Design-driven is not the goal. Why designers should speak the language of the business

Shiran Bloch at UXDX APAC. Video: https://youtu.be/N_f6q0vy_fw

Readable transcript: edited from the recording's captions for readability (fillers and false starts removed, punctuation and section headings added). Wording is the speaker's own. Timestamps are positions in the video. Names marked [?] could not be verified against the audio.

Business driven, and the pressure companies are under

[00:00:00] Host: Thank you for joining us. Yeah, the title, it's a little controversial, because I guess if you're a director of product design it's always like, let's be design driven, let's try to get the company design driven and focused on design. But you're saying it's not the goal. So first off, can you just help me out by defining what are the other types of driven that organizations are? If design driven isn't the goal, can you just explain maybe some other types of how organizations could be driven?

[00:00:33] Shiran: Yeah, I guess it's a fair starting point. I recognize that it's maybe not the most popular approach, especially speaking to designers and being a designer myself. But I have to say, and we're all kind of observing that these days, businesses these days are really struggling, and we see even major successful companies are being forced to make really tough choices, like you said, for the name of profit. And I think that we're starting to see a lot of companies rethinking their business model, their value proposition, they're making major changes in their priorities and their execution. And obviously the worst part of it is letting go of some of their staff, and maybe even some people who are watching this right now have already been affected by these moves.

[00:01:32] It's no secret that most organizations are for-profit and therefore are business driven, and they do get to be influenced by these external factors like sales, like how the market is going, like a lot of pressures from the investors, the shares, the value dropping. And all of these things are basically to be able to keep paying people salaries and keeping the company thriving and successful. This is nothing against design or nothing against the people, it's just for the business itself. But I do see that a lot of companies outside of that are also under the assumption that if we create a business value for a product, they assume users would just follow along with that. And that obviously could lead to some devastating results.

The Netflix example

[00:02:32] Shiran: But I'm not just talking about the extreme cases like that. Even companies like, if we take Netflix for example, a major successful company, Netflix, who's considered to be more user driven and more customer driven, they've actually lost more than one million subscribers over the course of the last six months, since the beginning of 2022. And the thing is, this decision that they've made that caused them to lose over a million subscribers, by increasing their monthly fees, their subscription fees, it was not driven by consumers, it was not driven by a user need obviously, and it goes against that in a lot of ways. But they were sort of forced to make that tough decision, they didn't have any choice.

[00:03:28] And they even predicted that they would lose more. They predicted, I think I read somewhere that they predicted that they would lose two million subscribers in the first half of 2022 because of that move, and they went at it fully on. They were aware of what they were doing, but they had no other choice. Like you said, companies these days are forced to make really, really tough decisions, and unfortunately this is the trend that we're seeing, and most companies are business driven.

[00:03:59] Host: So that's a great example. Is there a problem in that? What I mean by that is, if their projections were that they were going to lose two million people, they obviously have figured out that, okay, if we can earn this much more revenue per user and we have this many fewer users, we still end up better off. And the fact that they didn't lose as many as they projected means that they're actually much better off than they were expecting. So is that bad, that they're being driven by the business there? Yes, they've lost users, but they're doing well.

[00:04:39] Shiran: Exactly. I mean, I guess their case is relative. Like you said, it's relatively okay, because they didn't lose as many as they predicted. But obviously that choice didn't make people happy, and the fact that people chose to unsubscribe because of that move just goes to show you that this was purely driven by the business.

[00:05:05] Host: Great, so that's a good example of, I guess, business driven. What's your definition, or how do you define design driven?

The inherent tension, and what design driven means at foodpanda

[00:05:16] Shiran: Okay, before I answer that, I wanted to share one of my everyday challenges with you, that maybe helps demonstrate that inherent tension between design driven and business driven. So foodpanda, some people on the call probably are aware of our brand, some are not. foodpanda is a food delivery service that provides delivery from restaurants or from shops to consumers. We operate in a lot of different markets, mostly in APAC, in Europe. And obviously we are affected by these moves these days with what's going on in the market, and our business teams are extremely zoomed in and focused on creating profit and our revenue.

[00:06:12] And therefore, from their perspective, from their angle, they're mostly focused on the ordering process, on the checkout process, on what happens when a user goes into our platform, how quickly they're able to make a purchase and then check out and pay for that order. It doesn't mean that they don't care about what's going on afterwards, but it sort of gets deprioritized compared to the actual booking process, ordering process.

