The Value of Design

And how to talk about it with others who aren’t designers.

Read the original Medium post here.

Design is a funny thing.

It’s one of the few professions where you can be an expert at a thing but still be unable to communicate the value of that very same thing.

Still with me?

Think about doctors (I know — here goes another designer comparing their job to that of someone who saves lives. I promise, I’m not going there).

Doctors spend their days seeing (too many) patients, diagnosing health issues, triaging symptoms, and coordinating patient care with other specialists, all while still being expected to treat their patients like actual human beings (make no mistake, this should be part of the job description for any good doctor).

Do you know what’s not on this list?

Explaining the value they provide to others.

Do you want to know why? Because it’s obvious to any human who’s gotten hurt, had a health issue, or lost a loved one (which includes almost everyone). In fact, there are people that think healthcare (i.e. services that doctors provide) should be a basic human right, but that goes way beyond the scope of this post.

In other words, doctors show their value every day instead of having to explain it.

Can you imagine if the value of design was as obvious?

Most designers would be less stressed out, make way more money, and have almost nothing to complain about on Twitter.

You see, for those of you who don’t call yourself a “designer,” you might not be aware of one overarching truth about us:

We secretly love complaining about everyone’s inability to understand the inherent value of design.

And cue the angry mob of designers with pixel-perfect pitchforks ready to tear me limb from limb.

They’ll argue I’m not being fair because they’ve tried (and failed) throughout their entire careers to explain why design is so valuable to others who need it.

If you ask me, this is like a doctor complaining about not being able to successfully treat a patient or not correctly referring them to a specialist.

In other words, it’s part of the job.

As design professionals, we should be able to effectively communicate a message to others using a variety of different formats, some more visual than others.

Unfortunately for us, we came into this industry with one arm tied behind our collective back because you won’t find this tidbit of information on any design school application or job description.

Explaining the value of design is one of those weird things that somehow falls under the category of “you should just be able to do it” along with choosing the perfect font and making PowerPoint presentations less shitty.

So how can we be expected to become an expert at something that was never explicitly called out?

Well, like most things in life, you learn it the hard way.

You learn it by losing a client, a project, or (if you’re prone to extremely bad luck) you learn it by losing a job.

As someone who freelanced full-time for almost a decade, I know what it means to learn things the hard way. Over the past ten years, I’ve made a living illustrating posters, building brands, laying out websites, designing apps, writing articles, designing curricula, facilitating workshops, and pretty much everything else in-between. I’ve even gotten paid to make weird sounds with my mouth while five other guys sing. True story.

If there is one thing that all of these experiences have in common, it was one simple fact:

I was working with non-designers.

In other words, I was working with people who don’t see the world through the same lens. They may care about the same problems, but they address them with different skill sets and methodologies.

Anytime you have people from different backgrounds around the same table, a few things are inevitable:

• Each person will use their own industry’s jargon
• Each person will know something the others don’t
• Each person will favor their own processes for solving problems

This might sound overly skeptical, but as always, I like to plan for the worst and hope for the best.

Now, at this point, if you paid attention to the title of this post, you might be wondering:

“This is all great, but what exactly is the value of design.”

Well, I’m glad you asked because it would be tough to explain how to share the value of design without first agreeing on what it is.

For those of you who don’t know, there is an industry adage that I think sums it up perfectly:

“Design the right thing before designing the thing right.”

If you ask me, designers have a pretty good handle on the second half. In fact, we spend a little too much time on what tools to use, how it looks, and whether or not everything is perfectly aligned.

The real value of design comes from the first half.

As designers, we help ensure that the solution being built/coded/constructed/designed/developed/implemented/strategized/etc. is the one best suited for the problem.

In other words, designers are mitigators of risk.

Notice how I said, “mitigators” and not “exterminators” — we can’t completely wipe out all risk, but we can help ensure that the decision being made is in the best interest of the people who it will ultimately impact.

