4.0 Findings and analysis
Interviews with ten industry professionals were conducted for the purpose of this research and the data collected was analysed using thematic analysis. Nine recurring themes were identified in the analysis, which in turn were grouped into three main categories. In this chapter the researcher will describe the analysed research findings in detail, theme by theme. The quotes used in this chapter have been translated into English.
A note on terminology
Although the term “design” is used in this study and in the pre-planned interview questions, this term can cause ambiguity and confusion. Hence the terminology used in the pre-planned interview questions and in the conversation with the interviewees was adapted when necessary, depending on the terminology or jargon used by each individual research participant. In the context of this study, the term “design” is interchangeable with terms like “human centricity”, “user oriented”, “user experience”, “design thinking”, “service design”, “customer first”, even “innovation” or any other combination of these terms. To present and analyse the research findings with as much clarity as possible, “design” is used as a collective term in this chapter.
4.1 Strategy and key factors
Lean principles and entrepreneurial mindsets
One pattern that became obvious just from the first few interviews is the use of lean-startup concepts in large corporations. Some companies have already adopted certain lean practices and others are looking to the startup world for ideas about how to improve their operations. What they have in common is the motivation to find a new and better way of managing, funding and running projects in corporate organisations.
The vast majority of today’s projects in corporate organisations are linear. They are planned from start to deadline with milestones along the way, the use of resources is estimated and allocated up front and the project costs are very often attached to the fiscal year. Several of the interviewees share the opinion that project management needs to change for organisations to increase their agility, efficiency and, thereby, their competitiveness. In fact, management in general ought to become more entrepreneurial. As the strategic designer at telecommunications company Telenor put it:
We are working on improving the way we run our projects. An alternative could be to emulate startups. They have an idea, test hypotheses, get validation, come up with a solution and then make a pitch to investors…This way we could get the chance to pivot until we have come up with something really good that is ready for implementation.
In addition to being inspired by lean-startup concepts in the improvement of project management, many of the interviews revealed that the lean mindset is being implemented in the simple day-to-day workings of the organisations. One example is the effort to increase the internal tolerance for failure and to help people understand that learning from failures can be an acceptable goal in itself. Another example is the increased focus on collecting customer feedback, as explained by the founder and CEO of accounting application Fiken:
We are very conscious abut pushing things into production early so that we can test them and get customer feedback, instead of sitting and thinking and pondering over them for too long.
Understanding the problem
All of the research participants addressed the issue of shifting the management’s focus towards meeting customer needs and solving customers’ problems. They described how they have made efforts to help the management understand the value of doing research to gain a thorough understanding of the problems that need to be solved, rather than focusing on solutions right away. When describing this issue, some of the research participants referred to the first two stages of the design process (described in section 2.1 in Chapter 2 and illustrated in figure 4) and others referred to the divergent phase of the Double Diamond Model (described in section 2.1 in Chapter 2 and shown in figure 5).
According to the research participants, gaining an acceptance for spending time on research and to frame the problem at hand, is a crucial step toward implementing design on a strategic level in the organisation. A Lean Innovation Coach at the financial services group DNB described how the organisation’s management has started to understand the importance of focusing on problem solving:
Traditionally, one focused on the deliverables and the requirements, and success was determined on the basis of the progress according to the requirements. We’re moving away from that now. The management is beginning to understand what an outcome focus is and are starting to act accordingly. Instead of saying ‘I want this app’, they are saying ‘the customers have this problem — how do we solve it?’. In meetings, they no longer ask ‘how much have you built?’, but ‘to what degree are we able to solve the problem?’. We’re getting there!
For the research participants that represented startup companies, starting with a problem worth solving is a foundational principle.
Going all in
Although it was never explicitly expressed, it became clear from the research participants’ accounts and experiences that when it comes to implementing design at a strategic level, it is not enough to change just one part of the organisation. Putting together a team of designers will not have the intended impact if the rest of the organisation remains the same. Likewise, sending employees to design courses is not going to change much unless one reconsiders the organisation’s operating model. The Group Leader of Digital Design and UX at NRK, the Norwegian government-owned radio and television public broadcasting company, was one of the research participants who pinpointed this:
Other departments’ priorities do not necessarily correlate with ours. It can take a very long time before we get a new category in the web TV solution, simply because it was not a priority for another department. We are working on consolidating these different development processes, which in turn gives us the opportunity to think differently about the role of design.
