Value-based design goes beyond simple production work. It's about
tackling the complex human issues that shape how design is shipped,
critiqued, and bought.
As designers, we need to focus on the fundamental goals of increasing
revenue, decreasing risk, and decreasing costs. This is where the three
pillars of value-based design come into play. They work within our
existing practice to define strategy in terms of business outcomes, and
expand it meaningfully to follow through on our work.
Let's begin by talking about what value-based design is. It's not just making the comp. It's never just making the comp. I feel like I learned everything I needed to know about design, like the actual practice of design and making a comp in two or three years. Ever since then, I've just been focusing on messy human issues, which seems to make sense.
That's how the design ships. That's how the design gets critiqued. That's how design gets bought. Value-based design speaks to three things that every designer needs to be doing when they are actually putting together new design work. So we call these the three pillars of value-based design.
It is a way of focusing design on the fundamental goals of increasing revenue, decreasing risk, decreasing costs. So with that in mind, the first pillar of value-based design is one that a lot of people do but often gets cut out of design budgets, it's research. We think research is often considered a bad word in design. We walk from all projects that don't contain research at our consultancy because we think that research is how you really understand how the customer is going to behave. And if you don't have that understanding, then how do you actually create something that meets their needs?
No one has ever answered this question for me in a way that feels satisfying. So with that in mind, research is the first pillar of value-based design. The second is measurement. Measurement is really important in design because it allows you to prove that your work has value at all. It allows you to prove how much value your work has, what that impact actually looks like.
And then the third pillar of value-based design, maybe related to measurement, is experimentation, which is the application of the scientific method to new design decisions. How do we test this design? Experimentation is really vitally important because it allows you to de-risk the impact of design decisions. You never know what's actually going to work until it's been put in front of real people actually using it. And so experimentation allows you to determine whether or not the things that you're doing are actually worth pursuing as a business.
Sometimes you're surprised, right? So research helps you challenge existing assumptions about customers, and it helps you really question how the business is operating. That ensures design decisions are closely aligned with customer needs. And it also allows you to understand what customers are saying in interviews or usability tests and what people are doing in heat maps or analytics or behavior recordings. And those are often very, very different things, right?
Can be really, really challenging to try and unite those things with qualitative research and quantitative research. Super, super important. Experimentation can involve making a change in weighting. It can involve running A-B tests. But it has to be in the real world with real paying customers.
These all need to be integrated with what we would view as traditional design practices in order to produce impact for the business. You might think, oh gosh, that's not part of my job description. Well, it is now. You're part of this workshop. You're here to try and learn these things and here to try and grow.
And so if you're wondering, why are we here as far as our design practice is concerned, and how do we get in front of business value, it's this. I don't think I have to teach you how to make a better comp or what tool to use. Within the next five years, it's not going to matter what tool you use. Whatever people are using today is going to be vastly different. So with that in mind, we'll talk about more of the evergreen practice of design and what people are looking for when they buy design from you.
Because these three pillars of value-based design, clients, customers, they may not say that they actually need it, or they may devalue it. That is a issue of framing with us. We need to make sure that we are reclaiming the role of these three activities as generative of outsized economic value. And that allows us to reclaim our power. We can't just say we're researching for the heck of it.
We're not just researching for play or for fun. We're researching for a very specific reason. We're researching because we know we don't know. And conveying that to people, and showing the risk, the outsized risk of not understanding what the customer is saying and what the customer is doing, that is far greater. Far greater.
With that in mind, research can take many, many forms. Again, heat and scroll maps, analytics, customer interviews, usability tests, behavior recordings, card sorting is another activity, Surveying, post-purchase surveying. All of these things help gather greater insight into what the customer's condition is. Those are just a few of the most common research methods that I find myself using in my own practice, creating the right research to answer the right questions is a really subtle and beautiful part of a value-based design practice. As far as measurement is concerned, understanding analytics and data, Designers must know data.
They must, must know analytical data. They must know the quantitative side of what they are doing. Or they cannot call themselves designers at this point. This is the new designers need to code front, and I don't see enough people talking about it. I know how to code, just enough to be dangerous.
And you should too, because you work in the tech industry, presumably. Knowing all of this allows you to gain more authority over the project. Now, Are you spending most of your time learning about design? Yeah, absolutely. But you should still understand how it is measured.
I use analytics. I use heat maps. I use customer satisfaction tools. Many of the same methods that I'm using to do research, I'm actually bringing to bear in measurement. I'm also running A-B tests on experimentation, so learning my A-B testing framework's been really valuable for me.
Learning how A-B tests are run, basic statistics, how tests are called, All that is really, really, really important. So with that in mind, that's sort of an overview of the three main pillars of value-based design. And next, we'll be talking about the overall process of value-based design, how research can be synthesized into de-risked, revenue-generating design decisions through a process called synthesis. And then we'll be talking about how that hooks into rolling these out, experimenting, and measuring the impact.
