3 practical tips to selling design research in your company — short thoughts about design
A practical & experience based tips to help you sell design as a service in your company
Most successful product strategies are not written by ‘C suits’, it is driven by users.
Today’s digital product & service value propositions are much more complex than it used to be. There is a huge competition for users’ attention, and the one who understands them better will win the game.
We have many tools and capabilities to understand customers, several of them are part of the basic business set-up, like market research, business and behavioural data analysis, questionnaires etc.
However, in order to have deeper understanding of people, we need to have infos and insights about their emotional attitudes, dreams, fears and desires.
This is where design research comes into play.
TOP 3 TIPS to sell design research in your company
Unfortunately not all companies have yet recognised the importance and the role of design research in strategic wise (luckily it is better and better day by day), so as designers we need to be able to effectively articulate its value.
First at first, we need to consider design research as our product/service and build skills to sell it.
1. Identify common interests
Design research helps to reach business goals. Every design research initiative must have a goal/return. As a designer you need to understand your company’s strategic goals and priorities and find the common interests.
If you work for a corporate, it is important to understand the holistic connections between goals. Corporate is often built by silos, where departments do not communicate properly with each other. However, there are capabilities such as design, which is holistically connects the dots and create value horizontally in your organisation. Let’s use the power of network effect and build alliances between areas and stakeholders.
PRO TIP: Use your design skills and also design toolkit even when you are selling design. Meet & talk with people, conduct internal user interview, to understand their individual goals/KPIs/interests and connect them around a story.
2. Find your stakeholders
Common interests outline the stakeholders whose approval/support will be essential for design research. Design research is not a one-man show it is a corporate wise capability. Remember, users are not only people who will use your product, your (internal) users are your colleagues, your peers, your leaders etc. As Don Norman puts it:
Yes. Designers often ask me why their management doesn’t seem to understand their value. And I say, follow HCD principles: Know your user — and your most important user, if you want them to understand and respect the work of the design team is your client or the boss of your boss (I assume your boss understands what you do). Speak their language, which is not pretty displays, figures, etc., it is spreadsheets. — Don Norman, Linkedin
PRO TIP: create a Miro board and design a map of your internal stakeholders but also categorise them. There are people who are needed as collaborators, there are people who are needed as sponsors of your initiative and there are people who will approve your research.
Think holistically.
A very personal based advise: Build strong and good relationship with the head of business, sales and marketing because usually they will be your best friends in this story.
3. Productise design research
In order to be able to effectively sell design research, you will need to communicate effectively. You need to have different key messages and hooks for different stakeholders in different situations.
PRO TIP: In order to be able to confidently reasoning for the importance of your research, you need a one-sentence, a one-paragraph and a one-pager version of why the given research is important. (These versions can be derived from the research plan ofc.)
Personal best example: Here is my favourite example, where Balaji Srinivasan one of the best and brightest mind of our age express a very complex topic in one sentence, in one image, in paragraph and 1000 words. (And in one essay 😉)
I hope you find these short thoughts handy and useful — if so you can 👏 or follow me.
Cheers. ✌️
