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Make Design Count
I recently joined the 2FRESH Design Podcast (thank you for having me!) to discuss my experiences as a design leader. The conversation, held in Czech, was heavily focused on “the value of design” and it gave me a lot to think about. It inspired me to share these thoughts more widely — so here I am, putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard, let’s say).
After 13 years at Emplifi (formerly Socialbakers), I understand that great products aren’t built on intuition alone. In SaaS — whether B2B or B2C — success depends on how well we serve the user. But great UX doesn’t happen in isolation. Understanding users is crucial, but so is understanding the business.
The strongest design solutions don’t just look good or feel intuitive — they drive meaningful outcomes. Whether it’s reducing churn or optimizing checkout flows, design must align with business goals. That means engaging with data, tracking key metrics, and demonstrating our impact. Yet too often, I see designers and design leaders missing these opportunities. It’s not that the tools or data aren’t available — most companies are swimming in analytics. The question is, are we willing to engage with them?
In this post, I’ll share five lessons about embracing this mindset shift and aligning design with measurable outcomes. Looking back, I wish I had learned these earlier. Because when we get comfortable with numbers, we don’t just elevate design — we prove our own value.
1. Design saves development costs
One of the clearest ways design proves its value is by reducing development costs. Every feature built incorrectly — or iterated endlessly — drains resources. Take, for example, a feature that wasn’t properly researched or tested. Once launched, it might require multiple iterations to meet user needs. Don’t get me wrong — iterations are part of the agile process, but they should be planned and thought through in advance.
Rushed or poorly researched designs don’t just slow down progress — they also impact the team’s morale and eat into the budget for future innovations. By focusing on detailed research, prototyping, and rigorous testing, our design team ensures that features are developed right the first time (almost!).
Last time I checked, our Figma workspace contained over 4,000 files filled with experiments, prototypes, iterations, MVPs (and MVPs of MVPs), usability tests, and more. A perfect example of why this approach works is Emplifi Care, our customer service module that helps brands manage inquiries, provide personalized support, and resolve issues across digital channels. Care was carefully designed and tested with clients long before development began, ensuring it met real-world needs. Today, a year and a half after its launch, it’s performing exceptionally well, both in adoption and as a growing cornerstone of our platform. I can’t share revenue details, but for a product this young, it’s doing very well. I’ll definitely be coming back to our Care product and how we built it in a future piece — there’s so much more to unpack.
This echoes a key point I raised in a LinkedIn discussion (in Czech): quality design isn’t just about making things look good — it’s about mitigating risks. Poor design can snowball into expensive problems when features fail to meet user needs. As design leaders, it’s our responsibility to communicate this clearly to stakeholders, which brings me to my next point…
💡 Tip: Share specific examples of cost savings during leadership meetings. Knowing how developer teams are structured and resourced can help you show how early design investments prevent expensive reworks and streamline workflows. Over time, you’ll be able to quantify costs — like estimating how much two sprints of Team XYZ translate to in dollars.
Rushed or poorly researched designs don’t just slow down progress — they also impact the team’s morale and eat into the budget for future innovations.
2. The design leader as a business partner
Design leaders should be business advocates. We need to think like salespeople and position design as a strategic enabler. At Emplifi, we’ve built internal tools to streamline the creation of personalized, interactive prototypes for prospective clients. With a simple Figma plugin, an intuitive template, and a structured briefing system, our team can generate a prototype that feels native to a client’s web environment — improving engagement and trust during sales pitches. These prototypes have directly contributed to closing deals and driving revenue.
And this is just one example of how design can go beyond product development to influence the bottom line.
In my Design team, I always try to emphasize that a design leader must “sell” the value of design to clients and within the company. That involves building strong relationships with stakeholders from other departments like sales, customer success teams, marketing, and even HR (yes, with everyone!).
Over the years, I’ve hosted (or mostly invited myself to! 😆) numerous sessions with our sales or CMS departments, where I open my design booth (aka presentation: it’s the 21st century) and present all the ways my team can help them succeed. We also walk through new features, share prototypes, and discuss their direct impact on client satisfaction. This ensures they understand how design contributes to closing deals and retaining customers.
💡 Tip: Build cross-functional relationships. Collaborating with sales and customer success teams embeds design as a critical partner in driving company growth.
💪 Challenge for readers: How often do you actively engage with sales or customer teams to showcase the strategic impact of design? What’s one change you could make this quarter?
Design leaders should be business advocates. We need to think like salespeople and position design as a strategic enabler.
3. Metrics that matter
Numbers drive decisions. While qualitative insights shape great design, pairing them with data gives us the influence to push for change. In our team, we focus on:
- Retention: Understanding how design impacts users staying with the platform and designing experiences to encourage users to stay. Is our new product/feature/quick-win moving the needle in the right direction? Is our onboarding working well?
- Churn: Identifying UX pain points that lead to customers not renewing. Can we help? How?
- Revenue impact: Connecting design efforts to deals closed, such as a well-designed prototype influencing a $1M ARR deal.
- Inbound: Supporting new customer acquisition through optimized web and product experiences. Did this new shorter “Book a demo” form improve our lead gen?
- User friction signals: Every support ticket tells a story. We monitor categorized tickets in Zendesk to uncover UX friction early. If a newly launched feature triggers a flood of “How do I…?” questions, it’s a sign that we need to simplify the experience. Reducing these friction points improves usability and lowers customer support costs.
- NPS & CSAT: While they’re far from perfect metrics, tracking NPS & CSAT scores can offer valuable insight into customer satisfaction. For example, at this precise moment, we are scheduling follow-up calls with customers who rated us negatively.
