How does Strategy affect Design?

I don’t disagree with the points you’re making here (though I think “simple” is an overrated goal), but I have to ask - how do you measure the contribution of a designer? I completely agree that designers should take ownership for their design whenever possible (rather than handing it off to the “real” owner), and I agree we need to be accountable, but when it comes to measuring our contributions, I have yet to discover a good, repeatable way of doing this.

Terry asks,

how do you measure the contribution of a designer?

As much as I hate sports analogies, how do you measure the contribution of the third baseman? A great third baseman is an asset to the team. A poor third baseman is a liability.

By looking at third basemen throughout baseball history, we can see the attributes the great ones have. And we can look for those attributes in rookies as they play their first games.

But is there good, repeatable way of measuring this contribution? Probably not.

(By the way, Bill James might argue there is a way to measure the contribution of the third baseman.)

Ok, there are very good examples here. I think the designer should work in the team since the beginning of the project but he/she should stay apart from doing the business manager work to give an example.

Terry, I would say you dont have to measure it, simply demonstrate the advantages of applying user focused methodologies at the strategy level.

As always, it pays to understand your audience and speak their language. For me, I talk about consistency across the suite of products, branding at an interactive level, etc.

However I dont think its quite true that “if designers are going to be successful, then our contribution must be measured” You can demonstrate this up front, not just measure it at the back end.

This reminds me of the debates of yore. Back end usability testing results feeding in to the next iteration. Design is the manifestation of strategy, why not make it an agile relationship.

I think one of the keys here is that the contribution of the designer must be measured and I think that’s terrifically hard to do. Is the product selling well? Great, but is that the result of the idea being so good that consumers are going to buy it regardless or because the design of the product gives consumers the impression that it’s approachable?

I’d like advice on how to measure a designer’s contribution other than, “It’s looks good”, “It feels right”, and/or “It’s selling well”. Please advise.

Good post - certainly the designer (like every other role involved in a project) should be well-briefed as to the strategy and feel able to feed in ideas. Every piece of dire marketing collateral we’ve ever been presented with can be traced back to not involving or clearly briefing the design team. But that isn’t to say that one should look to the designer to take the lead in this any more than I’d expect a designer to set out the technical platform strategy. Still, each project and each combination of people is going to provide a different mix with different degrees of overlap.

So, basically, good design is like porn… you know it when you see it. =)

Jared - Actually, I think your example might be exactly backwards. The quality of a 3rd baseman is something that actually IS quantitative (as you say, Bill James does a good job of showing this) but people like to place qualitative judgments on it. The quality of good design is, IMO, inherently qualitative and people are endlessly trying to find ways to make it quantitative. Of course, this might lead to a baseball debate rather than a design debate…

Pauric - I think UX is relatively easy to sell at a strategic level, because it’s intuitive that focusing on customers is a good thing. The tough part is when you are trying to figure what the ROI is on applying UX to a particular design problem. The answer can’t be “it’s always worth it”, yet there seems to me no good way to answer the question. But I’m not sure too much time should be spent on it… that way madness lies.

rands - The closest I’ve come to a repeatable process is when the design problem is to fix an area of the product that is generating a lot of customer support calls. Fix the design, then look at the drop in support calls (and most companies can calculate exactly how much a support call costs). Of course, that only works when the design problem is specifically associated with lowering service costs.

Strategy does affect design. Moving forward, designers are going to have to become usability experts. Good design = good usability and if the usability stinks then the designer is accountable.

Their efforts can be measured with proven usability techniques. A prototype created by a designer should pass at least a Heuristic analysis to ensure that the interface was designed with the best possible intuitiveness.

When we build a new web application, it is first the business analyst that creates some simple wire frame of what a particular interface should look like generated from a use case. This wire frame is then passed to the designer to mock up prototypes. These prototypes are evaluated for usability and edits are made until the client is satisfied.