[00:06:45] And for us as the design team, we actually understand that the value of post order is just as important as the actual ordering process itself, so we are forced to push for this to get prioritized. We know that the journey doesn't just end after a customer completed their purchase. We know that they keep coming back to check on their ETA, they keep coming back to chat with the rider, or to ask for help if they really need that help. And that step in that process sometimes will determine whether or not they're going to come back, and I would even say that that step of the process would influence their brand perception of us.

[00:07:34] A lot of the chats that I have with my friends here in Singapore, when I ask them about their opinion about foodpanda, some of them would even describe a very negative opinion only because they had one negative experience where they didn't get the food that they ordered, or it was extremely late and they couldn't get the help that they wanted. And that really stuck with them. That one time that the journey didn't end well really, really stuck with them.

[00:08:06] So in terms of priorities it's extremely difficult. We want to prioritize that, we obviously care about the ordering process itself, but that inherent tension between the business and design is always there. And I predict that design managers are going to be under a lot more pressure in the near future because of that, because business is pushing for a lot more business-driven prioritization.

[00:08:44] That was a bit of a long example, but just to answer your question, how is that different, what is design driven to me? First of all, usability. We put usability first, we aim at problem solving, we are driven by a need, we want to make sure that it's desirable, that it's attractive for the users. And we also are obviously driven by a lot of design insights that are coming in from research and studies. But one other thing that I would like to point out that really makes something design driven, in my opinion, and I think a lot of companies kind of neglect that or take that for granted, is design needs to be a critical stakeholder in the decision making process and the prioritization. So that to me is, in a nutshell, what design driven is to me. And obviously, in terms of the assumption, it's that if users are happy and we meet their needs then the business will be too. Yeah, I hope that answers the question.

Why you can't be purely design driven

[00:09:55] Host: That ties in perfectly with the workshop earlier, where John Cutler was presenting about North Star metrics, and he was saying that revenue, a lot of companies are all about revenue, but revenue is a kind of lagging indicator of customer satisfaction and how happy they are. So yeah, that's a great sales pitch for design driven, but the title was, we shouldn't be so. That sounds like we should kind of shift from being so revenue focused and focus more on the experience, so that we don't have those negative experiences where then you don't get the repeat customer, revenue gets hit, et cetera.

[00:10:37] Shiran: Okay, so obviously I'm biased, I am a designer after all. But I have to say that when I first started in my career I was really sold on the idea of being fully on design driven, and I was even questioning, why are these companies and why are these customers that I had back then not able to understand the importance of design driven and the investment that they need to make?

[00:11:12] But you know what, bottom line, it is an investment, it comes at a cost. UX is relying a lot on insights, on data, and all of that takes a lot of time and people to get. And not just people, these people need to be specialized. You talked a little bit about that when you were talking about projects, but in reality, yeah, you need to have different specialities in order to get the right insight and the right support that you need. And as the team scales and we grow bigger and bigger, we start noticing more and more of these very, very unique specializations that are required. And from a business perspective as well, all of that really takes a lot of time to execute.

[00:12:02] And I feel like time to market sometimes is not just longer when it comes to being more design driven, but it becomes critical in a sense, especially if you have strong competitors that are neck to neck with you or breathing down your neck, and they might sometimes beat you to it. My team, back in the early days when we were just getting started, we once spent about eight months in research and execution of this feature that we really wanted to launch. And ultimately it was really heartbreaking, because our competitors actually beat us to it by one month. We were working so hard, we were trying to find that right formula, we were trying to fine-tune things, there were a lot of technical difficulties that we encountered. We finally were able to solve almost everything, just to see the competitor launching the same exact thing one month ahead of us. And that's tough, that's really, really tough.

[00:13:08] And honestly I feel like creating really good quality insights and really good quality design work and UX work, it takes a long time. And trying to expect design to do both excellent quality and unbelievably fast speed is what leads to burnout, and I think you mentioned that as well early on. You can do that, it is possible to do that, I would say, for a short period of time, but it's almost impossible to expect teams to be acting so quickly on that over a long period of time. Bottom line is, creativity, innovation, really good quality design work requires time and space to be executed properly. And that's my opinion, and that's why you kind of have to find a good balance between business driven and design driven. You can't just have an extreme.

