A pattern i’ve seen in my work over the last couple of years when engaged in very early “visioning” work is that of first designing the experience for “stakeholder sellability” to get internal buy-in and then worrying about “usability”. Of course its not as black and white as this – its just not in a UX professional’s genes to ignore usability but I do find myself saying “thats good enough for the stakeholder meeting, lets focus on something else right now – we can figure out a better, more usable way later”. Should I feel dirty? 😉
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You don’t mention what the context of this experience is: are you working as a contractor, or are you an employee of the people for whom you are “visioning?” I think it could make a difference in how awful it is that you have to continually get stakeholder buy-in.
I’m an employee, but don’t get me wrong – I think all UX professionals whether innie or outie are engaged in selling. I was just musing about whether other people found their design focus shifting from the user to the stakeholder for any portion of their project.
I don’t think you should feel “dirty.” lol. It’s just a matter that you know what your next audience will focus on. Selling an idea during visioning doesn’t mean you’re discounting usability. It just means you know your stakeholders and what will fly. Your job is to sell it. If that means cutting corners to make that happen, I say So Be It. You’ll make sure the delivered concept works, right?
A related problem is that it’s easier to get stakeholders to approve the more “photogenic” (“screenogenic?”) ideas that have fancy whiz-bang visuals. If I feel it’s important to do something where the benefit is complicated to explain and cannot be easily summarized in a few screenshots, I’m at a disadvantage.
I suppose it’s an inevitable consequence of human psychology.