293: Why you need to understand the impact of your work

Design Life

Femke and Charli dive deep into the topic of the business impact of design decisions. We discuss whether impact is expected in the product design world and if it is an integral part of the design process. We also cover how to measure success and incorporate metrics into the design process.

Additionally, we highlight the importance of sharing real experiences, including conflicts with PMs, design failures, and working without data. We discuss why it is important for designers to share stories of their failures and what they learned from them. We also discuss the resistance to owning failures, how to overcome it and become comfortable learning from failures.

In the end, we provide advice for designers on understanding the impact of their work and how to move up to a new seniority level.

Show Timestamps:

0:45 Episode intro and how this episode came about

1:39 Updates from Femke on her course

4:49 Updates from Charli on the conference she is attending

5:46 More on how this episode came about

8:11 What Charli expects from candidates in terms of the impact of their work on business

10:58 Discussing the impact from a product design perspective

14:49 Have you ever had to choose a design option that was visually less appealing but more effective in converting?

17:43 Femke shares a mentoring story and how to grow as a designer with a focus on impact and reflecting that in a portfolio

19:19 Discussion on resistance to owning failures and how Charli’s company helps designers become more comfortable learning from failures

20:35 Advice for designers on understanding the impact of their work and what designers can incorporate into their process in order to measure success of their design decisions better

Episode on landing a new design job in 2024

Femke’s course “Product strategy for designers”

Share your topic suggestions for the show with us at [e-mail]

‍