Before we get into slides, techniques, tactics, anything, we're just going to talk. We're going to talk a little bit about the mindset of a value-based designer. Because I think it's really important to get in that frame of mind and to know where I'm coming from as far as all of this is concerned. And that will allow us to kind of set intentions for what the rest of the workshop is going to look like. In this workshop, you'll understand overall what the mindset of a value-based designer is, what the value-based design process looks like, and how to execute it.
It will end with the thing that a lot of you have been asking for, which is how to run an A-B test. But so much goes in before you run the A-B test. And everybody wants to get to that part. And I get it, we want to move quickly. Design moves more slowly and in a more considered way.
And I think the reason that it's being undervalued in the tech industry on and off is because sometimes people just want to end run capitalism and cut it out, and then they learn. In short, they mess around and they find out. That's what ends up happening. Design is a critical business function. It's a non-optional business function.
If we think about the role of anyone in any company in tech, really any company, any investment should either increase revenue, decrease costs, or decrease risk. Risk we define as the idea that an investment of any kind is more or less likely to pay off. We want to decrease that risk so that things are a safer bet. Design is one of the safest bets you can possibly invest in. So knowing that and getting in that mindset and really understanding your value and your worth is why we're here, right?
And ultimately I guess you learn how to run A-B tests and read heat maps, which is great. That's another thing that I end up doing in my job. So ultimately, design decisions de-risk business activities, especially when they have been measured and tested, and that allows everyone to feel a lot more comfortable in what they're doing. When I see design being thrown out of an organization or general hand-wringing about our actual role in the industry, I mostly see people trying to do design as theater or just rolling it out or handing it off to a team and never sticking the landing. Those days will probably end.
And we're not here for that here. We're here to actually ship design and get design to have an impact. So with that in mind, I view ultimately the first sale within design as to yourself, really. You have to believe in this. You have to believe that design actually has value and that you have worth in this industry.
I've spent a lot of time talking with people who just hand-wring a lot and go through lots of deeper personal reckonings. And not to get too therapy-ish about all of this, but I get it. If you just get laid off, it's a huge attack on your sense of self and your own worth. But you have to believe that you have worth if you're gonna go and get a job and actually keep that job. Again, the first sale is to yourself.
So thinking about that, what do you do with design to actually help other people and help other businesses? How do you increase revenue, decrease costs, or decrease risk? And take a couple moments to kind of think about what that is. And I can talk about what we do. And really, we increase revenue by measuring our design decisions, keeping what works, throwing away what doesn't.
We decrease costs, sometimes with our experimentation programs, by showing that it's a safe bet to remove apps or software or decrease page weight or, in some cases, even pare back the product catalog. Those end up decreasing costs. But there's also the cost of doing nothing and there's the cost of rolling out things that might actually harm the business. So we're decreasing costs that way. And in both of those ways we decrease risk by only understanding what is actually liable to get an impact in front of real world customers.
And when you think about being able to push on all three of those levers is unbelievably powerful. It's so powerful. I love doing this in my job every day and you get to do it too, right? So with that, you're connecting your design efforts to tangible business outcomes by understanding, when you're measuring, you need to know what the metric is, you need to know what constitutes success. You need to come in with a set of intentions.
It's not just more money. I mean, money is fine. We love that. Go and enjoy the journey. But it could also be greater customer happiness.
It could be increased engagement. We don't really like using engagement as a metric here, but we get it. Reduce churn, that's another big one. And yeah, it really just depends on what the business is and what it's trying to be doing. So now in this moment, you're thinking of serving a business, and come with any business if you need to.
Could be the one that you're working for right now, could be one of your clients, could be somebody you formerly worked for, and try and understand what would be a home run for hiring any resource for that business. Don't just say more customers, more money, right? Would it be an increased sign-up rate? Would it be an increased share of people that were actually using the product or the app? Would it be more and more people talking and raving about what it is you do?