I love the way amazon has incorporated cookies to accommodate user behavior. If you browse today looking for a web design book and come back a few days and plan to buy a web usability book you would find a offer to buy both these books and get a discount.

Amazon heavily makes use of user cookie information. To illustrate how heavily they use it. I was reading reviews of web marketing books on amazon though didn’t buy any one of them . A few days later i visited a marketing blog and it had amazon affiliate ads running. Guess what the exact three books i was reading reviews for popped in the ads! Upon closer inspection i somehow found they use the last visited cookies to match to the ads.

Amazon’s design strategy if you notice is heavily influenced by how to make maximum use of user cookie info to provide best value to visitors.

There is an interesting class dynamic in the client/designer relationship that might hint at how to solve some of the problems addressed in this discussion…

The client holds the equity, the risk, and the potential rewards.

The designer holds no equity. A hugely successful project might help the designer get future work, but he/she/the consulting company don’t have a stake in the project.

A huge problem in all this is the common system of a designer or design firm bidding on a project to spec. Good design is ultimately part of a highly iterative process which is flexible and changes course often. But with bids based on spec sheets, every new suggested iteration by the client or the designer is a monetary loss to the designer. Or if not a monetary loss because the design firm will charge an overage, then it serves to train the client not to take an iterative approach.

The whole bidding thing is a total set up for a bad relationship between client and designer. That bad relationship has an affect on the quality of the product.

Working hourly with designers is one answer. The designer’s attitude stays positive because she’s being paid for the work she does. Not rocket science.

But how about a different solution: give the designer/design firm an equity stake. Here we move toward changing the landowner/peasant relationship at its core to the benefit of both client and designer.

The client has the opportunity to shift the paradigm and may achieve some market edge by changing the assumptions about how the business aspect of the relationship is set up.

When designers have equity stakes in the work they are doing, then the issue of designer accountability solves itself.

Shai Gluskin: “But how about a different solution: give the designer/design firm an equity stake. Here we move toward changing the landowner/peasant relationship at its core to the benefit of both client and designer.”

I don’t see that as common solution. Still, as a designer I have learned more on projects where I have been directly accountable on the results of the projects.

When designing site that you own, the design decisions become much more strategic and the ROI of the each alteration and feature comes so much more important.

I would say you dont have to measure it, simply demonstrate the advantages of applying user focused methodologies at the strategy level.

I’ll tell ya, now that I’m at a tiny company (6) where I’m THE designer, my favorite part of the job is everything that leads up to pushing the pixels. The actual XHTML/CSS is merely the manifestation of all the strategy and planning leading up to that point. Honestly, the nuts and bolts design work is becoming a little meh compared to everything else.

Maybe that’s why someone said to me today, “Oh, so you’re a marketing guy.” Not really, but the strategy part is the fun part lately.

I also have a stake in the product. I really want to make this work for many reasons. There’s something to be said for that… I fight harder for the right design choices. I won’t just accept it and say “wasn’t my idea.”

@Jared: James may get it, but not the Writers. That’s why there are disturbingly few 3B in the Hall.

The problem here is that people too often assume design means “graphics.”

Would you plan a car without involving an engineer? Of course not. The designer is the Experience Engineer. They plan out how the users will use the end product, and what experience will be delivered. It is the designer’s responsibility to take the goals of the project and determine what features are needed, where and how they will appear, and what they will look like. When designers are reduced to just putting a coat of paint on the work of non-designers, then it shouldn’t be a surprise when the end result is lacking.

The view I’m moving toward is that designers are responsible for the experience of the product’s user, which goes beyond just the product to the way it’s supported, marketed, and delivered, and the way it fits into the rest of the user’s life.

The client (or product manager, for team work) is responsible for the business, which goes beyond the product to the engineering, monetization, and business development.

So while we’ve always had this fight for product “ownership” between designers and clients/PMs, I think things work better when both parties recognize that their responsibilities go beyond the mere product, and focus on their unique contributions to product development when they do work together, co-”owning” the end product and not worrying about who is “in charge”.