Data Informed Design: How to Show The Strategic Impact of Design Work

Kai Wong

Medium.com's Top Design Writer.

The Difference between Good and Great Designers? Getting Executives to Buy-in

You're a skilled designer, but your work keeps getting ignored, changed, or overruled.

Not because it's bad. Because they don't understand you.

You present user research findings. They hear opinions.

You explain design decisions. They see preferences.

You share insights from testing. They wonder where the data is.

The problem isn't your design. It's your communication.

As one Design Director told me: "Great designers bring data that sells their ideas."

That's what Data-Informed Design teaches: translating design work into business impact that gets you heard, trusted, and promoted.

In this 4-week program, you'll learn to:

The result? You stop being the designer who "makes things pretty" and become the strategic partner who shapes what gets built.

No data science degree required. Just the frameworks to get the influence your work deserves.

Master Data Storytelling: The Presentation Framework that Positions You as a Strategic Partner instead of Just a Designer.

Learn the 9 Product Goals framework to identify which metrics your design work actually impacts.
Master the "Ladder Technique" to identify which Product Goal your Design Projects are about
Practice extracting metrics from from a real-life case study from Meta

Learn the Goals → Signals → Metrics framework to connect business objectives to user behavior
Practice translating vague requests ("improve the experience") into specific, measurable outcomes

Use the Core Challenge framework to make complex user problems instantly understandable
Use the Talk It Out framework to identify which Data Visualization best expresses your point
Understand how to find data that helps you craft an effective data visualization

Learn the ICE Prioritization framework to evaluate which design solutions move the needle on key metrics
Learn to create hypotheses, which tie design decisions to business outcomes
Understand how to effectively use data to turn ideas into evidence-based recommendations

Use AI to practice presentations and understand things from a PM/Executive view
Create a 5-minute story, a universal UX Story that can be used everywhere
Learn how to use Problem-Agitate-Solution, the persuasive framework that's sold billions of iPhones

Medium's Top Design Writer| 13 Years Designing in Low Maturity Organizations

Designers who want to use data to bypass office politics and prove their value immediately
Designers tired of watching 'strategic' roles like PMs get promoted while their insights are ignored
Designers in low-UX maturity environments where relationship-building isn't enough