The Business Case for developing a more Design Centric Operation

The aim of this article is to bring out some of the benefits of having a design centric operation, one which appreciates the value design has to offer to all aspects of ones business, and using design as an integral part of a profit generating strategy.

As a designer I am always questioned about the need for design within a business and the value or purpose it serves. A discussion with one of my peers lead to some introspection and research to uncover the facts behind this supposed mystery.

How do we quantify Design Value?

To many business people it’s difficult to quantify the effect design might have on their business. This is true for all aspects of the business and all forms of design, be it web, print, internal(within the company), external(customer focused), for products, services, communication and aesthetic purposes. The best way to quantify the value design has to offer is to analyse how design has added value to companies who are Design Centric. Design Centris meaning those who appreciate and employ design to enhance business value.

Insights from US & UK Design Research

Research done in both the US and Britain have shown conclusively that design has a positive impact on the performance, profitability and positive image of companies across a wide spectrum of industries. The “Value of Design Fact Finder” study, done in the UK, had the following to say about the impact of design on business performance:

Businesses which use design perform better than their rivals. There’s unmistakable proof of that in our Value of Design Factfinder, a unique online information tool.

The Value of Design Factfinder was launched in June 2006 and shows the positive impact of design on practically every measure of business performance, including market share, growth, productivity, share price and competitiveness.

In businesses where design is integral to operations, over three quarters say they’ve increased their competitiveness and turnover through design. Similarly, four out of five (79%) businesses that believe design is integral to their business think that design’s importance to competitiveness has risen over the past decade.

I don’t want to bore you with graphs and figures but would encourage you to take a look at the findings for yourself at www.designfactfinder.co.uk. The organisation had also conducted some case studies into how 11 leading companies have recently used Design to increase their competitive advantage, from Microsoft which previously was more of a technology focused company to companies like LEGO, XEROX, Sony Playstation and Yahoo. This show that the worlds top performing companies see real value in being more Design Centric in their approaches to increase their competitive advantage.

A few Business Benefits of Design

Design to persuade

As all entrepreneurs and business people know, it’s not enough to have a product or service without marketing it. Whether you have produced the ultimate, highly sought after product, or offer the best service in any specific field, if people don’t know about it you’ll never make any money. This is the task of marketing and sales activity. This alone won’t guarantee results as the manner in which your products are marketed or sold will have varying degrees of success. Communication is key and the key to communication is persuasion.

Design plays a vital role in persuasion, both in terms of the sales approach and the visual appeal. The manner in which a product is presented to a prospect is crucial in securing a sale, choose the wrong sales person could result in a top product to start collecting dust on the shelf. While we may not agree that this should be true, it is an unfortunate reality, that poor products which are correctly marketed could sell more than their superior, yet poorly marketed counter-parts. Though you can’t judge a book by its cover, many badly written books are sold because of well designed covers.

• Great product + Poor Marketing = less sales
• Great value Needs to be communicated well
• Communication is key & the key to communication is persuasion
• Design plays a vital role in persuasion
• You can’t judge a book by its cover but you can sell it by its cover

Design fills the communication/persuasion gap on a number of levels. From packaging to presentation material, language, product design itself and information design in relation to explaining the benefits of the product or service to name but a few. Another designed space is the store, or the website which acts as the shopping environment. Creating a space which facilitates the sale of products or services is an area large companies invest millions in.

Unique Identity Setting oneself apart

Differentiation is another keyword to remember. You don’t want to appear like a cookie-cutter-copy of your competitors. While some chinese ripp-offs survive off this type of approach, it’s not the best business model on the planet unless you’re willing to complete solely on price. Standing out from the crowd has never been more difficult with new products and service providers popping up like mushrooms. Design is used increasingly to give businesses a unique differential edge. It’s the same with people, we choose clothing within a specific niche, but try to keep our choices as different, interesting and personally meaningful as possible. Dressing your company up in the right clothes simply cannot be done without a certain amount of Design as well as creative/strategic thinking. Thinking is part of the Design Process.

