Month: September 2020

Value is an overused word.

Particularly in Silicon Valley tech culture, amid investor-led conversations, value is so very heavily overused. Value this, value that. Keep generating value. Yes, yes, of course! Yet, it all seems just so trite, and empty, as a practical concept. What does value even mean to those striving to improve people’s lives with better technology? And for the design leader who is dancing across multiple levels of craft in their work from production to storytelling to principled compromise …just how does value fit into that interpretive model? How does one talk about the value of design? Of a design? Of designing? Of being a designer? Sigh. So many angles to analyze!

I don’t have the time to write a doctoral dissertation on all this…but I suppose one practical way to describe design’s value is to articulate its usefulness, usability, and desirability, pertaining to the affected chain of customers and partners (i.e., in an enterprise ecosystem) as well as the intersecting demands of various stakeholders, as exemplified by Eames’ Venn diagram of competing concerns.

Another way is to deeply dive into how the design creates significance or meaning for people, from a deeply humanistic approach. This borrows from Richard Buchanan’s model of values in design — is the design good, fair, just, right? This suggests that we might regard value as an emergent outcome from a defined set of related principles that propose a point of view, based upon some informed intuition of users/contexts, and provides decision-making rationale when things get tough.

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OK. So where does this leave the designer trying to deliver something of quality and … value? This might be highly simplistic, but I propose that design’s value is best viewed in three ways: impact, inspiration, and influence.

Design value as impact

This implies a tangible outcome that is observable, recognizable, and somehow measurable (or describable via specific criteria & qualities). Like a real physical impact, there’s something left behind, of consequence and resonance.

Design value as inspiration

This suggests provocation, or stimulation, of both imagination (optimistic possibilities for a better future) and arguments (dialogues of opposition to arrive at some truth or understanding) around contrasting points of view, to tease out what’s critical and essential.

Design value as influence

In doing design, leading design, or just being a designer, relationships with cross-functional peers is vital…and knowing their agendas, motives, and deeply held values (or incentives) to get a design done. Being able to influence them via the powers and artifacts of design is valuable skill indeed.

Design is about quality.

Design is so loaded of a word, right!? Either it’s too emotional or too pedantic, with over-justified rationale that’s evolved into trendy buzzwords plastered on magazine covers (ahem, “design thinking”?). And still, in 2020, design is seen primarily as simply making things look sexy, exciting, glamorous. Pretty. Sigh.

However, quality is a word we all respond to, at intuitive and productive levels of execution, delivery, and service.

When we think of quality, we think of something that’s well-made, crafted with durability, solidity, strength. There’s an aesthetic dimension as well, conveying elegance or a poised balance of visual and tactile qualities. But not the only thing. This echoes the wisdom of Classical antiquity with the Golden Mean ratio and other examples of sacred geometry. It feels like it can stand the test of time.

In hi-tech sectors, the notion of QA or “quality assurance” is a standard phase of expertise in product development. At one company I led “Design QA” sessions, which involved verifying the accuracy of implementation by front-end engineers against the delivered and approved design specs. This has become a popular method at many places, since then. And I also helped lead a “quality” initiative with engineering and product leaders, which was my subtle code for “design-driven”, without getting caught up in the pre-ordained biases.

Hearing my words about improving our quality helped break the ice with code warriors and business suits alike, without any predisposed biases around the messy word “design” getting in each other’s way. Indeed, it’s a word that helped us connect and collaborate better. Quality is something we can agree upon. We all want to deliver something of quality, that we can be proud of. Who doesn’t?

However, what actually makes something be of high quality…well, that’s a whole other discussion! One pointer is to look at the brand qualities, UX models/patterns, and UI components being cohesively applied to create a product that respect’s the customer’s time and effort and money. Quality is a pathway to value that’s tangible and distinctive.

Design is about discipline.

I’ve learned over the years that “process” can be a… touchy word in hi-tech culture. It connotes bureaucracy and politics, time-wasting tedium on checks-and-balances, for their own sake. To suggest that a team follow a design process can imply emphasis on the project management aspects, sauntering through a sequentialized, mechanized, procedure. Yawn.

And yet, we desperately want to ensure that design is seen not as some idiosyncratic art of spontaneity (cue those ‘Mad Men’ scenes of drinking and spacing out), that there is indeed rigor with systematic thoughtfulness, and deliberation towards tangible — and yes, measurable — outcomes. So, I sometimes use the word discipline with design, either as proxy or as reinforcement.

Like: As a team and company, we should establish an internal discipline of design. Let’s apply design discipline to this problem or opportunity. We need to take a disciplined approach to tackle the ambiguity or complexity.

This emphasis on discipline suggests a couple things which help the designer in their rationale:

• Design as rigorous activity with intensity & reflection, a methodical cadence of doing per rules, constraints, and criteria.
• Design as an established approach with respect & value accorded to it for the sake of how it supports the team’s intentions.

By applying the notion of “discipline” to design, this confers a level of professionalism to the practice of designing, and sets up the designer as a serious practitioner of merit and respect.