No wrong answers, but try and understand what that thing is and what that actual success looks like. And then what are you doing to get design to actually help out? So with that in mind, knowing those things give you an overall intention for going into a given project. The next thing to be keeping in mind is your positioning. Positioning is what do you do specifically, who do you do it for specifically, and what makes you unique relative to everybody else.
And again, the more narrow and specific that positioning is, the more likely it is that you're going to find your kindred spirits. So we talk very clearly about what kinds of businesses that we serve at Draft, where we say usually you're on Shopify or Shopify Plus, you're making over mid-seven figures-ish, and you may have plateaued, or you may be unsure of who your customer is. And that's when you call us in. So there are strategic axes around this. Note that we're not positioning towards industries, but you can, right?
You can just say, I do design for everyday carry brands. Seems cool. All right, we need that. You can say that you do design for large enterprise businesses. I mean, fine.
Not the sexiest thing in the universe, but there's money in it for sure. You can say that you do a specific kind of design, like I only do user experience research. I only do customer phone calls. I only do pricing pages. The more specific that you get, the more likely people will remember you and be like, oh yeah, that person.
That person. So understanding that positioning is your next exercise. So how you serve people, what is your magic, what is your power? And then who are you doing that for? In what way are you doing that for?
And then the third is maybe deepening how you actually identify with your own work style. How do you get consensus with other people? Are you more of a writer or more of a meetings person? What's your care and feeding guide? How do you like to receive praise and feedback?
What constitutes success for you in your career? Not identifying really concrete goals, because ultimately life is a journey. You should just kind of do whatever you need to be doing. But what are you hoping to do as far as stability for the next step in your life and in your career. I'm not gonna be able to teach all of the soft skills for a value-based designer on this workshop.
That's a lifetime of work, and I'm still a student of it. I'm really not. I don't know how informed I am around all of this. I know a handful of other resources that I can recognize, but I firmly believe that the more that you step into your own authority and confidence and set healthy boundaries at your job, the more likely it is you're just going to be a good designer. That's it.
We need to own what our power is in this industry. I believe that on a soul level really, really deeply. And I believe in existing in as much authenticity and integrity as we possibly can. If people are devaluing design, either we've done a bad job of marketing to them, possible. We haven't done the same research on the people who buy design as the people who buy stuff from the people who buy design.
We need to apply that design process more. Or they just don't like us. They want something to move faster. Those are the places that are not structurally helpful for us. What we can do is create more customers who buy design by talking about what design does in a way that makes them want to buy it.
The purpose of this workshop really is to create a design process that is buyable, that is recommendable to other people. And so if you're interested in all that, buckle in. We're going to be talking a little bit about value-based design next. And we'll get into slides. We'll get into slides.
My slides are cool. I'm excited and grateful that you're here and you can always email me at nickd.org if you have any questions. Appreciate you.
lesson
How Design Serves Business
Nick Disabato
How Design Generates Outsize Profit for Business
Every investment made by a company should aim to achieve one of three
objectives: increase revenue, decrease costs, or decrease risk. Risk, in
this context, refers to the likelihood of an investment paying off.
Knowing this, design is one of the safest investments a business can
make. When design decisions are measured and tested, they help de-risk
business activities, allowing everyone to feel more confident in their
choices. However, when design is not properly integrated into an
organization or is handed off without adequate follow-through, it often
fails to deliver the desired impact.
Believe in the Value of Design
To excel as a value-based designer, you must first believe in the value
of design and your own worth within the industry. As fellow consultant
Alan Weiss often says, “the first sale is to yourself.”
Take a moment to consider how you can use design to help businesses
achieve their goals:
Increase revenue by measuring design decisions and retaining what
works
Decrease costs by demonstrating the safety of removing unnecessary
apps, software, or reducing page weight
Decrease risk by understanding what is likely to impact real-world
customers
Write down a few things that design has done to solve expensive problems
in other businesses, both in & out of your own career.
Connect Design Efforts to Business Outcomes
To effectively connect your design efforts to tangible business
outcomes, you need to clearly define the following:
Your intentions for the project
The metric you’re measuring
What constitutes success
Consider a business you've worked with or are currently working for.