Finding the balance

[00:14:21] Host: Yeah, so it was kind of a whirlwind of going up and down with that example. What I took away from that though was the eight months. So you ended saying that creativity and innovation takes time, but obviously we can't be waiting forever, people's salaries have to be paid and things like that. So how do you find that balance? I guess that's touching on your, we shouldn't be solely design driven so that we can get some kind of balance in there. But how do you find that balance?

[00:14:56] Shiran: It's hard to find that right balance, I would say. I think it really comes down to what it is that we're investing in, to make sure that we have our priorities in order, and really trying to convey to everyone that we can't have it all, we need to be more focused on fewer things but doing those things properly. And there would be projects that would require eight months of work for us to deliver on, but there might be projects where we can deliver in one month or two months. So I don't think it's completely black and white, and I don't think there is one design process that will meet every single requirement and will create a major impact on everything we do.

Getting senior stakeholders on board

[00:15:50] Host: Okay, great, it's the awkward "it depends" on what you're working on. But what you mentioned there was kind of getting people on board. One of the challenges I've seen in a lot of organizations is, it's great, the sales pitch, but you need the money to get the team together, to invest the time to do the research, and as you said it has a cost. So one of the people or the groups that's most important to get on board would be your senior stakeholders in your organization. So how do you go about trying to convince them with the arguments that you've just made there, that if you're so focused on revenue it can impact the experience, but if you focus on the experience it'll impact the revenue in a positive way?

[00:16:40] Shiran: Yeah, that's a hard one. I can't say that I have all the answers, unfortunately, maybe I'll never have all the answers. I can share a few things that worked for me and things that I'm still fine-tuning for myself as well. I feel like my role these days is kind of lodged between design and business. I'm constantly finding myself speaking on behalf of the business to my designers, and I find myself speaking on behalf of design to the senior stakeholders, so I'm sort of in between the two. So I can share a few pointers or a few methods that worked for me.

[00:17:33] So first of all I would say, if you are able to find a champion in the executive team, that could really, really open up some doors. By that I mean someone who's higher up, who can open some doors for us to demonstrate better design value, or to put in that money and investment, and someone that really understands the great value of design, of user experience. So if you can find someone like that from the executive team and speak to them and build a relationship with them, they can be your champion, they can really help open up some of these areas and some of these doors for you. So that's number one.

Start small: the first version of the design system

[00:18:20] Shiran: Number two, I would say, if you start small and if you focus on the quick wins and you're able to gain the trust of the stakeholders and you demonstrate that value, that really, really helps a lot. It doesn't always mean that you have to accomplish major projects or major changes. I think we noticed that in design, that sometimes these smaller things that we launched, that we didn't invest too much research in and we didn't put so much time in, but it was just a small adjustment, really, really made a huge difference.

[00:18:58] I remember when we were first launching the first version of our design system, the first version was honestly so minimal, so small, because we didn't want to completely overhaul the entire UI. That obviously takes too much time. The first version was so minor. We cleaned out some of the fonts. Instead of having these squarish boxes, they were more rounded. We made sure that all of the shadows are correct and aligned. The CTAs, all the consistency of our CTAs was all there, it's all mapped to the same location, everyone is using the same code.

[00:19:49] So from the stakeholders' point of view they were like, honestly, I heard this multiple times, they were like, oh okay, so you're doing that round corner thing, right? And I'm like, okay, sure, round corner. But obviously, after that whole project came to life, even though technically there were small changes, it really made a huge difference. And that actually is one of the reasons why we got approval to hire a full tribe to be working on our design system, and that's definitely not an obvious thing in our organization.

[00:20:28] And so, like I said, start small, focus on quick wins, demonstrate value, make sure that you iterate quickly on these changes, so you don't just sit around and wait for the applause, you quickly bounce back and you do more. And one thing that I keep telling my team, especially my management team, is that you can use your design thinking methods to really paint a pretty picture for the stakeholders, literally. These are your skills as designers, you can create a really nice deck to pitch your ideas, you use your storytelling skills in order to sell this and make sure that they understand it, and you really paint a pretty picture for them.

