Why are we still talking about the value of design?

Recently I have spent a lot of time talking to designers and design leaders, and one common theme in those conversations is the value of design. Designers describe challenges in:

• Stakeholders not understanding design

• Product Managers involving design too late

• Designers struggling to create room to undertake research

These topics have been in discussion for many years and have never really gone away.  Recently, I started asking myself why we are still discussing these topics? We’ve had a good few years of a boom in design, with the likes of Meta and Google having large design teams. Teresa Torres’ Continuous Discovery Habits advocated for the product trio, meaning that design became an essential component of a cross-functional team. Since the pandemic in 2020, there have been masses of tech layoffs and design has been greatly affected. Going into 2023, I see many companies cutting Design Leadership, especially at the executive level, and many heads of Design are now reporting into the Product Function. I've seen design teams which at one point had 50 designers, which slowly over time reduced to less than ten with all the Design Leadership laid off. 

Design Matters, right?

A McKinsey Study (2018) on the business value of design showed that design-driven companies generate more revenue than their competitors. There are also examples of hugely successful fortune 500 like Apple, Airbnb and Google that are design driven. When design is invested in it not only leads to more success but a greater understanding of the consumers they are trying to market too. In essence, design not only matters but it can make or break a product. A well-designed product can lead to customer loyalty and trust. 

So what has happened? I think part of the problem is that as design teams have grown, design has aligned more closely to engineering and tried to operate like engineering. Design has leaned into the craft aspect, creating design systems and thus design operations focusing on faster deliveries to engineers. The challenge is engineering is seen as a science and is technical, and design has always been seen as an art and decoration. By aligning with engineering, design teams have missed an opportunity to influence and shape. In order to show its value, design needs to be more business focused and adopt some of the mindset that Product Managers have. As designers we sit between Product and Engineering we have to have an understanding of not only how to deliver but also how to meet business outcomes while satisfying our users’ needs. I have outlined three ways that designers can influence and showcase that what they do is more than making things pretty.

Understand the business

In Steve Johnsons, talk at FigCon 2023 he spoke about the importance of designers going beyond the boundaries of traditional roles and understanding the business. As more and more companies focus on profitability designers need to be able to quantify how their activities ladder up to the business goals. Knowing what the business cares about and using design to help meet business goals demonstrates that design is not just nice to have but can make a real impact. Knowing the top business goalhelps you prioritise and focus on the top priorities and know what is important to your stakeholders. 

Showing your stakeholders that you have an understanding of their goals and then being able to show how your design can help contribute to meeting their needs, helps to get buy-in and as a result means that it is more likely to get built and helps to build your relationship with them. 

Top tips:

• Identify target metrics early

• Use data to show how your design makes an impact

• Ensure you mention the business goals when articulating your designer

Don’t design in isolation

Designers can often be in situations where they are working with people who haven’t worked with designers before or think a designer should be involved in the process once all the requirements are written and they need a UI. Regardless of the situation, collaboration and communication are key. 

Communication helps inform the team of where you are in the design process and how long it will take. Ensure that you give regular updates to the team and use simple language when communicating. Good communication helps to prevent the impression that you are designing in the dark and also helps to explain how you solve problems using design processes. Collaborating with engineers, product managers, and stakeholders is a great way for the team to understand your design solutions. Getting them involved in user research helps them understand the user problems you are tackling, which creates empathy for the users across the team. Facilitating sketching sessions with engineers and stakeholders helps to gather ideas early and also helps to understand feasibility (engineers won't sketch solutions that are not possible).  

Top tips:

• Ensure that you are giving updates in the stand-up

• Show ideas early and often to identify what is feasible

• Share your findings from user research with the team

Influence at the strategic level

Trying to get involved as early as possible is a good way to ensure design can shape business goals. As designers, we are in a unique position in that we know our users. We already use those insights to shape our designs, why not use those same insights to influence business strategy? 

Working closely with product managers on shaping opportunities a great example is doing an opportunity solution tree together and pulling out research insights and data to help support the opportunities highlighted, which in turn helps with prioritisation.

During my time at Cazoo, I positioned research at a strategic level - our goal was to influence the business goals. The research team worked a quarter ahead and worked with the commercial directors to pull out key themes, we would then shape and prioritise those research themes with myself and the product director. The team would work mostly on themes that we felt we could influence the most, we would then playback our findings before the OKRs (objectives and key results) for the next quarter were decided. As a result, we managed to influence business processes and also shape decision-making at a senior level.

To show more value, designers need to widen their horizons to not just focus on the craft. As businesses focus on profitability, designers have to demonstrate how design can contribute and influence the business to create products that users love.