Establishing a recognizable Brand

The visual language you use to convey what your company is about, can’t live on it’s own though. You still have to stand for something, offer something of real value, and be a genuine benefit to those who use your products or services. Building a brand can sometimes be like trying to give shape to thin air, because its filled with so many intangibles. Feelings and perceptions which people have about your company are difficult to manage and to encourage if they are positive. The Communication Language (literal and visual in fact all sensory communication) is an area to focus on and the way you speak is important. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words, and creating a visual Branding experience can speak volumes on what you want to convey. This extends into the entire sensory & emotional/psychological experience your customer has with your business & product/service. These experiences need to be Designed.

Design to give your operation a professional look

The last thing most businesses want is to look cheap, even if sometimes that’s their only unique difference, but you’d almost never find companies saying they are the cheapest. They’d use words like value for money, cost effective and all manner of other pleasant terms to describe the low cost nature of what they are offering. When something looks cheap we expect the quality to be poor and tend to stay away from this type of product or service. Design plays an important role in expressing and highlighting the inherent quality and professionalism of what you offer. If you’re a project management consultancy but your website is the most disorganised around, do you think people will believe you can manage their projects effectively? Many new prospects might not think so, but you’d never know because they simply won’t contact you.

Design for better usability

I’m sure you’ve heard of form following function. This expression explains objects taking the necessary shape in order to produce the best result. Many times we come across products, websites or even books which may look good aesthetically, but fail to fulfill their intended function.

Usability conscious design takes into account how the product will be used, determines the design decisions needed to enhance the users’ experience and to maximize the products intended functionality. It could be as simple as a decision on where to put the “sign up for newsletter button” on ones website, or what text to bold in a paragraph, or as complex as choosing the right technologies, materials, manufacturing processes or even developing new technologies to solve the business problem. These decisions have to be done in combination with an understanding of what will be aesthetically pleasing to the user.

Design for better readability

No, design is not just about creating pretty pictures, like many people think. Creating a message which is easy to read and conveys its intended meaning clearly, is also a design function. Take the example of a billboard. If I were to cram some essential but less important information into a small disclaimer, which was not legible to those the message was intended to reach, I would have failed at my job of designing the billboard to be fully functional.

A less obvious example would be increasing the letter spacing or line heights in a paragraph of text to make it easier to read. The choice of typeface or even the colour of the text can make a huge difference in the way the reader engages with your message. These issues are all a function of the design process.

Design for better communication

When communicating with different people, we shape the way we speak and interact with them based on our relationship with them. We also do so based on the relationship we would like to have with them as well as their level of understanding. This includes language or even accents. The same is true for business & organisational communications. We need to understand many factors which influence how our messages get across. We need to know the rules of the medium, understand who we are speaking to and what their level of understanding of the subject is. The more we know about our desired result and the target audience, the more tools we will have to develop our message. Design plays an important role in structuring and packaging messages into a format which can produce the desired result. Using the appropriate information the designer can create just the right message for the intended purpose.

Design to educate

Many times we need to educate our audiences on a specific subject, before we can convey our primary message. If you’re selling software for example, just rattling off the features might not be enough to convince your prospect. In this case you need to take your prospect through an educational journey in order to give them an experience of your product. Education takes place internally when conveying new company policies or processes. Maybe your factory has just implemented a new manufacturing process which needs to be conveyed to thousands of workers. Developing materials, presentations and guides to teach people is something that requires a thorough understanding of information design, typographic treatment, visual language and iconography and many other design related skills. With good design the task of teaching becomes easier. It’s common knowledge that Audio visual or multimedia presentations enhance people’s ability to grasp a subject as it engages their senses on multiple levels and creates and experience. A badly designed presentation could further confuse people on a particular subject and cost companies and organisations thousands in mistakes and lack of productivity.

Design can also unlock and enhance the positive attributes of your products and service by drawing. As we have all experienced when sitting down at a restaurant to have a meal presentation is very important in creating an appetizing experience. If the food is presented in a mixed up and disorganised fashion which does not bring out the good qualities of the ingredients we may even refuse to eat it. This applies to your business, your products and your services.

We can use Design to create focus on things which are of primary importance, to establish personality, to appeal to certain tastes, to fit into culture of a specific market, to improve efficiency and productivity, to uncover innovative ways of manufacturing, packaging and presenting products and services. What all of these do together is sell. Your customers will be happier if you design better experiences for them or give them a more usable or aesthetically pleasing product.

If you’d like to learn a little more about how Design can positively impact on your business, give us a shout, on nur [at] nomad-one [dot] com or contact us using our other details at the top of this newsletter.