As a designer, you know how much effort and creativity goes into your work. But how do you ensure that your design's value is recognized and respected by your clients, stakeholders, and users? How do you protect your design from being diluted, copied, or misused? In this article, we'll explore some strategies and tips to safeguard your design's value throughout the design process and beyond.
Before you start designing, you need to have a clear idea of what value your design will bring to your target audience and how it will differentiate from the existing solutions. A value proposition is a concise statement that summarizes the benefits, features, and advantages of your design. It should answer the questions: What problem does your design solve? How does it solve it better than others? And why should people care? A strong value proposition will help you communicate your design's purpose, goals, and expectations to your clients and stakeholders, and guide your design decisions and iterations.
The best thing that I read: The number one reason that company fails is because they are not solving a valuable enough problem and therefore they don't create a value worth investing in and therefore they fail in meeting needs. Creating a Value Proposition Statement makes sure that we know the value of design/Product and how is it helping users. We need to define our target customer segment. We need to know why existing solutions are not working for users. What needs of users are still not met? What does our design offer? What are the benefits of it? Asking these simple questions can guide us to think deeply about the Problem, our competitors, our offered solution, and its impact.
One of the best ways to safeguard your design's value is to document your design process and decisions along the way. This will help you create a transparent and credible record of your design rationale, research, insights, sketches, prototypes, feedback, and testing. Documenting your design process and decisions will also help you justify your design choices, explain your trade-offs, and address any challenges or objections that may arise from your clients or stakeholders. Additionally, documenting your design process and decisions will help you showcase your design skills, methods, and outcomes, and demonstrate your value as a designer.
Another important aspect of safeguarding your design's value is to protect your design's intellectual property rights. Intellectual property rights are the legal rights that grant you the ownership and control over your design creations. They include copyrights, trademarks, patents, and trade secrets. Depending on the nature and scope of your design project, you may need to secure one or more of these rights to prevent others from copying, stealing, or exploiting your design without your permission or compensation. To protect your design's intellectual property rights, you should consult a legal expert, sign a clear and fair contract with your clients, and use appropriate tools and methods to mark, register, and enforce your rights.
Another way to safeguard your design's value is to test and validate your design's value with users. Testing and validating your design with users will help you ensure that your design meets the needs, expectations, and preferences of your target audience, and delivers the desired outcomes and benefits. Testing and validating your design with users will also help you collect valuable feedback, data, and insights that will help you improve your design, fix any issues, and optimize its performance and usability. Furthermore, testing and validating your design with users will help you demonstrate your design's value to your clients and stakeholders, and prove its impact and effectiveness.
Finally, to safeguard your design's value, you need to communicate and present your design's value effectively. Communicating and presenting your design's value effectively means telling a compelling story that highlights the problem, solution, and results of your design. It also means using the right tools, formats, and channels to showcase your design's value to different audiences and contexts. For example, you may use a portfolio, a case study, a pitch deck, a video, or a website to present your design's value to potential clients, employers, investors, or users. Communicating and presenting your design's value effectively will help you gain recognition, appreciation, and support for your design work, and increase your chances of success and growth as a designer.
Dont Limit before you've even had lift off. Its very important to be conscious of the things we say we're not good at or that "we don't think we can do something", more often than not I find peoples opinion of themselves is not usually that they are not good at the thing, often finding out that they don't like it not. Liking something and not being good at something are two very separate things, to take a credit for not being good at something is a heavyweight that cramps your style and potential. Not liking something is being okay with not wanting to give full attempt, this keeps you safe from feeling of lacking the ability. Be cautious what you limit yourself on, as opposed to what you don't wish to give your interest to & say I AM ABLE