Introducing the Design Maturity Series
An inquiry into measuring the impact of design throughout an organization
Zalando aims to be a customer-centric company and we believe product designers and user researchers can help lead the way to embedding human-centric ways of working throughout the organization. Of course, in order to do this it is necessary to be able to measure and quantify the impact and overall value of design over time and throughout different areas of the business.
Many companies today express the desire to become more customer oriented or design driven, yet they often don’t know where to start. We propose that organizational design maturity models can provide a sort of orientation or starting point for such companies, or even serve as a map for charting out a change management strategy. It’s about maximizing the impact designers have throughout the organization. For instance, if we are able to understand that one particular team in a company is lacking in maturity, this can help us to focus our resources where they are most needed.
Many companies today express the desire to become more customer oriented or design driven, yet they often don’t know where to start.
It is in this spirit of inquiry that we are introducing the Design Maturity Series. We’ll discuss the strengths and weaknesses of existing maturity models, present our own maturity model, tackle topics like the utility of designers using business metrics and whether some companies should bypass maturity models altogether.
As part of our inquiry into the topic we convened the IxDA Berlin Think Tank on design maturity in December 2017. We gathered several design leaders from organizations throughout Berlin to discuss the various existing design models and how they might be utilized within their organization to evolve and reinvent their product design and development practices.
After an introductory ice breaking session talking about the participants’ craziest past jobs (a former circus performer and steel mill worker were among the crowd), the discussion moved onto goals for the evening. Each participant discussed what they hoped to achieve in a night devoted to maturity models. Hilde Schömers of Lab1886 hoped to get some insight into how other organizations overcome barriers to user-centricity, and Jan Michaelis of HERE wanted to get some ideas about how to quantify the business value of design. Others were hoping to discover models that would actually help to measure design maturity, rather than just provide descriptions and some were looking for new perspectives of design maturity.
Each of the participants had been asked to present one of the existing maturity models, pointing out both pros and cons. Among the models discussed were Jakob Nielsen’s 2006 UX Maturity Model, IDEO’s Creative Difference Survey, Artefact’s Design Maturity Survey, and Sony’s Three Dimensions of a Design-driven Company. These models, and others, will be discussed at length in future posts.
After the presentations, the workshop participants worked on the practical application of maturity models through a series of case studies:
- Becoming user-centered- A company from a traditional industry (i.e. book publishing or property management) wants to consciously transition to being a customer-focused, user-driven company.
The goal: Determine the baseline UCD maturity in order to measure progress going forward. - Tying maturity to value Management asks for the value of design for the business before making further investments. Designers are becoming restless and want to work in a more mature environment.
The goal: Increase funding / headcount for research and design. - Differentiating in order to maximize impact
A design manager in a huge organization with multiple levels of maturity wants to understand differences across the company to be able to explain why a diversity of practices should be welcomed.
The goal: Uncover and raise awareness for low-maturity areas in order to take steps to raise the bar across the org.
A lively discussion ensued and a number of points were raised concerning existing models:
- How do we define value?
- Why should we assume high maturity is better for every company?
- Designers not getting credit for their work leads to low maturity, so how do we help designers claim ownership for what they contribute?
- Should designers use business-based metrics?
- How do we quantify dimensions of UX?
- Why does design maturity differ throughout different departments in the same company?
- How do we create non-linear measures of design maturity?
The outcomes of this workshop will serve as a sort of roadmap into our inquiry into design maturity. We hope to address the questions raised and answer some of the concerns surrounding existing models with our own model, one that takes the focus off of individual behavior, placing it instead on the team and organizational level.
We would love to hear from you if you are working on ways to measure maturity in your own organization, or if you are interested in learning more about our methods.
Contributors Jay Kaufmann & Franziska Roth
