What is Design Value?
A blogpost by Jia Vera
How do we evaluate the value of design? This question keeps ringing in our ears.
We all understand that the value of design is difficult to define. Design is hard to isolate as a function, and the design function operates differently from industry to industry. That makes benchmarking to standardized measurement metrics difficult.
In the UCAN opening speech, Qing Yun, lead of Alibaba Design, shared the three milestones for designers in Alibaba who explore the concept of design value.
Design Value 1.0:
That was around 10 years ago. Internet at that time was as a sales channel. Design value was based on platform experience.
All the internet products are emphasizing on data, such as UV, PV, click rate, retention rate, etc. but all of these measurements are also related to business model, quality of engineering, etc. It’s hard to measure and reflect the value of design. This phase, we call it Big User Experience.
Back then, the design team at Alibaba was called UED.
At the first stage, Alibaba design team focuses on supporting business. At that time, the Alibaba design team was more focused on experience design based on the Internet. For example, if some products want to create a website, designers will support implementation together with technology.
Design Value 2.0:
With increasingly more people becoming familiar and comfortable with the experience of online shopping , the Internet has become a gathering place for industry brands. It focuses on consumer communication, rather than platform experience.
The design team in Alibaba changed to Alibaba Design (from 2019)
The slogan was “Make business beautiful and simple”.
The second stage was to expand business boundaries. Designers in Alibaba gradually turned from online to offline. They reached to other design categories, including product design, space design, creative design and user experience design. Designers create value for different categories of businesses in these areas.
Alibaba also focused on finding users accurately. For the home page or browsing page, thousands of users had thousands of interfaces. Big data algorithm model presented different contents according to different user needs and consumption levels, so as to improve the conversion rate.
The value of design is on Content design and creative design, focusing on content and brand.
Design Value 3.0:
Despite their success among global online retailers, Alibaba didn’t stop there. Instead, they start to think “How can we define the value of design in the next decade?”
They anticipated that the Internet will become an innovative partner for businesses. Design value begins to focus on commodity innovation. So at that time, design value in Alibaba is reflected by “Designed by Alibaba Design”.
The third stage is design acting on business and directly producing business value. For example, there are many business and new brands on Tmall. They have ideas, but they don’t have the ability to develop products. Alibaba design group hope to establish a designer platform to help them do new product development.
The biggest difference between Alibaba’s design team and other companies’ design teams is that they are gradually transitioning from an original supporting team to a team that directly generates business value.
Design plus: Industrial Design with User Experience Design
In fact, these innovations come from a young design team — Alibaba design Incubation Center (ADIC).
https://adic.alibabadesign.com/
This design team, which are mainly industrial designers, under the resources of Tmall and global high-quality design innovation resources, define the products and start design at a better and lower cost.
In addition to this, they conclude the industry development trend report on different domains, such as kitchen appliances, residential decoration, child care, personal care and health care, beauty care, etc.
Under the design of ADIC, many products under different brands become best seller products.
Good user experience encompasses multiple aspects, not only in the traditional sense of user experience, but also includes reasonable Ergonomics data, good product modeling and strong visual appearance.
