Design matters, it de-risks!
PART 1: From building a foundation to realizing a product
Authored by Thomas Duester
Design-thinking courses are amongst the highest ranked and most popular curricula at the top ranked universities across the US. The reason for that is simple. Not only are they an engaging and relevant addition to any business or entrepreneur courseware, but according to McKinsey, companies that use Design Thinking approaches regularly experience a third higher revenue and 56% higher returns than those that don’t.
Let’s begin with a little intro and why I believe that design matters when you start a new project or maybe even consider building an entire new company around a vision that you are passionate about. I promise to try my best not to make this another blurry essay about the ongoing discussion about the ‘Return on Investment” (ROI) of design. There might be a little bit of that, but mostly this article provides a little education about design and how great things happen when Technology, Business, and Design work together as an aligned team.
So what do designers do? What is design thinking, and why does it matter?
I feel that the discipline of design is extremely confusing, even for someone like me who has been in the business for almost 20 years. There are a ton of different disciplines and job titles that mean different things in different parts of the world and the boundaries between them can often be ill defined. Let's try to answer these two questions seperately.
What do designers do?
On a high level you can put the design disciplines into three overarching buckets:
Hardware – Physical User Experiences (UX)
Hardware designers are educated to work with different materials and manufacturing methods. They understand technical constraints, ergonomics, user needs, and use physical and digital tools to translate them into desirable, easy-to-use physical products and experiences that people want to invest in.
Disciplines: Industrial Design, Spatial Design, Interior Design, Sustainable Design
Software – Digital User Experiences (UX)
Software designers are trained in information architecture, content development and prototyping. They understand technical constraints and use prototypes and customer research during an iterative process to design a broad range of intuitive, and human-centered digital experiences.
Disciplines: Interactions Design, User Interface Design, App Design, Web Design
Communication – Visual User Experiences (UX)
Communication designers are specialized in working with colors, fonts, layouts, illustration, and photography. They are often called visual designers and next to a long history in design for print media, packaging, and advertising, they are also responsible for the visual approach of websites, apps, and entire brands.
Disciplines: Brand Design, Graphic Design, Print Design, Packaging Design
In today’s product landscape all these disciplines overlap, the combined contribution of hardware, software, and visual design makes or breaks a great end-to-end user experience, but what unifies them all is:
What is design thinking and why does it matter?
Personally, I am not a big fan of the term “design thinking.” It simply is not a good name for what it means or what it does. It is also a concept surrounded by so much hype that you can find an enormous flood of information, theories, and definitions out there. But if you ask me, it all boils down to three rather trivial things: foundation, creation, and realization; and when taking a closer look at them I believe that you can come to a very similar conclusion.
Design ensures a Human Connection through first-hand insights that are used to inform, guide, and validate whatever product, service, or experience you want to launch.
1: Foundation
The first thing we do as designers when we start a new project is to take a step back and make sure that we have answers to the most fundamental questions.
What problem does the product or service solve?
Who is this product or service for?
What is the human need behind the problem?
What would happen if we do not solve this problem?
If there are no sufficient insights and/or data to answer those questions with confidence you are accepting an enormous risk of creating a product or service that has no, or very little, relevance to your audience and therefore will struggle to get the market acceptance you may be hoping for.
The best way to get that information is using research and a direct and in-person engagement with your audience. This will not only provide you with the quantitative and qualitative insights that will inform the foundation your project is to be built on, but it will also give you an idea of emotions and behaviors that are connected to those insights. But first and foremost, it is an early opportunity to check if and how your vision or solution can be successful.
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Let’s pause here for a moment and dive a little deeper into what I mean by ‘foundation’ and why it has such an incredible impact. When I started my career at Philips no project would ever start without a proper kick-off workshop. We would bring all relevant stakeholders together in a room and make sure that everyone gets aligned on project goals, timelines, and milestones. And by the way, this has nothing to do with design, and everything to do with basic rules of teamwork; we just happen to be the ones that facilitate the discussion.