What would be a significant achievement for that business when hiring a
designer? Some possibilities include:
Increased signup rate
Larger share of active users
More people raving about the product
Position Yourself as a Designer
Your positioning defines what you do specifically, who you do it
for, and what sets you apart from others. The more targeted your
positioning, the more likely you are to find your ideal clients and
projects.
Reflect on how you serve people, your unique strengths, and your target
audience. You can position yourself based on industries, types of
businesses, or specific design skills.
Identify Your Work Style and Strengths
Gain a deeper understanding of your work style and preferences:
How do you build consensus with others?
Are you more comfortable writing or conducting meetings?
What's your preferred way of receiving praise and feedback?
What defines success for you in your career?
While soft skills can't be comprehensively taught in a single workshop,
embracing your authority, confidence, and setting healthy boundaries
will contribute to your growth as a designer.
Own Your Power in the Industry
As designers, it's crucial to own our power and value within the
industry. If people are undervaluing design, it could be due to
ineffective marketing on our part, inadequate research on those who buy
design, or a lack of appreciation for our contributions.
Our mission is to create more customers who recognize the value of
design by communicating what design accomplishes in a way that inspires
them to invest in it. This workshop aims to equip you with a design
process that is valuable and recommendable to others.
Transcript
Before we get into slides, techniques, tactics, anything, we're just going to talk. We're going to talk a little bit about the mindset of a value-based designer. Because I think it's really important to get in that frame of mind and to know where I'm coming from as far as all of this is concerned. And that will allow us to kind of set intentions for what the rest of the workshop is going to look like. In this workshop, you'll understand overall what the mindset of a value-based designer is, what the value-based design process looks like, and how to execute it.
It will end with the thing that a lot of you have been asking for, which is how to run an A-B test. But so much goes in before you run the A-B test. And everybody wants to get to that part. And I get it, we want to move quickly. Design moves more slowly and in a more considered way.
And I think the reason that it's being undervalued in the tech industry on and off is because sometimes people just want to end run capitalism and cut it out, and then they learn. In short, they mess around and they find out. That's what ends up happening. Design is a critical business function. It's a non-optional business function.
If we think about the role of anyone in any company in tech, really any company, any investment should either increase revenue, decrease costs, or decrease risk. Risk we define as the idea that an investment of any kind is more or less likely to pay off. We want to decrease that risk so that things are a safer bet. Design is one of the safest bets you can possibly invest in. So knowing that and getting in that mindset and really understanding your value and your worth is why we're here, right?
And ultimately I guess you learn how to run A-B tests and read heat maps, which is great. That's another thing that I end up doing in my job. So ultimately, design decisions de-risk business activities, especially when they have been measured and tested, and that allows everyone to feel a lot more comfortable in what they're doing. When I see design being thrown out of an organization or general hand-wringing about our actual role in the industry, I mostly see people trying to do design as theater or just rolling it out or handing it off to a team and never sticking the landing. Those days will probably end.
And we're not here for that here. We're here to actually ship design and get design to have an impact. So with that in mind, I view ultimately the first sale within design as to yourself, really. You have to believe in this. You have to believe that design actually has value and that you have worth in this industry.
I've spent a lot of time talking with people who just hand-wring a lot and go through lots of deeper personal reckonings. And not to get too therapy-ish about all of this, but I get it. If you just get laid off, it's a huge attack on your sense of self and your own worth. But you have to believe that you have worth if you're gonna go and get a job and actually keep that job. Again, the first sale is to yourself.
So thinking about that, what do you do with design to actually help other people and help other businesses? How do you increase revenue, decrease costs, or decrease risk? And take a couple moments to kind of think about what that is. And I can talk about what we do. And really, we increase revenue by measuring our design decisions, keeping what works, throwing away what doesn't.
We decrease costs, sometimes with our experimentation programs, by showing that it's a safe bet to remove apps or software or decrease page weight or, in some cases, even pare back the product catalog. Those end up decreasing costs. But there's also the cost of doing nothing and there's the cost of rolling out things that might actually harm the business. So we're decreasing costs that way. And in both of those ways we decrease risk by only understanding what is actually liable to get an impact in front of real world customers.
