Business Value of Design
I caught this recent panel discussion from Mix08 on the topic of Design and how it contributes and relates to business value. The discussion overall was pretty broad and non-specific, but I thought there were a few interesting points. The viewpoints were especially interesting to me, given that I had recently attended Alan Cooper’s presentation in which he questioned the meaningfulness of measuring traditional business value in the post-industrial economy.
Since I was listening while multitasking, I found it a little difficult to follow who made various points in the audiocast. Therefore I’ll just share some thoughts in general and note individuals only where I’m fairly certain about who made a statement.
When (not) to do user research
Someone on the panel made a comment that caught my attention: know when not to do user research. The statement was that at some times it is a waste to do user research. If a user research presentation ends up on someone’s desk and that person doesn’t appreciate it, then you shouldn’t waste your time doing the research. Perhaps I’m misinterpreting what I heard, but I couldn’t disagree more.
If user research results are ending up on decision-makers desks as a presentation hardcopy, then that is the problem not the user research. User research is most valuable when decision makers are involved in the user research. They don’t have to do it first-hand, but should be exposed to the results in the form of a direct observation or a rich presentation. I’ve seen successful presentations include videos from usability sessions, pictures from site visits, and excerpts from directed storytelling interviews.
I’m not saying the user research is always appropriate and should be done regardless of business culture. However, if the culture isn’t congruent with doing user research, don’t simply cut down and do less of it. The design will suffer in the end.
Methods should be only a means to an end
I think it is David Watson who made an interesting comparison about how designers too often share their design methods with other disciplines and distract from the design itself. He says that spending time explaining the design process, such as how personas, flow diagrams, and wireframes are created is much like a finance analyst telling everyone the details about his various spreadsheets. All anyone cares about is the final design, much like most non-finance workers would only care about how much money is being made. People would care about details such as where the money is coming from but not about how the analyst did the calculations in the spreadsheet.
I think there is a valid point here, and having recently been educated on many design and research methods, I am probably guilty of spending too much time on the process and tools rather than presenting the outcome. However, in many industries I think designers find themselves having to justify their work much more than a finance analyst would. And indeed because the design is so closely tied to key business decisions (i.e. “what are we going to build?”), designers need to justify the end decisions much more than a finance analyst would. Furthermore many teams aren’t as familiar or comfortable with “design magic” and so they need exposure and inclusion when selecting the design methods. I think it comes down to a matter of trust. Until designers demonstrate success within a team the culture may not support design work the same way it does something more core to the business like finance.
The takeaway for me in this analogy is that decisions about the process and tools should be left up to the design team and only shared when necessary to develop trust. And as we all know but not always practice, a design presentation should focus on the final design and only give enough methodology to demonstrate credibility.
Future design trends
Luke Wroblewski from Yahoo! responded to the question “what does the future of design look like?”. He talked about the awful complexity of many of our day-to-day interactions. Electronic devices are constantly asking for our attention with beeps, blinks and vibrations. His vision of future design trends is rooted in a more holistic simple design philosophy.
Hopefully this is a vision that will be realized, however I think this has always been people’s vision of the future. In studying ubiquitous computing at CMU, I read countless papers about how researchers and practitioners envisioned holistic systems which could solve our daily frustrations which never came to be. So, is now the time when design will suddenly allow systems to be more seamlessly integrated and ease our daily bombardment? I’m optimistic, but I see no reason to believe why now is any better of a time than 10 or 20 years ago. Granted, we’ve made some improvements and it’s always easier to see what’s lacking, so perhaps we are making progress. Only time will tell.
First to market vs. Best to market
The last topic that I found very interesting was how market maturity dictates what quality a product must be in order to be successful. The panelists more or less agreed that a less mature market is more forgiving of products with fewer features. This is basically because new products define the market niche for a product. We see a progression of products - take social networks as an example - and as the market matures users demand and expect more features. Competition forces leading products to add features until finally someone redefines the market with a drastic improvement. This phase is often referred to as feature creep and is difficult to avoid once a product becomes popular. The underlying reason is that user needs change - that is, users expect and ask for more and more features. Some of these features are likely to conflict with the needs of others and thus the cycle repeats itself.
What I found interesting about this view is that it directly contradicts the presentation I saw Alan Cooper give last week. His viewpoint is that best to market always beats first to market. I was pretty sold on his ideas at the time I heard him talk, but I think there are many counterexamples in which being first is better than being best. But having this mentality does lead to success - it’s just a different way of thinking about it. In my opinion, Cooper’s definition of “best to market” includes the time at which the product enters the market because down the road the market will be different. It’s enough to pique my interest and want to delve deeper into Cooper’s perspective.
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Is there any real correlation between first/best and success? There are so many examples that swing wildly. beta vs. vhs: beta was first to market and the best but lost. Friendster/MySpace/Facebook: friendster was first, MySpace dominated for a while, but now Facebook is the top banana (afaik). iPod was not the first, wasn’t heavy on features, and targeted a relatively small demographic (Mac users) when it was released, and it quickly took over mind and marketshare. Likewise, I’ve heard that NetNewsWire, which is Mac only, has a lion share of RSS subscribers for client RSS readers (best in spite of overwhelming circumstances). Walking through Microsoft’s entire product history shows that they can beat competition while neither being first *or* best; that’s essentially their business model.
Is there any hard data to suggest things work one way or another?
Comment by Jon Hohle — April 2, 2008 @ 6:00 am