Let's begin by talking about what value-based design is. It's not just making the comp. It's never just making the comp. I feel like I learned everything I needed to know about design, like the actual practice of design and making a comp in two or three years. Ever since then, I've just been focusing on messy human issues, which seems to make sense.
That's how the design ships. That's how the design gets critiqued. That's how design gets bought. Value-based design speaks to three things that every designer needs to be doing when they are actually putting together new design work. So we call these the three pillars of value-based design.
It is a way of focusing design on the fundamental goals of increasing revenue, decreasing risk, decreasing costs. So with that in mind, the first pillar of value-based design is one that a lot of people do but often gets cut out of design budgets, it's research. We think research is often considered a bad word in design. We walk from all projects that don't contain research at our consultancy because we think that research is how you really understand how the customer is going to behave. And if you don't have that understanding, then how do you actually create something that meets their needs?
No one has ever answered this question for me in a way that feels satisfying. So with that in mind, research is the first pillar of value-based design. The second is measurement. Measurement is really important in design because it allows you to prove that your work has value at all. It allows you to prove how much value your work has, what that impact actually looks like.
And then the third pillar of value-based design, maybe related to measurement, is experimentation, which is the application of the scientific method to new design decisions. How do we test this design? Experimentation is really vitally important because it allows you to de-risk the impact of design decisions. You never know what's actually going to work until it's been put in front of real people actually using it. And so experimentation allows you to determine whether or not the things that you're doing are actually worth pursuing as a business.
Sometimes you're surprised, right? So research helps you challenge existing assumptions about customers, and it helps you really question how the business is operating. That ensures design decisions are closely aligned with customer needs. And it also allows you to understand what customers are saying in interviews or usability tests and what people are doing in heat maps or analytics or behavior recordings. And those are often very, very different things, right?
Can be really, really challenging to try and unite those things with qualitative research and quantitative research. Super, super important. Experimentation can involve making a change in weighting. It can involve running A-B tests. But it has to be in the real world with real paying customers.
These all need to be integrated with what we would view as traditional design practices in order to produce impact for the business. You might think, oh gosh, that's not part of my job description. Well, it is now. You're part of this workshop. You're here to try and learn these things and here to try and grow.
And so if you're wondering, why are we here as far as our design practice is concerned, and how do we get in front of business value, it's this. I don't think I have to teach you how to make a better comp or what tool to use. Within the next five years, it's not going to matter what tool you use. Whatever people are using today is going to be vastly different. So with that in mind, we'll talk about more of the evergreen practice of design and what people are looking for when they buy design from you.
Because these three pillars of value-based design, clients, customers, they may not say that they actually need it, or they may devalue it. That is a issue of framing with us. We need to make sure that we are reclaiming the role of these three activities as generative of outsized economic value. And that allows us to reclaim our power. We can't just say we're researching for the heck of it.
We're not just researching for play or for fun. We're researching for a very specific reason. We're researching because we know we don't know. And conveying that to people, and showing the risk, the outsized risk of not understanding what the customer is saying and what the customer is doing, that is far greater. Far greater.
With that in mind, research can take many, many forms. Again, heat and scroll maps, analytics, customer interviews, usability tests, behavior recordings, card sorting is another activity, Surveying, post-purchase surveying. All of these things help gather greater insight into what the customer's condition is. Those are just a few of the most common research methods that I find myself using in my own practice, creating the right research to answer the right questions is a really subtle and beautiful part of a value-based design practice. As far as measurement is concerned, understanding analytics and data, Designers must know data.
They must, must know analytical data. They must know the quantitative side of what they are doing. Or they cannot call themselves designers at this point. This is the new designers need to code front, and I don't see enough people talking about it. I know how to code, just enough to be dangerous.
And you should too, because you work in the tech industry, presumably. Knowing all of this allows you to gain more authority over the project. Now, Are you spending most of your time learning about design? Yeah, absolutely. But you should still understand how it is measured.
I use analytics. I use heat maps. I use customer satisfaction tools. Many of the same methods that I'm using to do research, I'm actually bringing to bear in measurement. I'm also running A-B tests on experimentation, so learning my A-B testing framework's been really valuable for me.
Learning how A-B tests are run, basic statistics, how tests are called, All that is really, really, really important. So with that in mind, that's sort of an overview of the three main pillars of value-based design. And next, we'll be talking about the overall process of value-based design, how research can be synthesized into de-risked, revenue-generating design decisions through a process called synthesis. And then we'll be talking about how that hooks into rolling these out, experimenting, and measuring the impact.
Nick Disabato