Good design makes products more competitive, better, quicker and cheaper. It keeps production costs down but allows companies to charge higher prices.
Many of the companies in the Eleven Lessons study use design as a tool to ensure that their products can meet increasingly demanding cost and quality constraints. These organisations are not simply making use of design to add a little extra value at the end of the product development process: they demand that their design teams squeeze every drop they can from initial idea to final recycling.
At LEGO the design process is focused on producing products that can compete with an extraordinary new array of distractions for children. To do this they must be appealing look at, satisfying to construct and fun to play with.
Whirlpool uses its platform and brand studios to produce thousands of products with different brand identities and to suit the needs of different types of user, while still maximising the number of parts and subassemblies that are shared among them to keep overall costs down.
Designers at Xerox know that the people who purchase their products will probably buy them unseen, then use them every day for years. They build products to withstand tough use and abuse, leaving customers satisfied and ready to buy again.
Naturally, great design can do more than just deliver good products efficiently. It can also produce products that offer customers something extra and that create better brand impact