When a company hires UX, it makes a business investment. That may sound obvious, but I think it explains a great deal about why UX sometimes struggles to be heard.
Value is the common language
Businesses are trying to create value. Cost, revenue, risk, retention, time: these are the terms in which investments get weighed. UX has plenty to contribute, but we have to connect our work to those concerns.
The proverbial seat at the table is rarely awarded for insisting that a discipline deserves one. It comes from helping people make better decisions.
Stakeholders are human beings with needs, goals, challenges, and an inherent why.
Turn empathy inward
We spend a lot of energy understanding users. Our stakeholders are people, too, with their own pressures, incentives, deadlines, and perfectly understandable reasons for asking for things that make us wince.
Understanding their why does not mean agreeing with them. It gives us a much better starting point for finding common ground.
Make the practice easier to say yes to
“We need research” can sound like a months-long detour. “Let’s run a quick feedback panel and bring three things we learned to Thursday’s meeting” sounds like a useful decision aid.
The work may be similar, but a repeatable, well-understood practice makes its value easier to see. I want UX to be known for observation, empathy, validation, creative problem solving, and a willingness to figure out how. The tools are secondary.