Design is usually seen as an afterthought aesthetic necessity by most high-level executives.
Of course, there are exceptions (like having a background in design or having seen the real impact of it in a very tangible way), but for the most part this statement applies.
As an executive, it’s hard to view design as a source of clarity, confidence, and reduced uncertainty, as there’s a bias towards the visual side of what it brings to the table.
I’ve heard many design teams respond to this from a scarcity mindset:
“We don’t have a place at the small table”, or “design needs to be involved earlier in the product conversations”, or “we could’ve helped improve the business, but we were invited too late”…
Although this might be true in most cases, there’s no line drawn connecting business decisions with design, so from a “resources” standpoint, it makes sense to involve them once strategy is delineated.
Even though this can vary depending on the organization and team maturity, there are a couple of reasons why I think this vision can be hurting the company:
- When design teams are involved early in the conversation, solutions can be tested faster, reducing risk and improving decision quality. This can center decisions on users as well as on business goals.
- Lack of alignment in executive spheres is a common source of business and product problems. Good designers are usually eager to facilitate those conversations as they thrive on collaboration and good communication.
- Great product designers have the power to see the business as well as the design, prioritizing revenue and being pragmatic while uplifting product experiences.
- Many business problems can be defined by a series of steps or funnels. This is the bread and butter of any good product designer.
- While more subjective, design teams tend to be comfortable thinking outside the box, which allows parallel thinking and divergence to act as an ally when solving business and product problems.
But how can any organization start seeing the true value of bringing a design team into its more influential conversations?
There are many ways to do this depending on the specifics of each team and organization.
That being said, after experiencing this first-hand many times, there are 2 activities where I’ve seen the best ROI from the effort: one to evangelize and the other to track results.
- A weekly Open Research Session
- Focus on one single “business-prioritized KPI”
As number 2 is more nuanced and can vary depending on the product, team and market, I’ll focus on the evangelization as a way of bringing a broad point of view that can encompass almost every organization.
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Weekly Open Research Session
This technique is a great way to do a low effort and low budget activity that can serve as a beacon to evangelize an organization on the power of design in a product.
It’s a weekly one-hour call in which, everyone in the organization is invited to join. The goal is to call users on the phone to ask them about their experience with the product.
This is low effort, so:
- No video call
- No strict agenda
- Everyone can join as a background companion for their own tasks (they can keep silently working on their duties while they listen to the conversation)
- Moderated by a member in the design team
All you need is a list of users’ phone numbers (which you can do easily in case you don’t already have them), a set of open questions about your product and something to give back for their time (ideally, something you can give away digitally… like a gift card or exclusive access to features inside your product).
It can be done physically in a conference room and/or digitally on a call where everyone is muted, except the person talking on the phone.
This simple qualitative technique can be a powerful way of closing the gap between business and users, as it can bring empathy to profiles that are usually farther away from the user. From C-Level executives, commercial staff, salespeople, developers and even HR reps.
This is a great method for “evangelizing”, as it’ll slowly start to spill over conversations at every level of the company, surfacing the impact of the user experience so design teams can start influencing products beyond an aesthetic necessity and more as a strategic advantage.
Whichever is the position you are in right now, you can be the one that makes the change in your organization.
Run it for 4 weeks and observe what changes. You can send me a message after you’ve tested it and tell me how it went!
