As a UX designer, you know that the work you do is invaluable. After all, your job is to help create products that make people's lives easier and more enjoyable.
But future-proofing a successful UX career isn’t just about designing intuitive and aesthetically pleasing interfaces.
It also requires the ability to identify opportunities, generate ideas, think outside the box, and contribute to your company’s strategic growth.
In short: you need to develop a skill set that ties the value of your work with company goals and vision.
Developing your business acumen as a UX designer can open up a whole new world of possibilities—both in your current role, and future career opportunities. In this blog post, we’ll look at five ways to ensure your success as a UX designer goes hand-in-hand with helping your organization achieve their long-term goals.
Let’s get started!
Why do UX designers need business acumen?
In today's competitive business landscape, a cohesive user experience can make or break a company's success.
A growing number of organizations across every sector are waking up to the value of UX—with 55% of the world’s companies actively conducting user testing in 2023. These companies are investing in talented UX designers to help them achieve some key business goals:
- Drive revenue
- Maintain a competitive edge
- Bolster their reputation.
Business thinking can be a blind spot for UX designers, who are typically trained to focus solely on user needs. However, it’s important to strike a complementary balance between addressing user needs and achieving business goals.
What does this balance look like?
On one extreme: solely focusing on user pain points—but neglecting to position a product as the ultimate solution—might leave a UX masterpiece commercially invisible.
On the other hand, an overzealous focus on company goals might lead to employing dark patterns, which deceive users into making an action that benefits the business (but can lead to distrust and a loss of brand reputation).
Possessing a strong business acumen allows UX designers to navigate this delicate balance, ensuring their designs not only cater to user needs but also enhance the company's strategic objectives.
5 Benefits That Business Acumen Brings To Your Career
Let’s look at five benefits of sharpening your business acumen as a UX designer:
1. Getting wider company buy-in for your UX strategy
As a designer, one of the most challenging aspects of your job is getting company buy-in for your projects—especially when working on a large-scale project.
By learning how the business works, and how your UX strategy fits into the wider picture, you'll be better equipped to articulate the value proposition of your designs and get wider support from people who control budgets and resources.
2. Standing out on the UX job market
While strong technical skills are essential, it's also important for aspiring UX designers to demonstrate an understanding of how businesses operate. Developing an understanding of key business metrics like return on investment (ROI), and customer lifetime value (CLV) will make you stand out from other candidates and increase your chances of landing interviews.
3. Getting the most out of your UX efforts
Understanding business fundamentals is critical for helping ensure your designs are actually driving measurable results for the organization. Being able to think about how users interact with products from both a technical and economic perspective will mean your UX efforts are focused on delivering maximum ROI—which will, in turn, help you gain more support for your UX strategy down the line.
4. More fluid collaboration with stakeholders across the business
Cross-team collaboration is an important part of UX, and understanding how the business works will help that collaboration run smoothly.
When you know what each person in the business is striving for—whether it’s higher sales numbers, lower costs, or more effective campaigns—you can adjust your approach to design in a way that better serves the business. You’ll also be able to communicate more effectively within cross-functional teams by speaking their language.
For example, when working on design solutions with marketing teams, having an understanding of key marketing metrics—like click-through rate (CTR)—will help you create designs that hit the mark from both a UX standpoint as well as a business one.