Corporate and senior management support for design is beneficial. The success of the design process in a business is augmented when there is buy-in from – and acceptance of its value by – senior management.
In the companies we surveyed, we saw three primary drivers for top management support of design.
- Design’s role as a value creator
- A new focus on user needs
- Design as a tool to deliver the brand
In many of the companies we spoke to, the successful completion and communication of a single design project that fulfilled one or more of these drivers was a decisive factor in achieving top-level support for the design function. Whirlpool’s Duet washing machine was more popular and more profitable than any machine in it’s history. BT’s Home Hub wireless router helped to redefine the organisations’ position in the minds of its customers and Virgin Atlantic’s Upper Class Suite was a decisive differentiator in a highly competitive market.
Where senior management accepts that design itself is crucial to the success of the company’s products and services, this has a positive impact on the buy-in to the design process and its links with the company’s overall new product development processes. This is particularly important where design can be used as a key way of differentiating products and services from those of competitors.
At Whirlpool, for example, the use of design to produce highly successful, high margin products has driven a wider management enthusiasm for the application of design across all brands and product ranges. Today the role of design is accepted across the organisation and is seen as inseparable from the company’s overall investment in, and emphasis on, innovation.
While design is most commonly used to increase the customer’s perception of product value, it can also cut costs. At LEGO, productivity increases and radical inventory reductions have been an important result of the design process, which successfully reduced the number of bricks produced from about 14,000 shapes and variations to just 6,500.
A second and very significant source of support for design and consequently design process comes from the growing centrality of the user to the company’s strategy. Organisations that deliver complex and sophisticated products and services are increasingly recognising that usability issues are becoming the biggest barrier to success.
Today, these companies are paying extremely close attention to user experience and needs. They invest heavily in user research during the design process, and realise that designers can play a significant role in the translation of user needs into appropriately designed products and services.
Brands are hugely powerful things. They are also tricky to manage. Whether companies, like Whirlpool, need to cost-effectively manage and differentiate a diverse brand portfolio or whether, like Yahoo!, LEGO or Starbucks, they need to make a successful brand work in a growing variety of product and service contexts, design input can be instrumental in successful brand management.
Whirlpool’s platform and brand studios, for example, have helped the company to greatly increase the use of common parts across its different brands, while actually increasing brand differentiation and the number of markets served.
At Starbucks, the use of design filters to evaluate every product or piece of merchandise is helping to deliver a consistent user experience and brand recognition as the company’s offering diversifies rapidly.
The design process study findings show that senior management support for design is on the increase, with several of the companies having convinced senior management of the real impact of design in only the past decade.