Design a future that matters

Reflecting on a fascinating 12 months of consulting, it’s clearer than ever that there’s an emerging set of complex challenges that designers are uniquely placed to solve. It’s not that we didn’t know this, it’s more of a case of communicating this in a way that compels organisations to utilise design as a process to solve challenges.

There are many economic, human and environmental issues facing organisations, but below the macro level it’s process, agility and purpose that are ripe for human-centred design generated solutions.

Here’s what I’ve learned:

Organisations rarely have time to design their own future.

This applies almost universally - we herald Google’s ‘20% rule’ - but for the rest of us we find ourselves working in the business not on the business. Allocated time might be one way to open the opportunity space, but undirected it invariably gets consumed by busywork, urgency or business development. So how might you ‘design your business’?

Mapping out your current state isn’t a fruitless endeavour - structure and operations naturally create (and over time reinforce) boundaries of responsibility. And that’s where it gets interesting. Done diligently, visualising your end-to-end value chain, a customer journey or your business ecosystem can help you see where you’re winning. More critically, it also surfaces your weaker points - people spread too thinly or accountable for too much (or too little), disconnected process and systems, duplication of responsibility and so much more.

Determine where you’re at.

Determine where you're at, explore your current state options to become more efficient, effective and scalable, and then you can more clearly pave the way to do work that matters.

Change is hard, unpredictable, and continual.

Change management. I’m sure the phrase generates many a glassy eye, but it’s widely acknowledged (if not necessarily accepted) that change is hard, and inevitable - like it or not we all have to do it. But applying change in a structured way is the complexity, and a significant overhead for most organisations. And that’s where the challenges start because people aren’t a homogenous set you can universally change. 

Costs and cultural pain aside, the inability to change renders organisations frozen in time or worse myopic in their worldview - there’s enough sorry stories throughout corporate history to evidence this.How’s your Kodak moment going?

How’s your Kodak moment?

Design brings several key mindsets to people that support and benefit people. Experimentation, iterative development and ideation are just some of the design related techniques that I’ve seen ignite impactful cultural change. People need a why, and they don’t want change ‘done to them’. Perhaps more importantly, collaboratively designing your future increases the chances of positively changing in a way that matters to everyone. Co-design develops a sense of ownership of process, decisions and target outcomes, and we all seek a little control in uncertain times, don’t we? 

Furthermore, co-design with both colleagues and customers sets people up to be more comfortable with continually adapting - data increasingly shows that highly adaptive companies with design cultures are achieving significantly better growth than their peers. We know this, but acting on it by co-designing your future together really matters to your people.

People are increasingly mindful of the footprint of their actions.

This is perhaps the big one, certainly to myself. Data is increasingly showing us that people care about having sustainable lives that ensure a positive future. We simply can’t continue to consume more than is available from our planet’s finite resources, and emerging movements such as the circular economy align strongly with design’s intent. And just maybe your business plan isn’t yet adapting to this inevitable global trend.

Design is ideally placed to influence major changes in the way we develop products and services.

We’re becoming more aware of the upstream and downstream impacts our consumption patterns have, and we’ll have little choice but to consume responsibly when demand for resources outstrips supply. 

Design can be reductive as well as divergent - throughout the design process we can help organisations determine what not to make. Good process design should drive not only responsible sourcing and application of resources, but improve product and service resilience, quality and reuse or end of life activity. Fast fashion is just one example of growing consumer awareness and business response to responsible design at scale - now imagine if we can scale this to every product and service we design for?

So in summary...

Make stuff that matters. It’s everyone’s responsibility, and to reiterate - designers are uniquely well placed to facilitate making this happen for your organisation. Having joined the Meld Studios family I’m more optimistic than ever that responsible and well executed design can - as Meld’s mission states - improve the everyday lives of people as they interact with the world around them. And I can't tell you how excited I am to be part of that as we open our studio in Perth.

Happy days. Let’s design something that matters.

Credits: Header Photo by the blowup on Unsplash. Content photo by Chris Barbalis on Unsplash.