Embedding design in the organisational culture was listed a crucial factor by several of the research participants when addressing the topic of organisational change. The software engineer at Storebrand was one of them:
The most difficult part is changing the culture. A lot of the older people in the organisation are trying to understand why we should do things differently now. It’s hard to change people’s habits and mindsets.
Still, the interviews showed that it is important to change just a little at a time and to clearly communicate how things will change and why. Implementing sudden and radical changes throughout an organisation can cause resistance and discontent, and at worst, result in people leaving the organisation.
4.2 Inspiring, leading and spreading change
Rebels and grassroots movements
The interviews revealed that the shift toward design-driven business strategy often begins as a result of grassroots movements and bottom-up change. The vast majority of the research participants described how they or other key individuals in their organisations began to operate differently without asking for permission; they spent more time on user research, startet to test prototypes and validated their ideas. In very few of the cases studied in this research had the shift started as top-down change initiative.
Triggers for organisational change
In the context of becoming more design driven, the research participants told of how they levered for change. They turned poorly designed internal systems to one’s advantage by using them as a reference point for helping people in the organisation understand the concepts of user experience. Similarly, they used unsuccessful projects as leverage for change; for applying design principles in projects and even for hiring people with design skills. The Head of Applications at the internet service provider Altibox gave an example:
We just came out of a bad case where we failed to meet the customer requirements and it created noise in social media. I used its momentum to ask people ‘what do we do to keep this from happening again?’ Well, we have to listen to the customers from the very first moment.
The use of various triggers for organisational change was an important insight from the interviews. Interestingly, the interviews revealed that the research participants themselves in many cases had served as triggers for change. For some of the participants, advocating for the use of design in the organisation had been a deliberate and conscious choice. Other participants seemed unaware of their key role in the organisational development. In these cases, it became clear through their anecdotes or accounts of events.
From the interviews, taking the various answers into account, the researcher made the observation that four different roles can inspire change in an organisation: the change agent, the interpreter, the learning partner and the consultant.
The change agent takes responsibility for ensuring that change happens. It is the change agent that uses the momentum of unsuccessful projects or the frustration toward difficult internal systems to leverage change. He or she makes an effort to influence the people in the organisation to accept and understand the potential of design, for example by gathering people to watch a documentary about design and innovation or by educating the management about design. The change agent might not have consciously taken on the role as change agent, but acts as a trigger for change as a result of a genuine will to improve the organisation.
The interpreter plays an important role in prohibiting resistance to change, breaking down silos and increasing the understanding of design. He or she maintains a dialogue between the departments or teams and between the top management and the rest of the organisation, and helps the parties understand each other by interpreting and “translating” their perspectives to the others. This interpretation between different parties within the organisation makes an important contribution to maintaining a positive organisational culture.
The learning partner appears in organisations where the top management is older and lacks knowledge about digitalisation and innovation. The learning partner is typically a younger member of staff with a background in technology or business development who has the knowledge that the management lacks. A senior manager and his or her learning partner meet on regular occasions. The learning partner can give advice and input, and answer any questions in an understandable way. Sometimes, this partnership is part of a formal HR initiative to keep the top management up to date, but it can also form organically and randomly.
Consultants can also inspire change in organisations. Consultants are often required to have a greater focus on continuous professional development and sharing of knowledge to win projects and clients, and bring their updated expertise and sharing mindset into their client organisations. The research showed that employees who used to work in consulting also can have this effect on an organisation.
Spreading the message
Just like unsuccessful projects are being used as leverage for change, the research discovered that it only takes one successful design-driven project to demonstrate the value of strategic design. Several of the research participants described how their first design-driven projects soon created value and they did their best to spread the news to create a ripple effect in the rest of the organisation. The Head of Applications at Altibox described one example of this:
As soon as we had launched the third demo we could hear people in the organisation talk about the enormous value of continuous testing and creating good user experiences. They got it very quickly.
Some invited people to open sessions where they would present the project, their learnings and give demonstrations of the prototypes they built. Others collected and shared customer feedback in the organisation, or presented their results and the methodology to the top management. An Innovation Catalyst at the telecommunications company Telia explained how facts and real results with customers were crucial for demonstrating the value of design:
It gets much simpler if you can demonstrate some real results. The fact that we could say that we had been out in the streets talking to people and knocking on doors, and the fact that we had built something tangible in terms of these prototypes made it so much simpler for people to give us the backing we needed. If we just talk about it, it’s too fluffy. You need some facts and real things.
