How design projects can align with business objectives
The rules of business are being rewritten and it’s the designers that are leading the way.
Note: This is the written version of a talk I shared at the Etch Summer Summit 2017.
I’ve been involved with design and the internet for over a decade now and I’ve found that more than ever, design-led companies are outperforming those that aren’t.
But to set some context, let’s start with a story.
In 2009, a small company formed in Canada and they created a browser-based game which they launched in 2011. They thought it would go big.
It was described as:
“Monty Python crossed with Dr. Seuss on acid.”
Despite gaining cult status, the game shut down a year later, citing “limited audience appeal”.
The business had money left over from VC investment, and paying that back made a lot of sense, but they didn’t do that.
Instead, they let about 30 employees go and spent a chunk of the VC money and a solid month finding a job for each every one of them. That was a really cool thing to do.
The remaining team took a hard look at what they had around them and what they could turn into a product.
While they were building the video game, they used internet relay chat (IRC) to communicate during development, but eventually, it wasn’t good enough. Instead of choosing average team messaging software to improve productivity, they built their own.
That product was called… Slack.
What they thought would be a success (the video game) — wasn’t.
Slack is now a $5 billion Microsoft Outlook killer. It’s killing email. It has 4 million users.
A key to their success is that the company made customer feedback the centre of its efforts. They tested the app with other teams. They led with design.
It was a product they built that solved their own problem and they thought it might just solve it for other teams.
Design isn’t just about problem solving
Designers don’t just problem solve. They can think wider than that, because when we’re given freedom, we can actually validate whether these problems exist at all.
When we work with partners at Etch, we rapidly design and test with real people for that simple reason. Are the problems we think exist, actually exist? Are we building the right thing? Will people use our product?
Design has traditionally been done in a similar way to running a printing press. Plan, design, print, ship. One shot. Multiple sign-offs. Pressure not to screw up.
But it’s 2017 and user experience design has matured. You may even have a UX designer in your business, maybe two. Sometimes they’re just charged to do wireframes. They might even test with users.
And development has moved on as well. 91% of surveyed businesses describe themselves as Agile.
So now that businesses have levelled-up with UX and Agile, what is the value design agencies can offer? When is outside help required?
Well we’ve thought about that. That’s why we focus on outcomes rather than outputs. We’re less interested in delivering a pretty website (although we do that well) and more interested in disrupting whole industries by doing things differently. And not just differently for the sake of being different, but different because it works.
We recognise that people hire your product to do a task.
Focussing on making things people actually want is way easier than persuading people to want things that you currently make.
Just doing UX design isn’t good enough anymore, because everyone does it, especially your competitors. There’s a post from Jonathan Courtney who talks about the Golden Age of UX design, suggesting three things that Product Designers need to think about going forwards. It’s three things that I think about when working with partners for the first time.
Product strategy
How does this product fit within the business? Why do we have it and where do we see it going long-term?
Growth
One metric that entire businesses are based on. How can we hack growth e.g. Dropbox?
Marketing and awareness
How are people going to find this product? How and why is the company marketing it in a specific way?
(Thanks Jonathan — keep up the great work!)
Good product designers consider these as well as designing the UX of a product. The genius comes in understanding the user and the business.
And as designers, we like to have fun with it as well (I’ve been in a lot of awful meetings!). We have design workshops where we get managers and even CEOs to sketch solutions. We use bright post-its to facilitate work. We use stickers to vote on priorities. We make it fun, because it’s important.
It’s this idea of having fun with our work that aids innovation in-house. We love what we do.
Designers are increasingly taking leadership not just in projects, but also in businesses. Our managing director is a designer. So is Brian Chesky, CEO of Airbnb.
When Airbnb started, Silicon Valley didn’t take the company seriously. Partly because it was headed by designers rather than engineers. They were wrong.
Last year, Forrester Research and Adobe found that design-driven companies have outperformed the S&P Index by 219% over 10 years.
And if you like numbers, take a look at these. Design-led companies reported:
- 41% higher market share
- 46% competitive advantage overall
- 50% more loyal customers
- 70% digital experiences beat competitors
But being design-led is hard. It involves changing the very culture of your company. Some businesses “get it” and are changing. Consider the Co-op and startups such as Uber, who don’t have the legacy and do have the speed (and naivety) to disrupt.
Good design is the new normal
The rate of innovation is only getting faster and it’s because of the internet. It’s permeating every industry. Take television and film.
House of Cards was bought by Netflix partly because Netflix’s Chief Content Officer, looked at the data of Netflix users’ streaming habits and concluded that there was an audience for David Fincher and Kevin Spacey.
Interestingly, when Fincher and MRC went looking for networks, they all wanted a pilot, whereas Netflix — relying solely on their statistics — ordered the series directly. They disrupted how series are commissioned and that is making them win big time.
This is the new normal. Experimentation, learning and adapting. Businesses like yours need to think more like this. Remember Blockbuster?
So you might be thinking, that’s great Ross, but we’re not like those businesses you talk about.
SURE YOU ARE. The companies you work at sell products and services. You have KPIs you need to meet. You have competitors that are looking to grow market share. If they grow, and you don’t, what then?
Work more like a designer
So what can you do to turn the tide and kickstart innovation? A few really simple, but different things.
Understand the problem deeply
Is it a real problem? What are we trying to achieve? How can we measure it? What does success look like?
Admit you don’t know everything
Who works with the internet here? Was it around when you went to school? If yes, barely. The internet has changed everything. Experimentation is the game. Doing things that sound like the right thing, are likely not. That banner carousel may help you put marketing messages in, but people won’t read them. A deeper look at your products and feedback from real users will. Also, use Google!
Meetings
To help, use a timer (here’s a great one) and bring deadlines forward. Do just enough research, validate your design with real people and launch something small. Then build upon it.
Do some crazy stuff
There’s one company that does delete days. Sounds crazy, right? But means they have less legacy code making everything slow. Designers use design mashups where a mash-up brings odd or unexpected things together to spark fresh ideas. Try that!
Launch small and iterate in short cycles
Adapt. Don’t build everything and hope it works. Build less and measure. Less to do, easier to improve.
Love what you do
You know, you spend most of your life at work. I’ve worked with and in a few companies in my career, done what was asked and it’s not been enough for the wider business. They needed to do more.
Most companies can’t change fast enough because they’re not passionate enough about what they do, making real change to how they work. They need the ambition to do better, to experiment, and do things differently. And have fun with it!
What’s great is that experimentation and learning are now understood to be the vital ingredients to product success. It’s through that that you learn whether you’re focussing on the right things, and if the problems you think exist, really exist.
You can innovate. You just need to change they way you work. Be more design-led, find out what real people need and make something that really matters.
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