Been exploring the challenges of driving design impact, especially how teams balance user needs with business goals. This time, I focused on the business side.
Here’s how Eames frames design:
Design is the deliberate arrangement of elements to accomplish a purpose.
It is a method of action grounded in recognizing needs and working within constraints.
What are the boundaries of design?
Eames: What are the boundaries of problems?
In a business context, that means that design is always faced with imposing and managing constraints.
With new technology, problems usually become more complex. That complexity forces teams to add more constraints to hit their business goals. I put together a short piece to explore how design can reconcile this side of the equation with four questions.
The flip side is that users have their own needs. Without clear constraints, their wants can take over the problem space. The designer’s job is to balance these needs with the goals of the business.
@Bryan this continues to sit well with me. Really curious how @Helge would overlap this with a situational perspective. I think this overlays even more intuitively.
Secondly it’s really hard to distinguish between needs and wants. But very importantly: they are not interchangeable concepts. People are motivated by their needs, but want/use tools to achieve them (that is why we call them ‘users’).
A need emerges in a given situation. ‘Situations’ are an important concept because a). it’s a vastly better way to frame why people are doing what they are doing, and b). it broadens our perspective when we are looking for ‘constraints’ and influences that have an effect on what people want, what success looks like and how we can get them there.
Given the two frameworks above I would offer a challenge and a simple question:
Do we want to help people make sense of something or categorize something?
What this means is that if we are trying to make sense of something we let the data lead the way and help us find and shape the framework = “data precedes framework” (Dave Snowden)
While if we are trying to categorize something we create the framework and then ask people to fill in the data = framework precedes data
I’m personally much more focused on helping organizations make sense of emerging markets, compared to categorizing and solve complicated problems.
This is where I believe the core unit of making decisions with user input is not the data itself, but its interpretation in context. A concept is a way to interpret a situation. I do like your ideas around situations.
A design signal is a clear, measurable cue from users that shows what’s really happening so you can make the next decision.
We see it in a triangle. I think what’s interesting with this approach is that we’re not tring to abstract the need or situation out of the commerce scenario, but present a way to address it in a way that is sustainable.
Thinking more broadly @helge, we believe design signals help us produce leverage to drive design forward. However, situations, user needs, concepts… none of it matters to a business unless it can drive an agenda with a team.
We’ve put an immense amount of time into figuring out how to create design impact with these layers. Glare intends to help teams use sequencing to make a difference.
The way Design Signals resonate with me is that they are:
a. designed, meaning that there is an intention behind them to be valuable .. compared to other KPIs which often exist only because we have data.
and
b. because if we know we need to know something we can design the experience to produce this signal.
c. I have not understood Design Signals to be standardized .. and I would hope they aren’t. Because if (I would propose) two competitors measure the same thing they will end up becoming more similar (race to the bottom) instead of incentivised to become different.
a. Yes, if you want to create impact, a data point alone will not solve your problem. The great executors know how to build on risk while reducing ambiguity.
b. Because if we have a hunch that’s based on patterns, it can help us guide our decisions.
c. It’s a framework. The better you get at them, the stronger they become. You’ll often see a pattern in our work: We’ll show you how to think about the problem, but you still need to think. Each of the 16 blocks strengthens the design signals, but it’s not a process.
30-40 strong signals in any one project will create immense value, as they compound. It’s making needfinding extremely valuable.
In our work (at Merck) we found that different levels of Stakeholders needed to make different types of decisions needed to be served by different types of data and measures.
e.g. we had:
Digital team (job: engagement quantity and quality)
Marketer (job: strategy and business goals)
Franchise Director (job: business goals + support marketer)
Business Unit Director (job: prioritize resources across franchises)
Managing Director (job: prioritize resources across BU’s)
Would you say Design Signals are for everyone, just different signals depending on what decisions they are serving?
Yes, design signals are for everyone. Design’s unique roll is working cross functionally to design systems that serve both the user and the business. None of these workflows are set up to do that effectively with the end user in mind (this is also why design falls down).
And in Focus, Decisions, which require understanding how the user and business are effected by different parts of a decision. Interface is the part that touches the customer, but it could be a service or an activity.
I’ve been putting together thoughts on design signals for a post on LinkedIn, and I wanted to share it here to get your take.
The core idea is:
Design signals turn UX metrics into tools that drive decisions.
In most of our engagements, product and design teams have to wait on analytics from other teams to justify what they already sense is happening. Signals are meant to do the opposite. They exist to move work forward while it is still in motion.
UX metrics tell you what happened.
They are raw numbers about user behavior. Useful, but incomplete on their own.
A design signal is what happens when those numbers are tied to:
A great breakdown of the difference in impact here. (UX Metric vs Signal) Can a regular Joe shape a signal? Might be worth showcasing how we get there from the UX Metric.
