If you (or your boss) have ever thought about how to design correctly to maximize profits, we will support you with some facts. These facts about the commercial value of user experience design can convince those who are financially oriented.
This article covers:
- The business value of user experience design
- Four sets of design actions to be taken
- How to start implementing user experience design in your business?
McKinsey & Company International Consulting Company (McKinsey & Company International Consulting Company) conducted one of the largest studies in the world to measure revenue and shareholder returns related to the company’s good design culture. They found that the revenue and shareholder returns of the best design companies grew almost twice as fast as their peers.
01 How do you measure the value of user experience design?
How did they come to this conclusion? McKinsey has conducted follow-up investigations on 300 companies for more than 5 years. Measuring design behaviors and collecting a large amount of financial data shows that 12 design behaviors have the greatest correlation with financial returns. In other words, it actually shows the commercial value of design.
They then divided the design behavior into four larger categories or themes. This extensive and rigorous study on the relevance of design investment and returns is only available in the design mature model recently released by InVision.
02 What are the gains?
At the time of this research, many companies had not caught up with this difficult adaptation process, despite its huge commercial potential. This difference in revenue and total shareholder return (TRS) only applies to the top quarter of the company associated with the design score. Many companies are still unable to adapt.
In addition, the themes described in the report are not new to many designers. They have a painful understanding of these problems, but to solve these problems, the company needs a strong commitment from the leadership over a long period of time (maybe several years). It’s best to start as soon as possible!
03 Four sets of design actions taken
Unexpectedly, in the companies with the best financial returns, business leaders’ answers showed their implicit understanding of the four themes. When asked to name their biggest design weaknesses, the researchers found these four theme. Only 2% of people gave answers that did not focus on the topics below.
The four themes based on the commercial value of the design scoring system they used include:
- Leadership analysis: Measure and drive design performance with the same rigorous standards as benefits and costs.
- User experience: Break the inner wall between physical, digital and service design.
- Cross-functional talent: Make user-centric design the responsibility of everyone.
- Continuous iteration: Reduce risk by constantly listening, testing, and iterating with end users.
Again, these method classes may not surprise people engaged in design work, but for senior managers or others separated from design work, it may surprise them. The company’s understanding of the resource use process and information has a great impact on the quality of the design work.
In the UX studio, we regularly hold seminars to improve our services to add more value to our clients’ businesses. As expected, we found that these four themes perfectly describe the problems facing customers.
1. Leadership analysis
In order to improve the commercial value of design in the enterprise, design has become a management issue at the top. First, we should evaluate and manage it on the basis of measuring efficiency and value. Second, we must make implementation decisions and understand the true composition of the design and the tools and processes used.
Involve the boss
Involving business leaders in an organization is a good case practice and a good start for spreading design culture. When we start working with clients in the UX studio, we always try to reach the highest level decision makers in the project.
We try to involve them in the design process. We feel that this is essential to the success of any project. We share our experience with customers who do not want to participate.
For CEOs, spending time in contact with customers and personally understanding their needs not only provides them with valuable experience and knowledge. It also sets an example for the company to put users first. They should make a conscious effort to maintain a baseline level of understanding of customers in C-level management.
Who has the final say?
Unfortunately, design issues are often trapped in the middle management. Executives make decisions based on intuition, rather than strict measurement standards and benchmarks, just like they do in almost every other department of an enterprise. Measurement is the key to making the right decision and the most effective investment.
Historically, it has not been easy to measure design performance and the commercial value of design. Now, we have an emerging economic tool designed for this, and companies are slowly adapting to them. Measuring customer satisfaction in the field through simple surveys or regular usability assessments provides good examples.
We must realize that these indicators and processes should form part of any future design specifications. Designers must be aware of the importance of participating in leadership.
They must also strive to provide information about their work to all departments of the company to increase transparency and facilitate decision-making.
2. User Experience
Obtaining a complete user experience requires breaking down the barriers between physical design, digital design and service design, so that an important step can be taken to optimize the user experience. Companies must understand all the different possibilities that design can have an impact.
Cross-platform experience
Cross-platform services are becoming more and more common, and we must carefully craft the customer or customer’s comprehensive experience at all touch points.
The basis of these experiences is to “understand the potential needs of potential users in their own environment.” This requires observation, interviews, and other qualitative and quantitative research to collect reliable insights from users. These insights should then become the basis of reference for every meeting related to any design action.
Start with research
Therefore, our UX studio never designs without research. In some cases, we only provide research. In every project we participate in, we will constantly remind others of the potential needs and motivations of users, so as to push every design decision back into that environment.
Treating the user experience as an integrated, multi-platform entity, rather than a separate instance, provides companies with a lot of great opportunities for value.
Companies that are truly design-oriented should consider going out of their own ecosystem and cooperating with different services from different backgrounds.
3. Cross-functional talent
The design department must be open to other departments of the company, and other departments must also regard user-centricity as one of their tenets. The McKinsey report shows that overcoming the limitations of different functions within an organization is one of the most critical factors affecting the highest financial performance.
Against isolation
When working with clients, UX studios always try to involve stakeholders from business executives to development and operations in the design. We believe in diversity of thinking. We also hope that our customers, even after a long period of time after the end of the partnership, the seeds of design culture can still spread within their organizations.
Design involves many different parts of the business. From classic human-computer interaction to psychology and the development of new business models. In order to develop in this situation, the designer must become “T-shaped.” This means that they not only need to work with many different functions, but also have deep knowledge accumulation and practical experience in their own design skills. This ensures the greatest impact that the designer can have as much as possible.
Throughout the year, we have found many ways to share knowledge internally and externally in the UX studio. These should help our team members gain horizontal knowledge about multiple aspects of design and business, and those who initiate knowledge sharing have the opportunity to gain insight into that specific field, and can even revisit them at any time.
Retain top design talents
McKinsey & Company said that in all businesses, the contribution of the top 2% of employees to the company has doubled. Not surprisingly, in order to retain their best designers, the best performing companies have established some kind of incentive mechanism. They usually associate these motivational factors with the design performance of analytical leadership measurement and evaluation, as described in the first of the four themes.
However, when a designer composes a special type, please choose incentives carefully. In the minds of the most talented people, high bonuses and career development paths may not be very important.
Most talented designers want to work on projects they care about, and see projects that quickly enter the market as challenges. They hope to share their passion with their peers through articles, conferences and other community-type channels. And they believe that a good workplace culture requires diversity and interest.
4. Continuous iteration
Regarding speed to market as life
When extending to design, we must adapt agile practices to their specific needs, but the gist remains the same.
Learning, testing, and iterating with users can help reduce risks as early as possible, and discover huge opportunities when developing breakthrough products. This is the tangible business value of design. Putting the basic needs of users in our vision allows us to be aware of this first when new needs arise, or to improve our understanding of current needs.
Diversify your sources
McKinsey believes that the best results of successive iterations come from combining multiple information sources and multiple types of information and using them as the basis for design decisions. Considering user research, we must combine qualitative research (such as ethnographic interviews) with quantitative methods (such as large sample surveys).
We must also combine market analysis (such as competitor research and patent scanning, etc.) with the business focus of the finance department. If these data points are not associated with other execution risks, then good design work that ultimately cannot generate revenue will increase proportionally. This is a result that designers and companies do not want to see.
This means designers must share their work as early as possible and strive to get as much feedback as possible. Isolating the early model from other models for too long will not bring good results. On the other hand, product release does not represent the end of design work.
