A recent post discussing the value design can add to not just products, but to an organisation as a whole made me realise how hard it is actually to explain this subject to people who are not design professionals themselves. Partly because designers themselves are also a mixed bunch, some understand design thinking in a wider organisational context and others are quite happy just solving the problem they have been given. That means that a non-design person, coming into contact with designers, may encounter one who has plenty of ideas in terms of developing the business and another one who simply cares about the look of the latest product. This must be both infuriating and also highly unpredictable and ultimately I believe it makes life harder for us designers to communicate our value and potential in an organisation.
Another thing that gets to me regarding designers, is the widespread use of fluffy language that makes business people instantly switch off. Being a designer myself I find I make the greatest headway in communicating with people from different disciplines if I continuously make a conscious effort to avoid ‘designease’, the very specialist language and terminology we designers quite happily bat around with our colleagues and behind which we sometimes hide in order to sound more self-important. Whatever the reason for using ‘designease’ – drop it, it doesn’t do you any favours and moreover, words like ‘dichotomy, synergistic, contextual’ and whatnot makes it even harder to follow the point you are going to make so people switch off, and don’t listen a word you are saying.
Back to the maturity of design in an organisation – Jess McMullin has created a brilliantly simple diagram, which to me encapsulates the various degrees of maturity of the use of design in an organisation. Companies like Procter & Gamble have put design thinking at centre stage of their business innovation, and that means that design is not only used to solve specific problems, but also to help frame a wider strategic framework. This can of course only happen if there are design professionals in the organisation who have this degree of maturity themselves and are quite willing and able to contribute on this level. The other enabling factor, as mentioned before, is an organisation where the value of design thinking as capable of framing strategy and innovation on a company-wide scale is understood, and appreciated and thus a space at the negotiating table is reserved for the design professional with this capability.
