Good UX Doesn’t Sell Itself

Emre Ay
Sep 29
3 min read

There is a common belief in our industry, a romantic myth we tell ourselves: “If the design is good enough, it will speak for itself.”

I used to believe that too. I thought a great experience was like an Elven sword Narsil, so perfectly crafted that its worth was obvious.

But years of projects, endless meetings, and a few battle scars later, I know the truth: good UX does not sell itself.

The Myth of the Self-Evident Design

As designers, we fall in love with our own work. A seamless flow, intuitive interactions, a pixel-perfect layout. We pour our craft into making something so smooth that it becomes invisible.

Surely, people will see the value, right? RIGHT!?

Not quite. Because the better our UX is, the more it wears an invisibility cloak. When things work perfectly, nobody notices the effort. And most decision-makers are not trained to recognise great, invisible design. They are trained to recognise risk, revenue, and results.

A beautiful interface without a compelling business case is just another slide in a forgotten deck. Your work isn’t the hero of the story who gets the medal; it’s the silent droid in the background fixing the hyperdrive. Essential, but easily overlooked.

The Reality: We Are Translators

Being a designer today is not just about sketching interfaces or pushing pixels. It is about translating design value into business value. We need a “Universal Translator” in our toolbelt, turning user-centric language into the language of metrics and goals.

That means pitching ideas, building narratives, and defending design decisions against short-term thinking. In practice, this looks like:

Framing your design in terms of conversion rates, retention, or cost savings.
Showing usability test clips that reveal real human struggle instead of just making abstract arguments.
Learning to say, “This approach saves 10% on development time,” instead of, “This feels cleaner.”

The sad truth is that if you cannot tell the story, even the best UX will be dismissed as a “nice-to-have.”

Not long a ago, the team designed a seamless onboarding flow that reduced drop-off by nearly 30% in testing. We thought the results would speak for themselves. They didn’t. Without a clear story about the impact on revenue and customer retention, stakeholders deprioritized it. Another initiative with a louder pitch (but weaker data) got the resources instead. That was when we realized: design impact doesn’t live in Figma, it lives in the story you tell around it.

A Few Hard Lessons

I have been there. I have seen great designs die quiet deaths, not because they lacked quality, but because they lacked advocates.

I remember a project where we solved a complex onboarding flow, only to see it shelved because no one connected it to reducing churn. I’ve been in meetings where leadership dismissed usability wins as “just cosmetic,” until the metrics finally proved them wrong months later. I’ve watched the loudest voice in the room win, not the best solution for the user.

Each time, the painful realisation was the same: design without storytelling is disposable.

It’s Not Just Screens, It’s Influence

The job is not only to design the thing right, but to make the thing matter. And that requires influence. Influence through data, through empathy, and through sheer persistence. This is why soft skills are not optional. They are survival skills.

So, if good UX doesn’t sell itself, then who does? You do.

Learn to tie your work to measurable outcomes.
Tell stories that connect your design to real human struggles and business wins.
Build allies across teams. Developers, PMs, marketers. They can all help you carry the story of design. Just remember that not every potential ally is a true advocate, and the wrong messenger can break your story.

Because at the end of the day, the difference between a brilliant concept that never launches and one that transforms a business is rarely the quality of the pixels. It is the clarity of the story around them. Even the most powerful magic needs a wizard to explain the spell.

Good UX doesn’t sell itself. But a designer who knows how to tell their story can.