In the guys' 3rd installment of their recurring series on the business value of UX, they have another marathon episode for you. Chris gets things started by highlighting two themes that have emerged based on past conversations and interviews on UX business value: (1) the ROI of UX and (2) how to best reorganize or transform businesses to be more experience-led.
The point of focus for this episode is the 2018 McKinsey article “The Business Value of Design” (link below). While the article does supply facts and figures on how design can positively impact traditional business metrics like P&L and stock prices, this article is mainly centered on how to transform businesses to make them design-led. The authors argue that organizations can only gain the increased profits generated by design principles and methodology by restructuring and becoming design-led. The way this happens, according to McKinsey is by caring about 4 main business characteristics:
Analytical leadership
Cross-functional talent
Continuous iteration
User Experience
The guys dissect all 4 characteristics and embrace some digressions along the way. They bring up a number of topics including the difference between UX and CX, the importance of research and design ops to work quick, agile, and continuously iterate, and what customer-centric strategies look like. Chris also raises the important and open question: do all businesses want and need to be design-led? For UX and HCD to fully mature as a profession, does that mean we need a new form of business that challenges the status quo and seeks to rewrite the operating model? All good questions that we need more voices on.
To finish things off, Chris talks about the parallels and overlap between different models, calling for businesses to be more customer-centric. From his vantage point, the two clear points of agreement across all the models are (1) placing a designer in the C-suite and (2) relying on customer data and user research across every step of the business and design decision-making funnel. Sit back, buckle up, and get ready for a business transformation deep dive!
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