And when you think about being able to push on all three of those levers is unbelievably powerful. It's so powerful. I love doing this in my job every day and you get to do it too, right? So with that, you're connecting your design efforts to tangible business outcomes by understanding, when you're measuring, you need to know what the metric is, you need to know what constitutes success. You need to come in with a set of intentions.
It's not just more money. I mean, money is fine. We love that. Go and enjoy the journey. But it could also be greater customer happiness.
It could be increased engagement. We don't really like using engagement as a metric here, but we get it. Reduce churn, that's another big one. And yeah, it really just depends on what the business is and what it's trying to be doing. So now in this moment, you're thinking of serving a business, and come with any business if you need to.
Could be the one that you're working for right now, could be one of your clients, could be somebody you formerly worked for, and try and understand what would be a home run for hiring any resource for that business. Don't just say more customers, more money, right? Would it be an increased sign-up rate? Would it be an increased share of people that were actually using the product or the app? Would it be more and more people talking and raving about what it is you do?
No wrong answers, but try and understand what that thing is and what that actual success looks like. And then what are you doing to get design to actually help out? So with that in mind, knowing those things give you an overall intention for going into a given project. The next thing to be keeping in mind is your positioning. Positioning is what do you do specifically, who do you do it for specifically, and what makes you unique relative to everybody else.
And again, the more narrow and specific that positioning is, the more likely it is that you're going to find your kindred spirits. So we talk very clearly about what kinds of businesses that we serve at Draft, where we say usually you're on Shopify or Shopify Plus, you're making over mid-seven figures-ish, and you may have plateaued, or you may be unsure of who your customer is. And that's when you call us in. So there are strategic axes around this. Note that we're not positioning towards industries, but you can, right?
You can just say, I do design for everyday carry brands. Seems cool. All right, we need that. You can say that you do design for large enterprise businesses. I mean, fine.
Not the sexiest thing in the universe, but there's money in it for sure. You can say that you do a specific kind of design, like I only do user experience research. I only do customer phone calls. I only do pricing pages. The more specific that you get, the more likely people will remember you and be like, oh yeah, that person.
That person. So understanding that positioning is your next exercise. So how you serve people, what is your magic, what is your power? And then who are you doing that for? In what way are you doing that for?
And then the third is maybe deepening how you actually identify with your own work style. How do you get consensus with other people? Are you more of a writer or more of a meetings person? What's your care and feeding guide? How do you like to receive praise and feedback?
What constitutes success for you in your career? Not identifying really concrete goals, because ultimately life is a journey. You should just kind of do whatever you need to be doing. But what are you hoping to do as far as stability for the next step in your life and in your career. I'm not gonna be able to teach all of the soft skills for a value-based designer on this workshop.
That's a lifetime of work, and I'm still a student of it. I'm really not. I don't know how informed I am around all of this. I know a handful of other resources that I can recognize, but I firmly believe that the more that you step into your own authority and confidence and set healthy boundaries at your job, the more likely it is you're just going to be a good designer. That's it.
We need to own what our power is in this industry. I believe that on a soul level really, really deeply. And I believe in existing in as much authenticity and integrity as we possibly can. If people are devaluing design, either we've done a bad job of marketing to them, possible. We haven't done the same research on the people who buy design as the people who buy stuff from the people who buy design.
We need to apply that design process more. Or they just don't like us. They want something to move faster. Those are the places that are not structurally helpful for us. What we can do is create more customers who buy design by talking about what design does in a way that makes them want to buy it.
The purpose of this workshop really is to create a design process that is buyable, that is recommendable to other people. And so if you're interested in all that, buckle in. We're going to be talking a little bit about value-based design next. And we'll get into slides. We'll get into slides.
My slides are cool. I'm excited and grateful that you're here and you can always email me at nickd.org if you have any questions. Appreciate you.
Nick Disabato