For some, the powerful impact of user stories can make all the difference, as described by a service designer at a public Norwegian health organisation:
I can shout about this as loudly as I can. That’s what I’m doing and have been doing for all these years. But I think that the end user needs to shout with me. It is the user stories that have the potential to affect the decision makers in the organisation…It is the user stories that can create the ripple effect that is needed.
The research showed that one single design-driven project that creates value is the key to unlocking excitement and curiosity, and for starting the process of convincing decision makers of the strategic potential of design.
4.3 Interaction and collaboration
Organisational structures and teams
The interviews showed that breaking down silos between departments is a high priority in many of the organisations. This means moving away from the traditional field-specific teams (e.g. design, technology or business development) and aim for multidisciplinary teams that each focus on a specific customer segment or product. It is believed that this new way of structuring teams will increase the organisation’s agility and capacity for change and innovation, and thereby its competitiveness.
However, the research participants had varying experience with in-house innovation labs or other forms of separate teams dedicated to innovating the organisation. While it worked well for some, a software engineer at insurance company Storebrand described it as a failed experiment:
One thing we learned a lot from was our initial organisation with an OpEx team, which handled all maintenance of legacy systems, and growth teams responsible for new development and commercial growth. We experienced over time that this did not work as expected. It gave people on the OpEx team a feeling of being put on the B team, which created a bad atmosphere, so we changed the organisation so that all teams work on both maintenance and new development.
Another key finding is related to the retention of talents in the organisation. Retaining the best designers requires more from the organisation when the designers are spread across several multidisciplinary teams. The organisations that are able to retain their designers have a strong and centralised design leadership and an active professional learning community. The Design Manager at Laerdal, a manufacturer of medical equipment and medical training products, shared some learnings:
For many, perhaps particularly for the young and very talented, being a designer is very closely connected to their professional identity. This means that it is crucial for them to belong to a strong design community and to report to another designer.
Performance management is also an important issue in relation to effective team work. Rather than individual objectives, which can cause individuals to be protective of their ideas, some of the research participants recommended team objectives for creating a stronger sense of community, a culture of sharing and collaborating, and for prohibiting resistance to change.
Jargon issues and solutions
A very clear finding from the interviews is the challenges and misunderstandings connected to design jargon and terminology. The discipline of strategic design lacks maturity and “design” is therefore still closely associated with art, embellishment and visual graphics. The research participants described how these misconceptions often make it difficult to have productive conversations about the use of strategic design, but also how they have attempted to solve this issue. In several of the organisations studied in this research, the terminology related to design has been discarded in favour of a more unambiguous alternative, exemplified by the strategic designer at Telenor:
We don’t use the term “design thinking”, but call it “red way of work”. This is a way of getting rid of [the misconceptions related to] design and have a collective term for all of these buzzwords that come from the lean startup world and design thinking, and everything in between.
Chaos and structure
A pattern found amongst the startup companies is the absence of formalism and bureaucracy. Because startups tend to be small in terms of the number of employees, they do not need to establish a lot of processes and routines. Instead, they maintain their agility by using tools and implementing routines that facilitate iterations, experiments and efficient teamwork. The project management application Trello, the collaboration tool Slack and daily stand-up meetings are common choices. Like the founder and CEO of Fiken put it:
Although we need some formalism, we try to keep it to a minimum. We have daily stand-up meetings, but we mostly just try to be pragmatic and adapt our way of working to the tasks that we have in front of us.
The founder and CEO of Think Outside, a startup company making a wearable avalanche risk assessment tool, also explained her balancing act between chaos and structure:
Once I recovered from the first shock of not thinking linearly or in milestones, I was able to embrace the chaos, and find tools and methods that provide a form for structure in the chaos.
Success stories
Besides the themes and patterns described in this chapter, the interviews also revealed several stories of big success as result of strategic design. For the medical equipment manufacturer Laerdal, customer observations and insights prompted the development of a low-dose high-frequency resuscitation training programme, which delivered impressive results. In just two years, a Texas hospital documented substantial cost savings related to resuscitation training and a 21 percent increase in survivals after cardiac arrest. According to a service designer at a Norwegian health organisation, design has also created positive outcomes in the Norwegian health sector; a service design project at the hospital in Oslo resulted in a 90 percent reduction in the time from suspicion of breast cancer to diagnosis. Finally, the Group Leader of Digital Design and UX at the public broadcaster NRK explained that the Norwegian TV series Skam, which broke viewership records and received international acclaim, is also a product of deep insight and design thinking.
© Nadine Ramsberg, 2018
Hyper Island — MA Digital Management
Industry Research Project