[00:21:17] And finally, my last tip of the day is to pick your battles. Honestly, I can't emphasize that enough. Again, whenever war storms there, oh my god, yes. At first, when I was getting started, honestly I fought for everything. I was like, everything is critical, everything is important, everything is related to everything. But it's really not. Sometimes you don't have to be fully on design driven, sometimes you just need to push through and get this out. Sometimes the business value does triumph over the user need in certain areas. And really save those battles for when you really need it.

[00:22:10] But after saying all of that, I have to say that for me, from my personal experience, the thing that I found the hardest to do, and maybe it's just a matter of luck, but maybe that's why it was so hard, is to find a champion in the executive team. Because it's so dependent on luck as well. Because there were some companies that I worked for where I felt like no one had that design mindset. I mean, they wanted to do that, because they heard it as a sort of slogan that they heard, and they know, okay, this should be valuable for a team, or this is a principle that we do want to live by. But when it came down to writing the checks and paying the price, that's when they go, but you know, the investors and the company and the profit and the revenue and all of that. So that to me was actually the hardest part, was to find that champion.

[00:23:19] But one kind of loophole, or side door, that I found recently that kind of helps in most cases, is to rally up the support of your peers and co-workers, because there is a strength in numbers. That might be a lot more work for a manager to do, or for a designer to do, and to be honest, at some times I kind of feel like I'm running an election campaign, because I'm just fighting for support and like, can you vote for me in this initiative, for this impact, can you vote for me? But it does help. I mean, there is a very strong sense of numbers, especially if these people are your product peers or your engineer peers and they're also supporting that idea. It does open up some doors for the executive teams to reconsider, or try to walk a little bit in your shoes, and I think that that really helps a lot.

Demonstrating the value of the design system

[00:24:33] Host: Great, so rally the troops to either convert it and create a champion. The other one I just want to dig into a bit more, because I think it's very common, in my experience anyway, the whole rounded corners, or the coloring-in department I've heard it being called before, which we'll go into. But how did you — you mentioned then that you were able to demonstrate, even though you were, I guess, just tidying up the fonts, making it more coherent and a nicer flow for the users, you said that that was the win that helped you to grow. How did you demonstrate the value of that, and how did you attribute it to the work that you were doing, so that you got that follow-on investment?

[00:25:21] Shiran: That one was, oh my god, that was a lot of work. It was a lot of work, and I'll tell you why. In order for us to just do that, we had to pull some designers from their existing projects, but we couldn't, at that time we didn't have enough people, so we couldn't just completely let them abandon the work that they were doing. So it's almost like they were double hatting as the design system champions for us, plus they were doing their normal day-to-day work. And for me, I was just, every day, reviewing everything that they were doing, giving feedback, making changes, making suggestions, making some tough calls, because I knew that this would affect experiences for millions of our users across all of these markets. And that's a lot of pressure, that's a lot of pressure on design managers, that's a lot of pressure on the executioners themselves.

[00:26:28] And of course, in terms of tech support that we required, that was really challenging. A lot of the engineers were not used to working so closely with the designers on these, what they call, smaller UI changes, and they didn't even understand why we were putting so much effort and emphasis into this. Like, what's wrong with this font, it looks exactly like that font, and we were like, no.

[00:26:56] And what really helped at the end of the day, one thing was very simply just putting screen A, the existing screen that we have, and screen B, what we're trying to achieve, and just showing them the differences side by side. It makes a huge, huge difference. I have a funny story on this. It's not really related to design, but when I was looking to buy a new television, when you're looking online and you see the specs, it doesn't really mean much to you. It's like, oh, this one is a little bit higher than this, but what does that actually mean? But when you go to the store and you actually see the screens side by side, with different companies, different brands, different specs, then you go, okay, now I understand it. So making it very, very visually apparent to them, that even though it seems to be smaller, if you put it side by side you can really, really tell the difference. Something about it just makes it look more tidy, more neat, more clean.

[00:28:08] But I think overall, in terms of design system, what really was the last thing that got us the confirmation, the approval, was the fact that I mentioned that once we put it to code and these become actual components that we can reuse in future projects, then in terms of execution time, in terms of time to launch, we might be able to shorten that by like 20%. And that's when they go, okay, we're in.

Do quick wins set the wrong expectation?

[00:28:45] Host: Excellent, that's great. There's a question actually I want to throw in from the audience. Melissa has asked, would quick wins set a precedent in creating the wrong expectation with stakeholders, that design is always going to be so quick? So back to your point about you need time to innovate. So what are your thoughts on that?

