Targets, evaluation and feedback

Most of the companies we spoke to are required to report back on the success of the launched product or service. The common aim in doing this is to prove the impact of good design on the success of the product or service. Being able to prove that design contributed to business success helps to gain buy-in for design and maintains the team’s credibility and perceived value to the organisation

Measuring the impact of the product or service is done by collecting data from a number of sources. For example, companies use their internal consumer insight, research or marketing functions to carry out customer satisfaction tracking surveys and link changes in satisfaction to the introduction of products or services.

The introduction of a new product or service can be linked to other business performance metrics, such as sales and market share. Virgin Atlantic Airways was able to link a 2% increase in its market share to the launch of the Upper Class Suite, worth £50 million annually, a significant measure of success which is widely attributed to the design team.

Companies will also encourage customer feedback through in situ channels – via baristas at Starbucks or service operators for Xerox. Equally, data on the sales of spare parts or logged in-service failures are tracked in companies like Xerox and Whirlpool, and may indicate where design has successfully overcome problems in a product or need to be developed in more detail.

Finally, where companies see design as an extension of the brand, design is valued as part of the overall company brand value. This is the case within BT, where design is assumed to be strong contributor to the overall £6 billion brand value of the company.

Companies take their responsibilities in reporting back on the success of a design project very seriously, and many point out that they are required to do so.

Whirlpool has a one page summary of performance of their products against a number of hard metrics, which is circulated widely internally to demonstrate the level of success achieved. At Virgin Atlantic Airways, in-use evaluation of designs is quite extensive. Not only is the company’s senior management 'a group of frequent fliers who provide extensive feedback,' it also gives customer the opportunity to fill in detailed evaluation questionnaires – called Xplane – after every flight.

The link between interior designs and Xplane data is very robust, with even small changes in seat design, introduced to meet the size constraints of individual aircraft, being reflected in customer response. Virgin Atlantic also uses third party benchmarking data to compare ongoing customer satisfaction with that of its competitors.

Feedback loops

The information and metrics that are gathered are, of course, not always quantitative business metrics. Feedback related to problems with a product or service, or suggestions for improvements, flow back into the organisation via other channels, and can be used to spin off into new projects or improvements. One example of this type of information would be feedback gathered by BSkyB from its customer service centres.

Ideas that have emerged during the design process or in post-launch feedback may be put to one side but developed later, and will then go through the design process again on its own. Alessi’s private design museum, for example, houses a vast number of prototypes that were ‘frozen’ at some stage and never developed. However, some of these prototypes have been known to be ‘unfrozen’ and brought into production at a later stage.

Equally, lessons from the entire design process are usefully documented and logged in the various methods banks and case study libraries used by the companies.