Assigning Business Value to Design
I have heard it again and again: ‘our organization wants to prioritize design and make a better product for our end-users.’ Usually, they have heard about Apple or Google, or other large-scale tech companies that have large design teams that succeed by making well-informed and well-designed projects.
The problem? Well, we all know design matters. It makes a difference. But when that difference can’t be put into tangible words or visible data, the investment in design gets harder and harder for businesses to make.
I’ve worked for a variety of design teams; agency teams are brought into small companies who need a quick win, large companies starting new design teams, and small start-ups working on a skeleton crew trying to make do. All of this has given me the perspective of truly understanding how to make the contributions I make to an organization as a UX designer truly meaningful.
The golden rule, our time is money
One of the most significant areas I focus goals on is improving the time it takes to complete a task.
When improving processes, accurate time tracking is key. I keep a time tracking document, detailing almost every day of my career dating back to 2013, that allows me to see opportunities to improve my processes, and possibly, the processes of my teammates.
I’ve seen this in action when I proposed an improvement to the process of creating ‘themes’ in a SaaS website creation tool. Each new customer to the platform needed a stylesheet aligned to their brand and included styles for everything from text to complex components. I saw the process took approximately 8–12 hours for a mid to senior-level developer to create a large CSS stylesheet. I suggested streamlining the files we used as ‘templates’, creating clear variables that even a non-developer could update, having a possible impact of reducing the time spent on themes by 4–6 hours. Indeed, by releasing new files to our services team, we realized that time reduction and could quickly calculate the cost reduction for the company in terms of resource time. Our ability to produce themes not only had a 50% reduction in time, but also expanded the available resources by simplifying the process for junior level developers and designers to be able to code.
Reusability frees up resources to solve more complex problems
Implementing a strong design system is a difficult task, especially when design systems are a relatively new idea. When speaking of design systems, it’s really important to look at it through a lens of capital versus operating and maintenance (O&M). In a business, you want to reduce your operating costs (OPEX) and focus spending whenever possible on capital costs (CAPEX). A design system can be categorized as a capital cost, as it is a large investment in the future of a product for a company. It can heavily improve the process for both designers and developers, creating a reduction in OPEX activities, such as:
-Code or UI refactoring
-Design reviews and syncs solely focused on the visual design of elements
-Research
-Development
-QA
Design systems can drastically reduce or eliminate the time spent on these types of maintenance tasks. This frees up time for designers and developers to commit more to feature implementation that improves the product, instead of spinning wheels on fighting over the right color for a button.
Getting it right the first time saves money
Most products can’t roll out a sub-par product as a first launch and iterate on it. When Apple launched the iPhone in 2007, it was not a fluke. It was a well-thought-out product that had years of design and research (and the knowledge of one failed product) into it. I’ve heard many times in my career, “We will launch an MVP and iterate until we get good enough.” And while a minimum viable product has its place, what defines an MVP becomes the problem, because it often involves a lack of design, or at its worst, complete elimination of design from the process.
Designers are not developers, and developers are not designers. We have different functions, specialties, and skills. And while the two go hand in hand, there are reasons why we hire both an architect and a contractor to build a home. The design allows us to iterate on interfaces and flows early, quickly, and cheaply. For me to build out a single feature for an application may take me from 20–40 hours, often spread across 2–8 weeks. During that time, I iterate, meet with stakeholders and users, and change the design until it’s a correct representation of what is needed from both the business and the users. If a team had to implement what I was working on with real data and code? It’s often 2–5 developers working for at the same time. Let’s assume we all are paid the same rate — it’s a cost of somewhere between 2–10 times more to develop a feature prior to design. That is without including any cost for updates based on feedback. While the feature gets out there because 2–8 weeks were saved by skipping design, the true cost, and possible ramifications, are alarming.
A most important example comes from an idea within a large company I worked for to use facial recognition to ‘check-in’ vs. scanning their physical employee badge. Management was excited about the possibility of using the enticing future technology, but thankfully, they decided to test a quick wireframe prototype with users across the company. The result? Most employees had no interest in their employer using facial recognition to identify them. This meant hundreds of thousands of dollars saved on not developing an app first that no one had an interest in using.
The understanding business sells design
In our design schools, we don’t talk enough about why design matters in a business sense, in their terms. For years, I could identify ideas without being able to tie them to the true value. For example, ‘if we improve how this feature work, our users will be happy’ doesn’t provide a concrete data point to measure against.
This skill takes time to build, and without going to night school, there are a few ways to hone it. Partnering with someone in the company you work at to understand the business, including the budget or scope of your project, can help you figure out where your time is most valuable. Many companies offer training resources in process improvement and financial acumen that can help explain why design is needed from a completely different lens. A simple way to start? Look at how much your hourly rate is (possibly just your hourly pay, or at an agency, what a client is charged for your work) and track your time. See where you spend a lot of time, and if there are any possible improvements. When you try something, note it. It’s small, but being able to speak with a manager about how you are spending 4 hours on a task, and believe with an improvement to a process that requires some work up front, you could be spending half that time, can truly showcase your value as a designer.
