The Irreplaceable Designer

Feel like your ideas are not getting the attention they deserve? Have a good solution but struggle to get people aligned? Find yourself facing pushback from stakeholders?

Great designers do not just create great work. They understand the room, connect their work to what matters and help people make better decisions.

The Irreplaceable Designer is a practical, one-day workshop for designers who want to become more confident, influential and valuable in their teams.

Throughout the day, you will work with real situations, practise new skills, present your thinking and learn from the other designers in the room.

What you will learn

1. Know Your Room

Before you can influence a decision, you need to understand the people involved.

You will learn how to:

• Understand what different stakeholders care about, including business outcomes, user outcomes and technical constraints
• Adapt your communication to different audiences
• Identify what a stakeholder needs to make a decision
• Map the stakeholders around a real project or decision

Takeaway: Stakeholder Map you can use on your own projects

2. Connect UX to Business Value

Good UX work becomes much easier to advocate for when you can explain why it matters.

You will learn how to:

• Connect UX initiatives to product metrics and business outcomes
• Use a simple UX KPI Tree to make the value of your work clearer
• Move from a UX problem to something the business can understand and measure
• Explain the value of UX without relying on vague claims

Takeaway: UX KPI Tree you can apply to your own work

3. Structure Better Decisions

Designers are often expected to recommend solutions. But the real value is helping teams make better decisions.

You will learn how to structure a decision using:

Problem → Evidence → Options → Value → Validation

You will practise how to:

• Clearly define the problem
• Separate evidence from assumptions
• Explore options and trade-offs
• Explain the value of a recommendation
• Decide how you will validate whether it worked

You will also explore how to approach the same decision differently depending on who you are speaking to.

Takeaway: Decision Tree framework and practical experience applying it

4. Present With Confidence

Having a strong recommendation is only half the job. You also need to communicate it clearly.

We will work on:

• Structuring your presentation so people understand the point quickly
• Communicating with confidence and clarity
• Managing your pace, body language and nerves
• Handling difficult questions without losing your position
• Giving yourself time to think when you are put on the spot

And most importantly, you will practise presenting your own thinking and receive direct feedback.

Takeaway: Live presentation practice and feedback

5. Handle Pushback & Difficult Conversations

Pushback is part of being a designer.

We will practise how to respond when stakeholders disagree with your recommendation, challenge the evidence, prioritise something else or push for a solution that you do not believe is right.

You will use a simple:

Pause → Validate → Pivot

approach to stay calm, acknowledge the concern and move the conversation back towards the evidence, value and decision.

Takeaway: Pushback Playbook

6. Turn It Into Action

The workshop ends by bringing everything back to your own work.

You will create a practical action plan around the skills you want to strengthen and identify where you will use them next.

You will leave with specific actions you can take into your next stakeholder conversation, presentation or product decision.

This is not a sit-and-listen workshop.

You will spend the day doing.

There will be practical exercises, discussions, real examples, presentations, feedback and opportunities to learn from the other designers in the room.

The goal is not for you to leave with a notebook full of theory.

The goal is for you to leave knowing how to use these skills when you are back at work on Monday.

Who is this for?

This workshop is designed for mid-level to lead designers who want to have more influence beyond the work they produce.

It is particularly useful if you:

• Have good ideas but struggle to get them heard
• Want more influence with stakeholders
• Find it difficult to explain the business value of UX
• Want to become more confident presenting your work
• Regularly face pushback or difficult conversations
• Want to have a stronger voice in product decisions
• Are ready to move beyond being seen only as the person who delivers design

By the end of the day, you will have practised how to:

• Understand the room.
• Connect UX to what matters.
• Structure better decisions.
• Present with confidence.
• Handle pushback.
• Move your work forward.

Because being an irreplaceable designer is not about being the best designer in the room.

It is about becoming someone the room cannot make good decisions without.

Pricing

The stardard price of this workshop is €450.

• Price for Members: €350.00 (save €100!)

Member tickets are available to current members of IDI, ICAD, CCA (former IAPI), 100 Archive, RIAI and the Interiors Association (IA). Contact Lisa at info@designskillnet.ie to find out more about IDI membership.

Duration

Start Time: 9am

End Time: 4pm

About Your Instructor

Valentina Antunovic — Founder & CEO at UX Tree | Design Manager at Vhi Healthcare

Valentina brings over 15 years of industry experience across UX research, product design management and cross-functional leadership. She holds an MSc in UX Design from IADT and has spent over a decade guiding designers through complex career growth and high-stakes stakeholder environments.

As a Design Manager, Valentina specialises in the exact communication frameworks taught in this workshop: mapping complex stakeholder landscapes, linking UX metrics directly to business outcomes, presenting to executive leadership and navigating difficult pushbacks. Having mentored dozens of designers, she built The Irreplaceable Designer to bridge the gap between technical execution and strategic influence in the modern AI landscape.

Refund requests must be received at least 7 days before the scheduled event date.