Design Quality Is A Business Function
I want to offer a stupid-simple way to describe "the value of design."
Defining the value of design is a hot topic of debate among interaction designers. Design pundits and mentors commonly tell young designers they need to "speak the language of the business" to gain influence. Young designers then ask for guidance on how to rationalize the ROI of Design to business leaders. All these people get "wrapped around a tree" trying to frame this question in convoluted ways.
Design quality is a feature you can offer customers. It's an additional value that some customers will pay for. Some customers are willing (or able) to invest in products made with more craft, durability, and care. Other customers don't want to make that investment and will instead buy a product offering a lower standard of quality. Some people buy from Ikea while others buy from Room & Board. The quality you can achieve is almost always a product of who you're selling to and what you can charge (Total Addressable Market x margin).
The most common limiting factor on design quality I've seen in my career is not the talent of the design team or the organizational processes. It's market dynamics. If you want to raise the quality of design in your company and product; you need to find a market of customers big enough to pay for it.
A project I'm working on just provided a great example. For context, the product is similar to a smart thermostat. That market has three tiers of design quality (screen resolution, animations, gestures, shading, typography, build quality, etc.). Tier one is Nest and Ecobee Premium; tier two has Sensi, Honeywell T9 and Ecobee Lite; and tier three is the knockoffs, nonames, and nonsense. The product cost in each tier correlates with the design quality, i.e. tier one is 3x more expensive than tier three.
Our initial design aimed for the first tier. However, the chipset controlling this product can't render the animations, shading, or resolution we desire. We could upgrade to more expensive hardware, but that raises the product price into a different market of customers. The barrier between the first and second tiers is the cost consumers will pay, not the design team's ability. The business levers of market size and unit costs control the design quality.
I'm not mad tho. Neither tier is better or worse. They're just different businesses. My job as a designer is to solve the business problem, not gratify my desire for custom easing equations in transition animations. Some might argue that a good designer can balance production costs and quality—I’ve heard worse.
The quality tradeoffs in SAAS and consumer apps can seem more arcane than my example because there are more design requirements with indirect costs (e.g. design systems, usability, brand alignment), but the underlying constraints are the same. Design costs that can't be easily passed to customers will always take longer to achieve.
So, next time you’re frustrated about pushing design quality forward, step back and consider the business landscape. Understand your market before pointing fingers at those who “don’t get design.” We’re all in this together—designers and businesses—working within the same economic system. Let’s collaborate to create solutions that work for both our craft and our customers.
Thoughts? I’d love to hear how you navigate design challenges in business!
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