As a User Experience Developer / Designer you will find throughout your career that every project you work on, whether it’s within a UX team, along side back-end developers, or working directly with a client, at one point or another your sense of what is correct will clash with the idea of what someone else thinks is correct. If you haven’t experienced this yet then you’re either the most agreeable person that has ever lived or tomorrow is your first day on the job.

There will always be someone that either wants to play devils advocate or isn’t too excited about where you decided to put that “drop down” in the HTML form. Throughout my career I’ve had to go into battle countless times and I have witnessed some doozies. At times, in these situations, voices tend to get gradually louder, egos are challenged, people recline back in their chairs, while running their fingers through their hair in frustration, and everyone is fighting over the dry board marker to draw their idea of what is right on the board. You get the idea?

Now, in most companies you have upper management trying to keep the company running like a finely tuned automobile and the sales guys & gals are pitching to the clients and bringing in the cash. Then there is the tech side where IT ensures all computer equipment and the network is running smooth, while the developers are kicking butt on the back-end. However, you, as a User Experience Designer, bear the unique responsibility of being the voice of reason when it comes to building the best solution for any given user problem. From usability, to documentation, to design, to coding, you bear that burden and you love it. It is your job to ensure the user comes first and sometimes you will have to fight tooth and nail against everyone else to ensure that happens.

So what is the key to successfully presenting your case before the court? Well, I’ll tell you: Research & Reason. Research encompasses all forms of usability testing, case studies, and “documented” personal successes and failures. Reason, in this scenario, is the cognitive application of your research to prove or disprove a particular idea.

With one or the other you have a decent chance at proving your idea but with both, failure is rare. So before you go into that boardroom to present your solutions make sure you have done your research and that you have the reasoning to sell the jury. A hunch just won’t do it most times.

Oh, there is one final thought I have to throw in here. After you have pleaded your case, you know what the hardest part of being challenged is? Being open minded enough to accept that you might actually be wrong. There is no “best” way to solve a usability problem, it’s all about finding the “better” way.

If you have a good story on how you’ve won a particular battle, I’d like to hear it. Feel free to post it in the comments.