I recently taught at the Stanford d.school, and was delighted to see that 1/3 the students were studying Design, 1/3 studying Business, and 1/3 came from a variety of disciplines. This certainly showcased the importance and versatility of design thinking! While perhaps not intuitive to everyone, these guys got it – they got how design enhances business results.
A seeming dichotomy?
Traditionally, we might think of design as craft and creativity – and to be clear, these are certainly critical to great design. However, an understanding of user needs and business goals should also sit at the core of what designers do.
On the other hand, business leaders often value financial performance, strategic planning, or product development as top priorities. But great design is critical to creating a great user experience, which is core to delivering on any financial goals.
In sum, great design isn’t only about how things appear, it’s about seamless functionality and delightful experience. And as with any business priority, we don’t get there accidentally. Strong design comes from a deep understanding of user needs, reflection and foresight on industry trends, and fluency with the latest tech.
Design Thinking Saves Money
Optimizing your user experience, or UX, saves you money. How? Great design upfront reduces disappointment, which means lost users or potential users. Also, a well-designed experience delivers everything a user is looking for, which reduces the need and expense of customer support. In fact, one tech organization estimates that 25% of all project failures are due to poor design!
Design Generates Revenue
Every design decision has an impact on the user experience, which directly impacts our ability to make money. For instance, great design brings in intrigued consumers, keeps them engaged, seamlessly converts that interest to trial, and retains loyal users. Forrester, one of the most influential advisory firms in the world, estimates that for every dollar invested in UX, there’s a return of $990!
See, it’s not just about bringing customers from awareness to trial and loyalty, awesome design reduces friction across the user journey. This ensures a delightful experience, which can often become a competitive advantage. How many websites or apps do you stay on for over a minute, waiting for a page to load? (I’d guess NONE).
Some Tips for Design that Enhances Business
- Learn about the business: What are we trying to achieve? What are our goals?
- Ruthlessly prioritize: Identify the most critical product features and perfect them.
- Clock the miliseconds: Reduce every tiny bit of friction you can in the user experience.
- Marie Kondo the thing: Remove every bit of unnecessary clutter that doesn’t add value.
- Make technology your friend: Learn how to use tools that enable simplicity and efficiency.
- Iterate: Recognize you won’t get it perfect the first time, and let consumers inform quick, agile improvements.
- Monitor and Evolve: Watch and learn how design drives growth, not on a monthly basis but on a daily, hourly basis.
Oh, and Design Thinking Makes us Better Leaders, too.
Design thinking enables efficient problem-solving. Over the last 25 years, I’ve witnessed how leaders generally approach problems with either: 1) An engineering mindset, or 2) A designer mindset.
For instance, an engineering approach starts with collecting and analyzing the data available. We take a methodical approach based on what has been done in the past, the current challenge at hand, and a view of where we need to go in the future.
On the other hand, to solve a design challenge, we start with the end in mind. What does success look like? This can massively expand our consideration set and approach, to develop as many divergent solutions as possible!
So, rather than seen as a dichotomy, Design and Business come together to make us and our business better.
For a related article, check out The value of experiential design, What I learned in an emerging market
Images made with Dalle 3