Product innovation sits at the intersection of desirability, commercial viability, and technological feasibility. Design thinking—which has proven ROI—integrates these three elements and delivers business value.
Successful companies make millions by recognizing the value of integrating design thinking into their process.
Good design is simple, beautiful, and easy to use. It creates a sense of purpose and belonging. It meets user needs, and it just works. Aside from these characteristics, how can we tell if a design is “good”? Furthermore, how can a company tell if the investment of time and money in a design is worth it?
The proof is in the numbers
Companies are slowly recognizing that design can be used as a differentiator to respond to changing trends and consumer behaviors. Time and again, Fortune 500 companies such as Apple, Microsoft, Disney, and IBM have demonstrated the intrinsic value of as a competitive advantage that impacts the bottom line and drives business growth.
Design thinking, often dismissed by business leaders in previous decades, has now become a driving force in the business world thanks to publications in Harvard Business Review and Forbes.
A buzzword popularized by Tim Brown (CEO of IDEO, a global design firm), design thinking is “a human-centered approach to innovation that draws on the designer’s toolbox to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the demands of business success.”
Today, this growing trend is changing fundamental business practices. It’s changing the way management thinks and the way design and product teams operate. Some have even understood the value of user experience and, by extension, invested in improving the customer experience.
This is quite astonishing, because just ten years ago, most companies didn’t even know what user experience meant.
What exactly is “Design Thinking”?
Design thinking is an approach to creative problem solving that is widely recognized as an effective means of people-centered product innovation. It has been called a methodology, a culture, and a philosophy. At its core, design thinking recognizes that design must serve a business purpose and goals, not just beauty.
Design thinking was born out of the lack
Capacity of large companies to be creative and create new products and services that meet the unmet needs of their customers. At its core, the methodology stems from and revolves around the customer. The design thinking process considers the ethnographic context, behavior, thinking, motivations, habits, and needs of people. Think of a person in their daily life and all their interactions with a variety of products and services throughout their day.
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User-centered design thinking creates value for the business
Design thinking shifts the focus from a business-centric engineering solution (we invent a product based on a bunch of assumptions and hope it works for customers) to a customer-centric solution (we explore cultural phenomena, observe how people behave and think, gain insights into their needs, and design a product accordingly).
Design thinking places understanding context and ongoing engagement with people at the heart of the practice to determine the problem to be solved, the metrics for success, and the activities that will emerge from solving the problem.
Designers have hundreds of tools and resources
At their disposal to identify problems, conduct research, imagine solutions, and explore use cases to find the best path forward. While designers and train to create value for the product and for customers, design thinking methodology can be used everywhere from product development to customer service to finance.
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Chief Design Officer at Epic Decade
design thinking is “the application of design techniques, design methods, and design mindsets, not for the production of new artifacts or objects, but for the application of developing new models of business value, potentially new activities themselves […] from the design of things to the design of ideas.”
However, this is not a definitive solution.
Simply following the same processes without context will waste time and resources. Pentagram Partner Natasha Jen succinctly reminds us that designers do great work not because of their genius or their process, but because of the critical examination of their work and their common sense when faced with challenges in the workplace.
Design thinking is still a good tool, but it is not a universal tool.
What is the business value of Design Thinking?
Every business has a never-ending list of goals, whether it’s constantly launching new products that increase sales by generating customer interest or providing better customer support.
When a company decides to launch a new product, heavy and expensive machinery is set in motion, especially in large companies. The costs are enormous. The application of design thinking allows for immediate savings of considerable amounts of money, because it focuses attention on the specific solutions that people really need – immediate savings are realized as part of the return on investment offered by design thinking.
The world’s largest technical professional organization in its article “
Why Software Fails,” estimates that the amount spent on IT projects worldwide is about $1 trillion per year.
According to their report, of the top twelve reasons for project failure, three are related to the failure of user-centered design:
- Poorly defined requirements
- Poor communication between customers and developers
- Stakeholder Policy
What are the reasons to invest in design thinking?
Whether you’re a CEO, marketer, or designer, here are three clear reasons why your company should invest in design thinking:
- Improving your UX saves you money
- A little initial UX research can save you hundreds of engineering hours and thousands of dollars.
- Reduces the cost of customer support
- Focusing on UX increases your revenue
- Increases conversion rates
- Improves customer retention and loyalty
- Focusing on user interface excellence creates competitive advantage and impacts the bottom line. Just look at Dyson, Uber, Mint, Apple, IBM and Intuit.
Proven ROI gains from design thinking
Measuring the return on investment (ROI) of design thinking can be challenging in any organization. Even more challenging, changes to your company’s operations may not directly reflect the overall change in product performance compared to the previous workflow.
However, there are many cases that show very nepal phone number library clear signs that a design thinking methodology brings about significant and positive changes throughout the organization.
When Intuit implemented a new policy allowing employees to spend 10 percent of their time on side projects, some of those employees questioned TurboTax’s purchasing policy in 2007. They discovere that the company was focuse on selling five seats of the software. But most users were buying only one.
This shift in focus resulted in a $10 million increase in TurboTax sales in its first year.
Design thinking doesn’t guarantee better products or solutions.
Instead, it drives experimentation, data collection, and analysis, and allows designers to look at their daily challenges in a new way. The results are promising. Moving from a “one-size-fits-all” model to one that follows user-centered design processes is a smart way to push any organization to be faster, more organized, and more creative—all of which translates into a better return on investment.
Startups that embrace design
Thinking methodology tend to outperform their peers in terms of fundraising and profits. Uber, Airbnb, Warby Parker, and Etsy have all had great success a complete list of unit phone numbers and incorporated design thinking into their methodologies. Over time, these brands have outperformed their peers, and their investors have realized a better return on their investment.
Conclusion
The value of user experience resulting from design thinking is particularly compelling. When comparing a user experience project to another investment with similar business goals.
All these companies have one thing in common. It is their constant focus on the customer and providing the best possible user experience. Which is deeply root in their design thinking methodology.
