The business of bad design?
May 18th, 2007 by Andy Didyk
This post is in response to David Armano’s post, “Thought of the Day”, in which he quotes Roger Martin, Dean of the Rotman School of Business, at the University of Toronto, saying this:
“To get more reliability (business approach), you sacrifice validity (design approach). And vice-versa.”
Wow. I have the disadvantage of taking this quote without context, but at face value I have to totally disagree Mr. Martin. I’m sure that Roger is a very intelligent and accomplished individual, but I’m not sure what his motivation is here. So somebody please correct me if I’ve got this wrong…
I think that the core of this statement is a very, very narrow definition of what design is. I know that’s the cry of our industry, right? Evidently with good reason; most people still aren’t convinced. Design isn’t pretty pictures, it’s immersion and empathy, science, statistics, usability, and communication. To me, Roger’s statement invokes sentiments of an artificial demarcation between business and design that is decades out of date and dangerously uninformed. Validity (good design), by its very nature breeds good business results. And I’m not talking about how nice something looks, I’m talking about how well it functions, which is a direct reflection of the design.
Good design has to be fueled by clear business objectives, a thorough understanding and empathy of the audience, and skillful problem solving. It’s a result of teamwork between businesspeople and designers, not competition as Roger implies. I’d love to hear feedback on what others think.
–> Clarification: David was able to offer me this context:
Hi Andy,
I read your post and I do think this may be a case of not having the context. The essance of Roger’s message was that designers speak the language of validation while business speaks the language of reliability. This causes friction and miscommunication though there are shared goals. He stresses that each camp needs to learn the language of the other and get closer to a 50/50 mix of reliability + validity. His point being that this balance leads to both good design and business.
This entry was posted on Friday, May 18th, 2007 at 9:16 am and is filed under communication, design, marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
May 18th, 2007 at 12:29 pm
Andy
I’m on your page with the same reaction to the quote. Design is about “form follows function” for me where validity connotes “by the book”, “form over-rules function”, “do what looks good even it sucks to use it”. Reliability is a question of use, value to the user and context of the customer. It takes creativity to get there, designing through iterations of feedback to tune in, get it right. It’s not easy debug the preconceptions about “what’s good for the customer”. It takes “designing” to do that.
Tom
May 18th, 2007 at 1:58 pm
Tom,
Thanks for the comment. I hope you revisit the post to see the clarification offered by David Armano.
I agree with you, iterations and “fine tuning” are key. Finding clients who value this process enough to pay for it can be a challenge, but it’s always worth it to both parties in the long run.
May 19th, 2007 at 9:20 am
I did read both Dave’s and your follow-up comments. Thanks to both of you for moving from either/or to both/and outlooks. That helps a lot.
That’s an iterative process in itself.
Tom
June 1st, 2007 at 3:12 pm
A more relevant way to approach the question might be to say that designs tend to get raped by fear and uncertainty once they migrate from the designer’s desk to the business units in charge of validating the concept before transforming it into a finished product.
Some businesses embrace design – like Apple, BMW, Cartier, Ducati, Canon and Kohler, for example. These types of businesses have learned, through trial and error, that bold and innovative designs can and often do serve the business objectives of their companies. Design differentiates. Design creates relevance. Design solves problems. Design inspires and seduces. Design is often the answer to price erosion.
Other businesses, however, are afraid of innovation and design. They prefer to take a more defensive, “let’s wait and see (what our competitors are going to do)” before making a move. Many business execs (product managers, etc.) don’t want to risk giving their careers a black eye by being responsible for a noticeable flop. They would rather play it safe with a more conventional product that will not attract a lot of attention if it fails. Sometimes, it’s a personal issue. Other times, it’s a business culture issue.
What happens in the latter scenario is that elements of the design that help differentiate it from its competitors will be sanded off for manufacturing and/or cost-effectiveness reasons. Over the course of a product development process, these types of environments tend to forget about the importance of the details of the original design, and favor manufacturing-friendly compromises.
The end product may be cost-effective (and thus can be validated internally) but at th cost of having lost the edgy goodness that would have validated it (made it relevant) “out there,” in the market.
More often than not, companies fall into that second category and forget about the power of the original design – which is why so few products in the marketplace truly stand out, and why so many are so… bleh. This is purely a leadership issue. Most business managers don’t have an appreciation for the power of design, and have not been trained to integrate best business practices and innovation design equally into their “process”.
Apple and Toyota are great examples of companies which have figured out how to integrate innovative design and profitable business models. More companies should learn to embrace the fact that putting a premium on design is conducive to success.
I talk way too much.
Great topic though.