How to grow design maturity in your organization

Becoming design-centric is not easy, but the journey itself is the goal. Struggling well improves your company for years to come.

Designers are incredibly sought-after today. Every company seems to hire them, and the titles are getting more and more senior. We now see the Chief Design Officer as a regular title in organizations that are not known as design-centric. The rallying cry is falling on fertile ground. Latest after McKinsey got in the game and published their study on the ROI of design, the C-Suite is on board with promoting it.

At the same time, it seems that many organizations are lost as to what designers can deliver in terms of value.

In their latest piece, McKinsey found that most companies do not know what to ask and expect of their design leadership. This results in design being prominent, yet often toothless. The lofty goals of design influencing all the way through to strategy are rarely met, and business stakeholders are frustrated.

Yet some companies already got it right. Design-led enterprises can deliver tremendous value, as prominently exemplified by Apple, Logitech (link to article), Nike, 3M, and many more. What do these companies understand that others do not yet? And what struggles do you have to pass through to get there?

The Nielsen Norman Group has published a neat framework for how to think about UX Maturity. In their work, they describe eight stages that each company passes through. Those go roughly like this:

• Stage 1: Hostility to Usability

No one wants to hear from users or think about them. Full stop.

• Stage 2: Development-centered User Experience

Someone has design in the title and comes up with what they think is good UX. They are not the user but have some intuition as to what a typical human might get frustrated with.

• Stage 3: Skunkworks User Experience

The designer gets permission to talk to users in rare cases. There is no process, structure, or budget for this activity. Sometimes he goes out on his own time because no one else will support him.

• Stage 4: Dedicated User Experience Budget

There is a method to the madness — UX activities are planned for and budgeted. Budgets are small, to be sure, but there is some recognition. Designers are few and belong to products or business divisions.

• Stage 5: Managed Usability

There is a dedicated design team, which owns UX at the company. Further, there is a UX manager, who is not operationally moving pixels, but instead has the remit to improve usability as a whole.

• Stage 6: Systematic User-Centered Design Process

The design team has a well-established process in place and tracks the quality of outcomes. Designs will be iterated upon to achieve better results.

• Stage 7: Integrated User-Centered Design

Every step in the product development lifecycle is infused with user data, and there are clear success metrics in terms of what great usability looks like at the company.

• Stage 8: User-Driven Corporation

User data and research insights determine the company’s direction and strategy. Everyone is exposed to users and user testing sessions regularly, and the company is obsessed with great experience and usability.

The corollary to the above is that companies can potentially spend an infinite amount of time in Stage 1 until a rude awakening that starts the journey. Moving from Stage 2 to Stage 7 can take somewhere around 20 years. To move from Stage 7 to Stage 8 another 20 years. Talk about a real transformation.

Needless to say that rushing to hire a substantial design lead and promote a Chief Design Officer within a period of 3–5 years means skipping over most of the internal change management that needs to be done. Hence business and functions get very irritated and confused, as they did not have the years of exposure typically recommended.

The Roots of Design Maturity Go Deep

Drawing on the framework above, as well as our own experiences with many organizations, the key levers that design-mature companies get right are then the following:

• People: They have a dedicated design team as a function to serve the whole enterprise. There are people who do not actively “design,” but who are in charge of thinking about the experience at the company as a whole and in connection. This is where you move from having well-designed products that all feel different, to provide a unified experience and customer journey that delivers.
• Process: The product creation process is well laid out, and it starts with user research, makes time for proper design process, allows for user testing and iterations on the design, and sees designers integrated into the production process. This is the only way for designers to be the customer advocates they are supposed to be — by getting plenty of time with customers, and being part of every activity.
• Budget: The process comes with clearly defined budgets for design activities that are generous enough to allow for the discovery, prototyping, testing, and iterations, which a good design process needs. It is understood that sometimes outside parties need to be contracted to support and that different projects will require different resources. The design team owns its budget and has control over it.
• Metrics: The design team does not act on their gut instinct, but has clear metrics in place for what a great experience delivers. These are a mix of customer-centric and business-centric metrics. After all, the design team will continuously need to justify their existence — and making customers happy just does not cut it. The business will always want to see the impact in dollars and cents.
• Collaboration: Great design teams are networked well within the organization. They have good relationships with business units and product teams. They are team players, deliver value in every relationship, and are sought-after as collaboration partners. No one in the organization should feel like they “don’t get” design, or want to “run faster” by compromising on design activities. This takes lobbying.
• Recognition: Last but not least, design-mature companies recognize what design can deliver and where it can add value. They understand that having a design leader at the table is invaluable when discussing product pipelines, company strategy, and overall organizational vision. They have seen first-hand the strong impact design can have and appreciate the design team for where it can contribute.

Are there many organizations today that check all the boxes? Definitely not. Probably very, very few. Yet many are trying, and they need to keep on trying. It is a long but rewarding journey, which can add a lot of value to the company and its customers. Becoming design-centric and -mature is not easy, but the journey itself is the goal. To paraphrase an old proverb:

We are what we consistently do. Great experience then is not an act, but a habit.

Sebastian Mueller is Chief Operating Officer at MING Labs.

MING Labs is a leading digital business builder located in Berlin, Munich, New York City, Shanghai, Suzhou, and Singapore. We guide clients in designing their businesses for the future, ensuring they are leaders in the field of innovation.