Design used to feel optional in tech, something to be sprinkled on at the end. Now, leading companies like Apple, Uber and TikTok rely on design and designers to identify new ideas and help users accomplish their goals - whether looking for their account balance or watching a funny video.
For example, let’s take relative newcomer TikTok. Three years ago memes and other viral trends rarely originated on TikTok. Today, the social media platform with over 1 billion users is the source of a third of all memes. Tiktok’s instant feed of videos curated to your interests – all skippable like an unwanted dating app match – has changed what people share, what they watch, how they shop and even what they make for dinner. And it’s by design, or perhaps more accurately, because of design.
It’s not just memes, of course. Nearly every industry now battles the constant risk of lost attention, interest and spend, often sparked by the arrival of new entrants with better-designed products. The UK Design Council puts the contribution from design at £85.2 billion in Gross Value Added to the UK economy, equalling almost 75% of the value of UK financial services and insurance.
Why is this happening - what’s making design so important now?
First, there’s the ongoing rise in the number of interactions we have with apps and sites, in our personal lives and at work. And it’s not just the volume of interactions, it’s also their importance. These interactions dictate how we manage our money, organize and complete work, get therapy, watch shows and movies, find new books, and even do end-of-life planning. But while sheer proliferation drives demand for design, the impact design has on how companies operate is more dramatic.
All those digital interactions take place with companies and organizations that increasingly sell their services as subscriptions or rely on user engagement. This makes user retention more important than in the past. Combine that with how individuals and companies have come to expect (or at least tolerate) consistent updates, and you have a vital set of incentives for businesses to make design improvements that react to user feedback quickly.
These changes have also put design and designers at the center of how businesses function as a whole and have created less resistance to the work of design than in the past. Approaches like design thinking, the Stanford d.school’s approach to democratizing design methods, and Net Promoter Score, a way of measuring customer loyalty, have been adopted by businesses across the globe. Terms and practices like personas, prototypes, and user research—once the domain of a highly specialized design niche—are now widely accepted as best practices.
In fact, research conducted by McKinsey found that companies with high-performing design practices have as much as doubled their revenue growth compared to their competitors. McKinsey also found evidence that non-designers were now more likely to have “intrinsic design literacy,” showing many types of employees are more conscious of design. All this awareness means requests for user research or time to explore directions are more likely to be understood and encouraged, rather than disregarded.
Lastly—and this has become a particularly important factor during the pandemic—design’s emphasis on visual collaboration, artifacts, and consistent feedback improves hybrid and remote work. Teams that are apart or working asynchronously often have more trouble collaborating. Co-creating prototypes and diagrams—something that’s endemic to the design practice—greatly improves the experience of working remotely. Designers and design teams have a lot of knowledge to impart to broader business processes here.
What happens next
We are, as A16z partner Peter Levine has noted, in a decade of design. “If products and companies would live or die by code before,” he has written, “they now live or die by design.” Whether this is true or not, there’s no denying design’s rising influence. It shapes the way we interact with the world around us – from the things we buy to the memes we share – in ways that are sometimes obvious, sometimes subtle and sometimes deceptive.
Looking ahead, the challenge for companies will be to ensure they have the right talent and teams in place for the job. Without this talent, great design simply doesn’t happen. The key for businesses looking to win at design is to focus on building the sort of magnetic culture that draws in design talent. Organizations like Microsoft, Google, and Airbnb have all established core design principles, tools, and processes that are widely respected, and have attracted leading design job-seekers.
The role of design and designers has transformed over the last decade, with many businesses investing in and building in-house teams for the first time. Design is indeed the core battleground for today’s leading debates in tech–however–it is the teams themselves that do the work and the most successful companies recognise this.
By Andrew Hogan, Head Of Insights And Analysis at Figma
