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UI Design

Never urgent, rarely important: how to find and elevate the value of visual (UI) design for different types of projects

September 5, 2023 1:05 PM
Power Talk
🇬🇧 English
Wisła

About

Consult The Eisenhower Matrix, and most visual (UI) design tasks will fall under the delete (distraction and unnecessary) quadrant. Ask your product manager if you can work on improving the curvatures of the icon set you are using, and observe closely. Visual (UI) design is the thing that attracts people's attention; although it is genuinely the least important aspect of product design, delivering work related to visual improvements is usually pushed down. How to navigate the paradox of this situation? How to show the hidden value of the visual (UI) design, and when to let go? This talk is about being more strategic about the craft of pushing pixels and micro-interactions.

Talk by

Photo of Łukasz Tyrała, Principal Designer at Grafana Labs
Łukasz Tyrała
Principal Designer at Grafana Labs

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From the recording

Talk in brief

A strategic guide to defending visual design without asking stakeholders to care about typography, button curvature, or color tokens for their own sake. Visual craft sits after interaction design and before implementation, so it often loses priority to more urgent product problems. The talk proposes three ways to read the context: whether a product’s language should be neutral, trend-led, or niche; how structured and widely shared the system is; and how many engineering or organizational dependencies a change carries. Designers can then name or measure the value of appearance, such as making technical work easier to communicate, improving satisfaction, reducing maintenance, or strengthening brand equity. The practical lesson is to discuss outcomes, know when to wait, and keep delivering craft where it matters.

Key takeaways

  1. 01

    Accept that utility may outrank visual refinement

    An unattractive but usable product often deserves priority over polished work that does not solve the underlying customer problem.

    Watch from 4:46
  2. 02

    Classify the visual character the product needs

    Neutral, trend-led, and niche products differ in lifespan, audience reach, and the specificity their visual language can sustain.

    Watch from 6:44
  3. 03

    Map ownership and implementation dependencies

    A personal site, a shared design system, and an interface tied to many engineering teams require different strategies for visual change.

    Watch from 9:06
  4. 04

    Translate beauty into a concrete customer outcome

    A visually strong dashboard mattered because it helped an internal expert gain attention for complex and expensive technical decisions.

    Watch from 12:37
  5. 05

    Discuss value instead of isolated design details

    Stakeholders respond more usefully to revenue, efficiency, cost, satisfaction, or brand effects than to craft terminology alone.

    Watch from 15:27
Read edited transcript highlights

These concise notes were edited from automatic captions and checked against the talk structure. They are not a verbatim transcript.

Visual refinement must compete with real product problems

Teams may sincerely value beauty while still placing reliability, usefulness, or missing functionality ahead of it. That prioritization is often correct: a usable but unattractive tool can serve customers better than a polished interface with a broken core. Visual designers strengthen their influence by recognizing this tension instead of treating every postponed detail as evidence that the organization rejects craft.

Watch from 4:46

The product category determines the visual strategy

A large design system may need a neutral language that lasts and works across many audiences. A trend-led product can use a more recognizable current vocabulary, while a niche service can speak specifically to a narrower group. Understanding where the product sits helps designers judge how expressive the interface should be and how quickly its visual choices may age.

Watch from 6:44

A visual change inherits the organization around it

Changing a personal site may require only one person’s decision, while adjusting a mature shared system can affect many teams and release plans. Some properties are local; others depend on engineering work or synchronized adoption. Before advocating for refinement, map who owns the affected layer and what else must change so the proposal reflects the true cost and path to delivery.

Watch from 9:06

Beauty became valuable because it enabled influence

An infrastructure specialist described a dashboard as beautiful, but the important effect was not aesthetic pleasure alone. During meetings about technical investments, colleagues ignored abstract discussion and paid attention when the visual dashboard appeared. The interface helped the specialist explain complexity, hold attention, and make consequential work visible. That outcome gave the visual quality a concrete organizational value.

Watch from 12:37

Craft earns support when translated into shared outcomes

Conversations with non-design stakeholders should not begin with font substitutions or the exact curve of a button. Connect the visual proposal to something the organization already values: customer confidence, satisfaction, conversion, maintenance cost, delivery efficiency, or brand equity. If that connection is weak, waiting may be the responsible choice; continued high-quality delivery can create a better opportunity later.

Watch from 15:27
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