Think about this for a second: doctors do their best to mitigate the possibility of sickness or death, lawyers try to mitigate the potential of their clients getting sued or thrown in jail, and architects mitigate the chance of your house crumbling down around you.

Mitigation of risk is extremely valuable, especially in the world of business where millions of dollars and thousands of jobs could be at stake.

I know, I know. This might sound a little over dramatic, but if we’re talking about the design of healthcare products, then lives really can be saved or loss.

Now, I would never dream of bringing up a problem without at least trying to offer up a solution, so here is how we, as designers, can start to better communicate the value of design to others:

Learn someone else’s language

Whenever I travel to another country (which is nowhere near as much as I’d like), my first step is to redownload Duolingo and fumble through learning the native language. Whether it’s two week or two months before, I do my best to learn at least enough to be able to communicate with others. It makes life so much easier and it shows I care enough to try.

In much the same way, when I was a design student in college, I decided to pick up a business minor just in the nick of time before I graduated. Honestly, it was one of the best professional decisions I’ve ever made. Since I knew I wanted to dive directly into freelancing full-time, this crash course in business gave me the fundamental business vocabulary I needed in order to have a productive conversation with people in the business world (i.e. clients).

Start talking in numbers

Speaking of learning a new language, the first one you learn should be that of numbers. From conversion rates to gross margins and everything in between, these are the numbers that clients, cofounders, and C-suites care about. As a design professional, you have to know how your efforts impact these numbers. If you don’t, then you’re designing in a vacuum, which is bad (unless you work for James Dyson).

*Crickets*

In all seriousness, if you’re tired of sitting at the kids’ table, then you have to learn to speak like other adults. Only then can you learn how to use design in order to increase the good numbers and decrease the bad ones.

Start translating what people are saying

Another valuable skill I’ve learned as a designer is the ability to translate words, concepts, and conversations in real time. When a meeting goes south, there’s a good chance something important is being lost in translation. As a designer, you can help figure out what this is mainly because you should be focused on people more than anything else — how they think, how they act, what motivates them, and what they say (and don’t say). If you pay close enough attention, you can read the room and start to connect the dots that others may not see.

Speak to outcomes instead of deliverables

Admit it — most people couldn’t care less about buttons, pixels, or fonts. Hell, I would go as far as to say that don’t even care about what those things add up to make (in this case, a website). What they want to know is how that website will help them sleep better at night. If they’re a small business owner, how can that website bring in new customers and generate more money? If they’re the head of a department within a massive company, how can that website automate repetitive tasks throughout their day so they can use that time to do more meaningful work? These are the needs that should be front of mind and always on the tip of your tongue when talking to others.

Prove that you understand the problem

One of the most powerful parts of the design process is the beginning. Whether you call it a “discovery phase” or research, this time allows you to take a deep dive into the problem you’re trying to solve. In many cases, it can help identify a problem that is much more urgent to your client than the original issue. If you use this time effectively, you should be able to understand the world in which this problem lives — the industry, the landscape, the relevant stakeholders — and then communicate this understanding to others sitting at the table. Best case scenario? You uncover something about your client’s business they weren’t even aware of.

Remind others that you’re working with humans

Once you understand the problem, your job is to keep the affected people at the center of the experience and in the front of everyone’s mind. Notice how I said “people” and not “computers” or “spreadsheets.” Sure, these tools can be important to business success, but at the end of the day, they’re useless without the humans behind them. As a designer (who hopefully practices human-centered design), you can and should be the mouthpiece for these people, especially when they aren’t in the room. If you communicate their wants, needs, and frustrations as accurately as possible, then you can help create a solution that will provide true value to others (and mitigate the risk of that solution failing for your clients).

We might not be doctors, but that doesn’t mean we can’t help save people…from shitty experiences and solutions that don’t really solve problems (or at least, the most important problems).

William Frazier is a designer, founder, and writer who is productively fumbling his way through a creative career. He’s also on Twitter.

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