Episode #65: Mark Baldino on Proving the Business Value of UX Design

Good design work can still be sidelined when a team cannot show how it helps customers or the business. In episode 65, Mark Baldino, co-founder of Fuzzy Math, explains how UX leaders can make that connection without abandoning the craft.

What you'll learn

• How UX expanded from information architecture into research and strategy

• Why stakeholder communication is part of effective design work

• How small, measured projects can build support for a human-centered process

• Which product and business signals can help demonstrate design impact

• Why better leadership decisions begin with broader listening

From information architecture to design strategy

Baldino entered the field in 1999, before “user experience” was common language. His early work centered on information architecture: organizing information, shaping navigation, and producing wireframes. Research was not always available to designers, and direct access to users could be rare.

The field has since widened. Information architecture and interface design still matter, but they now sit within a broader human-centered process that includes research and strategy. For Baldino, that shift changes the foundation of the work. Teams can begin with human needs, goals, and motivations rather than treating the interface as the starting point.

His experience on a large design team at Orbitz also showed him the value of learning alongside other practitioners. At the same time, watching mature products move from major innovation toward incremental optimization prompted a question: could small, focused design teams create more meaningful change inside large organizations? That idea helped shape Fuzzy Math, founded to work with established companies on digital products and services.

Design influence depends on communication

Working inside large companies prepared Baldino for consulting because it required navigating different levels, functions, and priorities. A design recommendation may be strong for users, but it still needs to be understood by product partners, subject-matter experts, executives, and other stakeholders.

That makes communication a practical design skill. The same decision may need to be explained differently to a peer than to an executive. With senior leaders, the connection to revenue, cost, risk, or another business priority often matters. Baldino describes advocacy as a major part of the job: teams must explain why the process is worth the time and how it supports outcomes beyond a finished interface.

This is especially important when leaders see UX as slow or equate it only with UI. Executives may operate around quarterly commitments, while a design team proposes months of research. If the team cannot make the expected benefit tangible, the process can look like delay rather than risk reduction.

Build the case with smaller bets

Baldino does not recommend beginning with a six-month strategy phase and asking an organization to trust that value will arrive later. Instead, teams can run smaller projects that demonstrate how research changes a decision. A contained comparison can show where an unsupported feature might have landed, where a research-informed version landed, and what evidence distinguishes the two.

This approach makes human-centered design easier to evaluate. Teams can examine errors, efficiency, satisfaction, or other measures relevant to the product. A series of credible examples can then earn support for more substantial work. The core point is that skipping research also carries risk, particularly when a company builds and launches before it has adequately tested the customer problem.

Measurement should start with context, not a universal metric. Baldino recommends first understanding what the organization already measures, then identifying useful product-level signals. The right measure depends on the job the product supports. Speed may matter in one workflow, while error prevention, trust, or decision quality matters more in another. Counting clicks alone rarely captures that distinction.

A practical system can combine feedback at key moments in the product with a recurring customer satisfaction measure. Establishing a baseline early makes later movement meaningful. From there, a design team can connect product sentiment to business indicators such as support demand, subscription renewal, or churn when those measures fit the business model.

Baldino is clear that this system is difficult to establish while a team continues its everyday research, design, product collaboration, and development handoff. He says getting the UX data and analytics system working generally takes close to a year. Yet without it, an expensive design function can be misunderstood because leaders see the cost but not the full contribution.

Listen before deciding

Baldino closes with a leadership lesson. His instinct has often been to produce an answer quickly, but speed can narrow the inputs behind a decision. He has learned to listen more, consider a wider set of perspectives, and still act without becoming trapped in analysis.

For UX teams, that lesson mirrors the larger conversation: better outcomes come from gathering the right evidence, understanding the people involved, and then making a clear decision. Listen to episode 65 for the full discussion on design maturity, measurement, and influence.