[00:29:08] Shiran: Quick wins is easier said than done. I think if you have the time then it's great, then you can really demonstrate that over a short period of time or a long period of time, then that really helps out a lot. If you don't have the time then you really need to pick what you demonstrate quickly. Because sometimes, even for us as design, I feel like it's a gamble. I don't even know sometimes, if to me it looks amazing and I think it's a great example of a project that was design led, design driven, and I think it really will speak volumes, and once I show these to the stakeholders they would love it, and then I'm wrong sometimes.

[00:30:01] Same goes when we execute something for our users. We can execute something and we are 100% confident that they're going to love it and it's going to increase conversion, increase retention, and it doesn't. And my best case scenario, it might not change anything, best case scenario, and worst case scenario, it actually causes more damage.

[00:30:31] Host: Yeah, okay, so it's kind of a, yeah, it's almost a context. But I think the quick wins can be a great way of just building, as you said before, building the trust, because that needs to start, and once you've developed that then you can have the conversations where you go, now actually we can't just do quick wins the whole time, we need a bit more investment in a bigger team.

Convincing designers to find the balance

[00:30:57] Host: We've been talking about convincing the stakeholders that design driven is the right thing. What about the designers who were like you in your past self, who was kind of, no, we have to go 100% design driven? How do you convince them that actually you need to get the balance right as well?

[00:31:15] Shiran: Okay, so there are multiple angles to this and multiple ways to demonstrate that. I would say, first of all, feedback is the most tangible way. Just quick feedback from the stakeholders, getting them to give us more buy-in, basically, on our work, on our project, that obviously demonstrates that really quickly.

[00:31:45] I think one of the highlights that I point out in terms of a success metric for why you should be investing in this: we start noticing that the business stakeholders start speaking the design language. They're using our jargon and they're using examples that we gave them, and it's kind of like we pulled them onto our side and they use it properly. I think a lot of designers were worried about them misusing it or using it against us, but it's really up to us to onboard them to our universe, to our world, and once we bring them in and they start speaking our language and we are both on the same page, I mean, this is a quick win for everyone.

[00:32:43] I recently started noticing that designers are speaking the business language a lot more. They're speaking in pain points, they're speaking in challenges, and they're finding opportunities in their scope that will not just benefit the user but would also benefit the business, which I think is amazing. And it's not just about the way that they phrase it, it's also their mindset is completely changed, because now they're working in multi-dimensions. They're not just thinking, oh, user, usability, accessibility, they're also thinking, okay, how does the business benefit from this, or at least doesn't lose from this? I think this change in mindset is going to bring both designers and stakeholders closely together and understand each other a lot more.

Motivation as an investment

[00:33:34] Shiran: And we will start to see that the business will give creatives more time, more autonomy, more freedom to do their job, and these things are super, super critical. I can tell you that as a manager I sell these things to the business as a value, because I truly believe that motivation is an investment and businesses should invest in it, because in most cases these things really, really pay off. And I think these overall help build stronger teams and stronger bonds between the designers and the business, and not just designers, but between employees and the company and the brand, and provide that brand loyalty that we all want as managers. And I really sell that to the business stakeholders as a value, as a proposition.

[00:34:35] And one thing that I've noticed recently, funny enough, is we've started noticing a rebound of employees that are looking or trying to find their way back into our company, because we do invest in that full spectrum of motivation and allowing people time and growth. And so they go out — I've seen, we've seen that happen especially this year, beginning of the year, huge resignation, people went out, they started exploring different opportunities, different companies, and they realize the value that we provide as a team, and maybe they also realize that the grass isn't always greener on the other side. So that to me is a hundred percent a value proposition that I sell to the business teams as well, and that allows them to give us a little bit more time to think creatively, outside of the box, and to give my team and my designers more autonomy.

[00:35:41] Host: Brilliant, that was great. I love the example, because a lot of people think two companies are the exact same, but very different cultures in different places and what you can get. So it's great to see that people are coming back. Unfortunately we've run out of time, I could dive into a few more questions there, but thank you very much for sharing that, I hope everybody out there enjoyed it as well. So thank you, Shiran.

[00:36:04] Shiran: Thank you, thank you so much for having me, and have a great Thursday and almost weekend to everyone.