Key stakeholders are representatives of each discipline that is relevant for the successful operation and execution of a project. Depending on the magnitude of the project this can be quite a large group of people. In a smaller setting this often includes representatives from: Project Management, Research + Design, Hardware Engineering and Software Development.
Building a Good Foundation
Minimize friction?
Problem: Not every team is part of the same reporting line and therefore they have different goals and priorities within their own workstreams, and most likely for any individual project.
A kick-off workshop will use different exercises to surface potential frictions between the goals and priorities of the different stakeholders and disciplines.? It will nurture an open exchange that usually results in a better understanding of each other’s challenges. It allows a healthy discussion and conclusion that is directly tied to what is best for the project and not to an isolated perspective.
Accelerate efficiency?
Problem: Not every discipline has the same pool of resources and therefore may not have the availability of the volume or level of capability at the time needed.
With aligned goals and priorities, you will already accelerate, simply by preventing ongoing discussions and by having clear guidance on making better and faster decisions. The kick-off workshop can also deliver a rough definition of a project timeline and milestones, allowing the team to allocate internal or external resources that will enable the team an uninterrupted cross-disciplinary workflow and to deliver on milestones in time.
Boost quality
Problem: Not every project is aligned on a project ‘foundation’ and therefore different disciplines may have inconsistent definitions of key project drivers and will not function as unified project team.
The first two points above unblock and nurture a respectful open-minded, and highly collaborative approach. The kick-off workshop does not prevent all friction or conflict of interests, between different stakeholders or disciplines, but it is a ‘foundation’ that provides solid guidance that ensures that any decision or compromise is based on what is best for the project, company, and the customer.
2: Creation
With a solid foundation and alignment in place, the design team has the information in place they need to kick off the creation process. What we do next is dive a little deeper into what we learned from research; we take a close look at the key touchpoints of the end-to-end user experience and start to translate findings and challenges into opportunities and ideas. Together with similar critical input from other stakeholders we will be able to turn those initial ideas into design concepts.
Through a process of iteration and collaboration, you can further refine your concepts into a few cohesive design directions. At this point the resolution of the visual representation, prototypes, and story of each direction should be good enough to test the direction with the user. You can observe and gather their initial reactions and feedback to get an idea how to further improve and which directions seem most promising for further exploration.
3: Realization
During this phase of the process the design team collaborates closely with the development teams to translate the design direction into a fully feasible and validated solution ready for production.
Most of the time – and depending on the scale – it is a fun, but lengthy iterative process of building testing, changing, and doing it all over again. But it also is the perfect chance to get your future customers involved to fine-tune your product on functional aspects along with other things like colors, materials, and tactility – which we usually call look & feel – before you start with production.
This literally is your chance to do it right! It is your chance to learn directly from your customers what works and what does not, what needs to change, or needs to be improved. Not working with your customers to refine and validate your solutions during this phase is simply stupid and a risk not worth taking.
Next up: Part 2
In part 2 of "Design matters, it de-risks!" will be about making sure technical and business requirements are in perfect balance with design.
About the Author
Thomas Duester is the Owner and Design Director of formfuture . He and his team are driven by the goal of re-connecting research and design to maximize the value and impact of UX Design for small start-ups and full-scale corporations. His journey as a Design Leader and Innovator commenced with a background in cabinet making and teaching, culminating in graduation from the esteemed Design Academy in Eindhoven in 2006. He honed his skills at Philips Design, contributing to global initiatives in Lighting, Healthcare, and Consumer Electronics. Leading teams, he immersed himself in holistic industrial design and innovation processes. In 2014, he took on the challenge of heading industrial design for Amazon's groundbreaking 'Amazon Go' retail experience.
Subsequently, in 2018, he founded 'formfuture' in Seattle, a Design Haus dedicated to deliver successful digital/physical experiences, with a passion for people and the planet.
Please, get in touch!