The design transformation pyramid
I n the age of digital products and services, design matters. It has become the number one differentiating factor. When done correctly it lets you solve the right problems, the right way. It’s what makes your customers love your product and tell their friends about it. It is indeed, good business.
“Good design is good business”
Thomas Watson Jr, CEO IBM 1952–1971
In a world pre iPhone (2007) however there wasn’t much mainstream concern over delightful design, usability and user experience. Software was often kind of shitty to use and look at.
But then mr Jobs had “one more thing” to show us and from that point on things changed. You have to give Apple credit for making the world aware of the power of using design as a competitive advantage. Apples understanding of design as more than just aesthetics is also famous, with Jobs stating that design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works. And it worked pretty well for them.
In the years since then the market for digital products and services has exploded. The bar for what is expected from the design and experience of a product has been raised significantly. Nowadays the savvy consumer expects their apps to be fast, intuitive and beautiful. If they are not there are plenty of alterantives out there. It has never been easier to launch a product to a global market, giving any newcomer a chance to compete for the affection of anyones customers.
The most successful companies today are the ones that know the value of being design oriented. Apple, Google, Spotify, Airbnb, Netflix etc. all position design as driving force in their business. They know that creating meaningful outcomes for the user/customer equals good business value.
Design is a way of problem solving through understanding and empathy for the end user in order to create meaningful impact in the users behavior. Delivering the best possible value to the customer and thereby also the business.
Delightful design, user focus, continuous learning, innovation and responsiveness to change are things that a modern company needs to adopt if they want to stay relevant in the digital age. Companies have started moving towards a more user centric, design oriented culture to be competitive. They are beginning to incorporate the fundamental principles of design thinking and experience design as a way to start solving real user problems and create products that are a delight to use and have an impact on the users behavior.
This design transformation is no small task. It’s not enough to suddenly say that design and the user experience is important and expect people with no experience of working in a design oriented way to know what to do. It is also not as easy as just hiring a truckload of designers and spreading them out randomly in the organization. Although hiring proffessionals is an important part, (more on that later) you can’t expect them to move mountains on their own if the people among them just want to continue working as they have.
For a design transformation to ultimately succeed you need to focus on three areas, which brings us to the idea of this article — The design transformation pyramid.
The three areas are Mindset, Toolset & Skillset and it is crucial to tend to all three if you want to end up with complete design awesomeness.
Lets go through them shall we?
Mindset
This is the groundwork that sets the entire thing up to succeed or fail. It’s the cultural shift that has to happen company wide in order to start working in a more design oriented way. Its a shift from prioritizing output (more features!) to outcome (more impact!). The entire organization needs to appreciate a great user experience and see the value to the business and to the end user/customer. Buy-in is equally important on the executive level as on the employee level in order to prevent roadblocks from stopping progress towards this goal. Here are a few key pointers:
- Clearly communicate your ambition of becoming more user centric and design oriented to the entire company. You will need a strong vision to inspire everyone and act as a north star on this journey.
- Educate people in UX and show them the value of design to the business, the customer and themselves. Working in this collaborative way is very stimulating and creating outcomes that lead to satisfied, happy customers is truly rewarding.
- Start focusing on outcomes instead of output. Piling on features and hustling to ship them is not the way to reach a great user experience. Prioritize outcomes, making a difference in the life of your user and many things will start falling in place.
- Appoint design leadership with enough influence to drive the agenda for good design across the organization. They will be your torchbarers that lead the way towards your goal.
Toolset
Ok, now that you have changed the way you think, it’s time to change the way you work. With this new lust for delightful, wonderful user experiences you need to give people the right tools and processes to start working towards achieving them. You need to create new processes and routines that make room for design, for learning and working iteratively to validate assumptions before too much time is invested in solving the wrong problem. You need to start collaborating in crossfunctional teams that merge strategy, design and engineering. True teamwork that creates a shared understanding and ownership of the problem, instead of working in silos and faux agile methods that are really just waterfall in sheeps clothing.
Look to methods like Lean UX and Design thinking for how to merge your development driven past with your design driven development future.
Key pointers:
- Organize your design resources in a way that fits your company and that allows for a coordinated overarching move towards better user experience in your products. There are different models, usually a centralized team or having designers embedded in the development teams. But the so called Hybrid model is popular where a central design team acts as a hub that connects embedded designers to eachother and makes sure efforts are coordinated and everyone can support one another.
- Find ways to incorporate design and UX into your ways of working. Things like design sprints and design studio excercices. If you are doing agile development, experiment with staggered sprints and dual track agile to merge discovery and design with delivery.
- Creating a design system containing guidelines, components, pattern libraries and resources is a great way to ensure consistency, quality and effectiveness in shaping the user experience. It also speeds up both the design and the development process.
Skillset
Lastly, there is no getting around it, you are going to need people with design ability. If design is going to be your competetive advantage it goes without saying that you need people with the skills to create beautiful, intuitive, usable products that your customers will love. If you are a large enterprise, you are going to need a lot of them too. One designer for every five to ten developers is a general number that many seem to agree on. Many companies go beyond that by also adding user researchers and strategists into the mix.
Designers are going to be the tip of your spear as you blaze onto this new trail.
Key pointers:
- Make sure you have the right mix of senior and junior people. Your first hires need to be experienced. They will set the tone and they will act as mentors for the designers that come after them.
- Empower these first hires to take the lead in changing the mindset in the company and show people what is possible.
- When you bring in less experienced designers make sure they have the support structure they need to grow and come into their own. Don’t strand them alone in some corner of the organization without any peers to learn from. (See hybrid model above).
But listen up because this last thing is important, this is where the pyramid really makes sense. Without the foundation of mindset and toolset, hiring a bunch of designers is not going to end well. Without the right mindset in the company there is going to be a clash of priorities. Without the right tools and processes, a clash of methods. Everyone is going to be miserable. It’s not a design transformation if the business as a whole doesn’t transform. So hire designers, just remember that design is way too important to be left only to the designers. Pave the way by committing to get everyone onboard and giving them the means to do great work. Then sit back and chill as happier customers, happier employees and a happier business ensues!
