manner, they evolve their roles. Teams involve them earlier in projects and give their perspectives greater consideration.
However, mindset alone does not suffice.
Three factors consistently determine how much influence a designer holds in the workplace:
- Trust, which includes how you present yourself professionally and the strength of your relationships
- Voice, how clearly you frame problems and communicate your thinking
- Strategic judgment, which relates to the quality of decisions underlying the work
Most designers focus on producing tangible outputs such as screens, flows, and prototypes.
What really matters is the strategic judgment behind the work, your reasoning, the trade-offs you make, the alternatives you explore, and the clarity you bring to defining the problem.
If you do not make your underlying thinking visible, others find it difficult to trust your judgment. In my presentation, I show how to make this thinking explicit. I include strategies such as:
Things like:
- Simple methods for establishing trust with new teams at the outset
- Techniques for structuring presentations to ensure ideas are effectively communicated
- A storytelling framework that helps reduce resistance to your work
- Approaches for making your reasoning visible within design files so others can understand your rationale without direct explanation
I also address a frequent challenge: building confidence, especially when you speak up or present. You can build this gradually instead of throwing yourself into high-pressure situations right away.
Small, incremental changes here can add up to significant effects over time.
If you feel stuck in execution, pay attention to this. You can find a comprehensive overview in the full presentation, available to paid subscribers.
