Earning Design’s Seat at the Table
A seminar chat on how design can overcome the challenge of influencing business.
I was recently part of a seminar discussion with a great group of design and product thinkers brought together by John Maeda. Along with my co-host for the seminar, Karin Hibma, we chatted with the group about the challenges that design often faces in influencing business decisions and strategy. As someone currently learning how to navigate this ambiguous space, I found their insight and advice to be immensely helpful. By sharing some of their stories and ideas, I hope to shed a little light on the hurdles that design often faces, and help open up conversations that can lead to better ways of influencing business through design thinking.
Where We Are Today
For many companies without a foundation in design, business culture is often built on traditionally objective, quantitative and predictive business models. In practice, these models are more prevalent than design thinking, and while design is now a recognized success factor in business, it’s often not as easy to quantify its value. The use of data has become a popular way to measure aspects of a product, but data is often just one way to slice impact, and it can often struggle to reveal the more elusive, qualitative aspects of design. Many companies are now starting to embrace the potential of design, but it can take time to foster a design culture. Meanwhile, business and design are finding themselves in the same room — and struggling to understand each other. It’s not surprising then that designers are now facing the challenge of learning to communicate the importance of design decisions to business.
The Influence of Design
“Design has to be insulated at a high level. Otherwise, you can forget it.” Dieter Rams
On an interview with Cliff Kuang, Dieter Rams explained how his work was “only possible” at Braun through his closeness to company leadership — this is likely also true for Jonathan Ive’s role at Apple. But how do design leaders reach that level of influence in the first place?
As my co-host Karin Hibma pointed out, “designers have to earn their place at the table in business strategy and decision-making. If a designer is only focused on their creation, they miss the cues for the big picture… Authority comes from the certainty that not only is the ground you’re building on solid, but the direction you’re building toward has a future. Leadership comes from being able to filter the chaos, prototype, listen again, execute and deliver.” In other words, in order to be successful designers will need to understand not just the context they’re designing for, but the constraints and affordances of the one they’re designing within.
But perhaps as Karin also referenced, the trouble is that “designers create whole solutions to complex problems, which result in meaning and impact greater than the sum of their parts.” That “greater sum” can be harder to communicate and quantify, especially when you’re looking for early buy-in and belief in a long-term vision.
“Therein (partly) lies the greater challenge of design ‘authority’ at the executive level of influence,” shared Uday Gajendar. “Much of it will be resolved (hopefully) over time through demonstrations each of us make in our respective contexts. That will hopefully serve as the ‘social proof’ executives require.”
Maybe one of the reasons that design has a harder time powering its influence is the fact that, at least in the the space of technology, it constantly works alongside engineering. As John Maeda mentioned, “engineering works within what can be measured objectively. Design works within what can be felt objectively and subjectively. ” Which is perhaps exactly why, as Megs Fulton explained, “it’s our job as designers to help make that value tangible.”
Another valid point that came up was the lack of well known process and role terminology, making it difficult for design to be understood and adapted to business. This will likely take longer to sort out as design becomes more settled within both new and more established companies.
In the end, the way to help design gain influence seems rooted in helping to demystify its practice (and value) by including others in the design process more deeply. After all, if a company is focused on creating a product or service with the best possible experience, that outcome will stem from the joint effort of everyone involved — in ways big or small.
Play the Long Game
So how do you go about demystifying design? There is no silver bullet, but if you’re working within a less design-savvy company, you can begin the worthwhile investment of building a design culture through these actionable pieces of advice. A giant thanks to Megs Fulton and Mike Davidson for their insight.
Teach Design
Get your exec team involved in the design process, build their design vocabulary, teach them what makes a design good and educate them on basic user experience principles and patterns. Take the time to explain the “why” and demystify design for them. The more they understand what goes into the process and rationale of your design work, the more they’ll understand its value and stop seeing it as just “making things pretty.”
Build and Develop Allies
If you’re working with a design team, this is easy — you’ve got built in allies. If not, find someone or several someones on your team (or elsewhere in the company) who are just as passionate as you are about delivering a great user experience. You may not always be in the room when decisions are being made, and it’s really powerful to have a team of people who are always looking out for the integrity of the user experience. (Don’t be a gatekeeper!)
Get Feedback Early and Often
Don’t be afraid to show things that are half-baked. Grabbing someone for 10–15 minutes and running your ideas by them makes for an effective design cycle, and also gives everyone insight into your process while getting them involved early. Just be sure to establish parameters for what feedback you’re looking for so that things can stay on-track.
Share Progress - Make the Experience Theirs Too
If you get constructive feedback, come back in a week or two and share with that person how the work has evolved with their input. It is now progress you can share as a team.
Understand the Power — and Limitations — of Data
It’s easy to misrepresent data — either purposefully or accidentally. You added a fourth button and a ton of people clicked on it? Great! But did you also know that the fourth button caused the number of clicks on other buttons to decrease? Or even… that it caused a certain amount of product abandonment? Or had a novelty effect that wore off after the A/B test was over? Or maybe that it wasn’t measured correctly to begin with? That may seem like a lot to consider, but if you’re going to use data to your advantage, you need to make sure you’re understanding the complete picture.
Contextualize Data and Use it to Your Advantage
Quantitative feedback is only half of the equation. Getting regular qualitative feedback is just as important as having solid analytics. Run those sessions on your own if you need to. Compare your findings to the numbers and share them with the team. Better yet, invite them to sit in on the sessions and hear from the customers firsthand. If there are pain points in the product, everyone should know what they are and internalize them (instead of turning a blind-eye and hiding behind analytics). A little bit of empathy and sharing can go a long way in getting people to acknowledge that the numbers won’t tell you everything.
Speak the Language
Take the time understand and ask questions about the medium used to build your product, and the tools that will help measure its success — whether that is through engineering platforms, data tools, product management, etc. Be ready to have conversations about those spaces as it relates to design. It’s important to always remember that what matters to you in any negotiation is not necessarily what matters to the other person. Understanding the other person’s values and motivations will help you identify constraints and communicate to solve problems together.
Set Up a Collaborative Team Structure
A properly-staffed team has PMs, engineers, researchers, and designers, all involved very early in the product planning and development process. No role is more important than any other. Make it a point to start and finish the work together, sharing initial goals and outcomes of the work.
A special thank you to Mike Davidson, Megs Fulton, Uday Gajendar, Karin Hibma, John Maeda, Johnnie Manzari, Greg Neustaetter and Jackie Xu for your contribution to the conversation as well as your invaluable advice.
