What is disruptive design?
Have you been told before that your interface design was not disruptive enough and you started wondering what on earth is disruptive design?
This term is used by people that do not fathom what they are talking about or on a better level, those that do not know how to get across what they have in mind.
A miscommunication problem or down right “I have got no clue, I just needed to throw some words around to make me sound smart”.
Innovation most times is misused for disruptions. When you break it further down, most times management wants change but do not know how to say it and how to go about it.
In such case, my good friend, use your problem solving skill or as we say it these days, “design thinking”, to get to the root of the enquirer’s intent or problem.
Ask the person what do they mean by disruption in design? Then you will start hearing stuff that are way beyond the company design team “restricted scope of work”. What you will be hearing will be way closer to an holistic and top to bottom features and functionalities creation, requirement gathering, new approach to work, culture change and most importantly new business offering. So much, so that you start thinking they wanted another company entirely — a new startup.
Before I go on rambling, you can guess where this sort of questioning and design team interrogation mostly occur and why, right?
An established tech company or traditional non-tech company with over 1000 employees just realised that 3 university dropouts in their metaphorical basement are just about to take on, successfully, some or major part of their customer base.
Time to look for hail Mary and magic wand from the design team. And there is no better phrase for that than “Why are you not delivering a disruptive design?” Or your design is not disruptive enough?”
The disruption is in the company overall offerings. There is little to nothing your design team can do if your business offerings and approaches are not inline with what you desire.
And no, you can’t bring in someone and say hey make us disruptive in a day.
However, a person can come in and start to advise, hire, influence and direct the company towards that elusive disruption so many established companies are after.
Take a look at the fintech as an example, and you will notice a trend. The bankers have not been oblivious to all the “innovative ideas “ that the new fintech are bringing to life. It is either that they don’t have the gut to implement this, or do not have empathy for the customers to care enough to do anything to make customers life better.
Talk of the amount of time and energy it takes to open an account. If your design team made that happen, a seamless opening of bank account within two screens without visiting any branch, will you approve it? Will you jointly work with them as a domain expert to solve the security concern this might bring up? Or will you use the security concern as mere excuse? Do you have the company culture and management structure to implement it? No.
If you want disruptive design understand what product design really entails. You can start by looking at:
1- Aesthetics design team vs Real Product design team
One of Steve Jobs most popular quote is that “Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works”.
Companies management team most times unknowingly tie their design team hand by limiting their input within the product development process and turning them into artefacts, properties and components beauticians.
Please, dear manager, see design as what designing a product really means. An holistic bringing to life of an idea or solving a problem.
If and when the managers at a company, that are supposed to direct the said company to a new height, do not know what disruptive is or what design really entails, then the company problem is not only being disruptive. The company longevity itself is seriously in question.
2- Is Your Company structure onboard with the above?
Inline with the above, bring on your board or management team or whatever the position, where the decisions as to the direction of the company is taken, someone or group of people that understand and practice the above point 1, so that they can help direct the company towards that illusive disruption you so desire.
Review your company structure and see if its towards innovation or keeping up with the status quo and readjust it to what you desire.
3- Be a design led company rather than development led company
Don’t just talk about it, be about it. You can’t make all decisions in a silo without the design team involvement and say you are design led company.
4- Design thinking
If they don’t understand the problem in details and customers pain points then they are just making an art, rather than product design. When you see and treat your design team as pixels creator rather than product team, then expect nothing more than a beautiful screens.
So, Dear Managers,
Please, quit asking your design team for the abstract. Disruptive design indeed!
Your friend,
Yusuf Hassan
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