Of course, plenty of other metrics depend on your company’s industry and goals. These could include conversion rates, time to value, feature adoption, activation rates, ads revenue, outbound, average order value, items sold, time saved, or even lives saved in healthcare.
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The key is to align your design efforts with the metrics that matter most to your business. I spend quite a lot of time in Salesforce/Tableau. It’s not about fully integrating design into every analytics but more about staying informed about trends and performance, which helps us align our efforts with broader business goals.
💡 Tip: Track key metrics and share them with the rest of the company regularly via dashboards or team updates to reinforce the design’s impact on the business.
💪 Challenge for readers: What business metrics are you currently tracking? How can they inform your design decisions?
Stay informed about business goals and align your design efforts with the metrics that matter most to your business.
4. Building internal advocacy for design
Yes, metrics matter, but building a culture of design advocacy is what truly amplifies their impact. Here are a few tactics that we established over time — and continue to nurture every day — in my team.
- Monthly Design Forums: We host open sessions where designers present their latest work to the rest of the company. These forums, often including 150+ attendees, are an opportunity to celebrate wins, share insights, and build internal visibility for design’s contributions. Everyone from our team has a space to present. It’s a win-win situation: designers improve their presentation skills, and everyone else gets a chance to connect the work to real people, increasing relevance and making it easier to build relationships.
- Slack channels for collaboration: Our dedicated #design Slack channel encourages real-time cross-functional discussions, from salespeople requesting customized assets to product managers seeking quick feedback. We also created private channels like #design-feedback-champions, which build deeper connections with employees who love getting a sneak peek into work-in-progress, testing prototypes, or sharing UX/UI bugs and ideas — and sending special merch (t-shirts, stickers, a personalized thank-you card,…) to our “top feedbackers” is also lovely:)
- Internal newsletters: We recently launched “Design Digest” — bite-sized updates showcasing recent design wins, upcoming features, and team highlights. These updates are easy to consume and keep design top of mind. Slack is great for instant communication, but email ensures broader reach, especially for those who don’t live on Slack daily (there are more of them than you might think, I have data as proof!)
- Internal research: Our research efforts don’t stop at customers. We also dedicate time to understanding our internal stakeholders’ needs and pain points. By interviewing colleagues across departments and gathering feedback, we can align our designs with internal workflows and business goals.
- Design strategist & advocate role: One of our fantastic senior designers transitioned into a strategic role, acting as a bridge between design and the rest of the company. And it certainly helps that she’s good with people.
Remember that advocating for design means being proactive. Don’t wait for colleagues to come to you with problems — reach out, ask questions, and look for ways to make their lives easier. This is especially important in roles with higher turnover, like sales or customer success, where new faces might not immediately know how design can help.
Early in my journey at Socialbakers, I made this very mistake — I believed that great design alone would speak for itself. However, after a few years, I realized that even the best work can go unnoticed without active advocacy and collaboration.
💡 Tip: Treat internal advocacy like a product. Communicate your work widely and tailor your messaging to resonate with different audiences, from engineers to executives. One of the best advice I ever received was: “Everyone needs to know that Luděk = Design.” And this isn’t just about me — I actively encourage every designer on my team to embrace this mindset.
💪 Challenge for readers: How might you advocate for design in your organization? Could you organize a design forum/all-hands or similar initiative? What other tactics work for you?
Remember that advocating for design means being proactive. Don’t wait for colleagues to come to you with problems — look for ways to make their lives easier.
5. The mindset shift: form habits, be consistent
If there’s one common thread I’ve shared so far, it’s this: effective design leaders aren’t passive. You need to be proactive and take initiative — but most importantly, do it consistently. It’s not enough to collaborate with other teams once, join a meeting here and there, or share a prototype and hope for lasting impact. Influence just isn’t built in a single conversation; it’s built through repetition.
Leadership requires building habits that drive the mindset shift I started this post with. And that means being persistent. At first, pushing yourself into new spaces — whether it’s leadership meetings, sales syncs, or cross-functional discussions — might feel uncomfortable or unnecessary. But the more you do it, the more natural it becomes, and what starts as a conscious effort turns into instinct. That’s when the magic happens.
I’ve seen firsthand how designers who stay visible and engaged over time become trusted partners in the business. It’s never because they had one brilliant pitch, and always because they kept showing up and proving their value again and again. The first time you explain how design saves development costs, people might nod. The fifth time, they might start bringing you in before decisions are made.
Keep in mind that the best opportunities to advocate for design often don’t come when you expect them. If you’re not consistently showing up and staying engaged, you’ll risk being overlooked. So make it a habit. Be there whenever the conversation happens, and bring design to the table.
💡 Tip: Consistency drives mindset shifts — not just in yourself but also in how others perceive design and trust your expertise. Form habits to keep design visible in ongoing conversations.
💪 Challenge for readers: What’s one conversation, meeting, or initiative you can commit to consistently this quarter? How can you turn engagement into a habit rather than a one-time effort?
Influence isn’t built in a single conversation; it’s built through repetition. Be there every time the conversation happens, and bring design to the table.
The bottom line: wear multiple hats
I think I’ve made my point: design isn’t just about making things look good — it’s about solving problems, saving resources, and driving meaningful results. The lessons I’ve shared here aren’t just strategies but a mindset shift. I hope they inspire you to think differently about how design fits into your organization’s bigger picture.
For design leaders, the key takeaway is this: to succeed, we must wear multiple hats — that of a creator, manager, mentor, but also a business advocate. This is our real challenge, and we must own it with confidence. In doing so, every effort we make to align design with business outcomes will pay off — for our users, our company, and ourselves as valued drivers of success.
What’s the one step you’ll take today to elevate design’s impact in your company? Will you track a new metric, start a design forum, or embed design deeper into business conversations?
