Design & Revenue Growth. Wait – what!?

Design is beautiful, functional, intentional, and—Profitable?

Becoming Growth Savvy

After a couple years of being a UX/UI Designer at Vendasta, there was a shift in the product group structure. Up until this point I was iterating toward the final prototype with Product Managers and Development teams. Much of the product strategy was part of the design process, but was primarily driven from the top. I was about to find myself in one of the most intensive transitions I have ever faced; from Design to Product Strategy. During the shift, I felt like I was going through professional puberty. I was still a Designer but I was barely pushing pixels, and I wasn’t a Business Analyst but I was crunching revenue projections. I felt like Jackie Chan shouting – ”WHO AM I!?” But there was something I was going to learn during this season that would challenge and change my perspective for the better.

We were just starting to dive into planning a roadmap for 2017. There were a set of goals that were going to be broken out into themes and epics and I was assigned “Increase engagement.” The wheels were already turning about ways to make the UI/UX more captivating and I couldn’t wait to add all the things! Then it came time to prepare my pitch for the Q1 epics to executives. All of a sudden, it no longer mattered how much I wanted to change the look and feel of my products and it came down to quantitative metrics. How will increased engagement provide a ROI? How much will this idea reduce churn? Will this affect our short term revenue or long term revenue? Will we be able to monetize this feature? What is the projected revenue for this in 2017? Oh, and throw in a little bit of competition for priority in there too. Damn! I didn’t go to Art School to get a business degree!

Design Goals

Why do we have design departments, and what are they driving towards? For many organizations, design is the group of aesthetic polishers eagerly waiting to tweak the padding by 2 pixels! All stereotypes aside, the goals of design vary from industry to industry – even between departments like marketing and product design. The truth of the matter is, it doesn’t matter what type of design you find yourself in, it will have an affect on revenue. Let’s look at a couple examples of professional design and the goals they have.

“We are not the group the business calls on when a project is nearly finished; we are the group that brings clarity to what the project needs to be.”

Marketing

I went to school for Visual Communication, so my entire perspective of design started here at the marketing level. What are we doing as graphic designers? We’re creating an avenue of communication that resonates with a demographic, starting the customer journey from prospect to customer. This could be anything from a concert poster that sells tickets (revenue) to advertising campaigns that entice consumers to buy from the local businesses (more revenue). Let’s not also forget that graphic designers start the conversation with their work, and it’s a rigorous task to encapsulate an emotional connection to the entity we are promoting while also creating a visual masterpiece. It may not be the graphic designers job to think about how their piece will result in dollar bills, but it’s an important factor when you need to sell your ideas to clients. There are many different metrics that feed the conversion path, but the final outcome needs to result in revenue. Either that or you’ll soon find yourself with less of the marketing budget dedicated to design.

Product

This speaks to both tangible products(hardware, toys, furniture, etc.) and software. Quite frankly, it comes down to why I’m buying your product instead of the other product. What features and functionality does this product have that is a benefit to my life and is it worth the money? When it comes to designing these products we need to think about the usefulness and how it competes in the market. It’s a lot less about communication at this point and more about value. The more valuable you make your product to the consumer and the utility of solving their problem will have an enormous effect on the revenue it generates. This is why upfront user research is vital to the success of a product; if you don’t solve the problem based on the customer’s behaviours, you might as well throw a million dollars into the fire.

This is not an exhaustive list of design professions, but my point is fairly simple. Design has business value. Please don’t take this as me declaring that design is strictly business with zero room for creativity. My struggle has been that we are often viewed as the artists, not the innovators. We as designers need to be valid stakeholders in the success of the organizations we represent. We are not the group the business calls on when a project is nearly finished; we are the group that brings clarity to what the project needs to be.

“…if you don’t solve the problem based on the consumer’s behaviours, you might as well throw a million dollars into the fire.”

Focused Optimization

After a few months of projecting revenue and planning epics in product strategy, I started to think differently. I started thinking more about the user’s behaviour and what we could build that would make their day better. It wasn’t about what they were already doing in the product that we could streamline; it was about what they weren’t doing in the product. What is their daily routine? What other tools do they use? What is the goal they are driving toward everyday? What do they need to have access to? By focusing on their behaviour outside the product, we’re able to highlight the biggest pain point and try to alleviate those roadblocks. The results should provide a unique value proposition that stands out from the competition. By applying design thinking we can interpret their behaviours and quarks into useful interactions that complement their routine. In turn, this has the potential to exponentially increase revenue.

“Design has business value.”

Don’t be Blind to Success Metrics

I’ll be Honest, when I made the switch from Graphic Design to UI Design I wasn’t thinking about metrics. I was still in Pixel Paradise where the air is made of warm-fuzzy feelings and creative freedom falls like raindrops. Thoughts of refactoring entire products – with no reasoning other than because they were “ugly” – seemed like the obvious choice. I had no understanding of development cost or juggling priorities that drive revenue. I was blind to success metrics and I’m not sure how I survived. After a while I came around to understanding the basics, but until I shifted into Product Strategy I wasn’t associating my decisions to revenue – or even engagement for that matter!

Here’s the thing; update your UI, optimize workflows, make it delightful, change the button colour – but do it because there is a return. That return doesn’t have to be revenue, but it should have some impact on either quantitative or qualitative user data. If you impact engagement enough, you reduce churn. If you make onboarding easier you could increase the number of marketable customers! Design has business value.

Not All Designers are Wired for Business, and That’s OK.

If your a Designer living in Pixel Paradise and you’re not thinking about moving, that’s OK! The world needs your untainted creativity, your abstract thoughts, and your double rainbows. The reality is, we can’t really be designers without living there for a while and making frequent visits. Let’s not forget our relatives that have adopted the technical side of the spectrum either! These Designer/Developer “unicorns” are fantastic for rapid implementation of design standards in the code! For those of us that have adapted our creativity to the business world; we can’t lose our roots. Keep being driven by emotion, but use it to empathize with your users. Keep your artistic preferences, but back it with data. Keep being curious; only for curiosity’s sake.

Have you started applying success metrics to your designs? Did it help you focus and streamline your process? I’d love to hear about it!