The Business of Design

Robert Fabricant's article from Fast Company on the aging of American design directly contrasts with the idea of designers as business people. When Fabricant lauded American designers for winning a major battle by recognizing and asserting our "strategic" position, I expected much discussion on the fact that designers were improving the culture and bottom line at small and major companies alike. Fabricant wrote "Designers don't just make things easier and simpler to use, we open up new opportunity spaces through a more creative approach to problem solving." Unfortunately, the rest of the article backpedaled into a discussion of purely formal (and usually visual) concerns with no mention of improved ROI, increased market shares, or even shifting corporate culture thanks to design contributions. Rather than encouraging companies to embrace design in all facets, Fabricant reduces designers contribution to merely visual and usability concerns. His attack on Google's black navigation bar, Windows Swiss design and Apple's bookshelf only alienate designers from other business professionals and even cause division among those within the profession as evidenced by the comments attached to this article. Obviously formal concerns such as these are important, but I feel they should be reserved for design-centered publications instead of a business publication such as Fast Company, where designers should be united in their push for inclusion in the "boardrooms" across the country.

I fear that Fabricant's article also runs the risk of making designers appear to lack the ability to work as part of a multidisciplinary team. In Tim Brown's On Being T-Shaped, the IDEO executive uses his own personal experience as a consultant to demonstrate how designers must evolve in order to become integral to the overall success of a business. In addition to formal constraints, designers who are able to factor in business constraints like efficiency and politics position themselves as management consultants and can win over other disciplines by employing design thinking outside of typical "design" boundaries. Proving your individual worth in this way can be a great boost for the design profession as a whole in the eyes of business leaders.

One difficulty for designers can be getting that foot in the door in the first place. Perhaps not every designer is in a position like the one outlined above. This is where measuring and quantifying our work becomes so important. Determining how our contribution improves a company's bottom line lends designers bargaining power and a voice in the boardroom. Bill Breen and Thomas Lockwood outline a few ways to measure the impact of design in Fast Company and in Businessweek respectively. Some of their suggestions are easier to measure than others, but all are useful in showing that design is not merely an expense that must be swallowed, but an investment that directly and indirectly impacts the bottom line. I especially appreciated Breen's closing statement.

"We can no longer get by on being the wacky creatives who can't be held to any kind of standard. The sooner we get over this notion of having to 'speak the language of business' and just get on with it, the better off we'll all be."

Most of design history indicates that designers put out a product or poster and then move on to focus on the next client. Adding a new dimension to our workload and following that design and its impact is one way that we can cement our status as professionals. Of course those measurements will not always be easy. Even a purely visual design, a poster for example, has a job to do and we must measure that to determine effectiveness.

Application
Most of my career thus far has been spent as a freelance designer, or as the sole designer for an in-house operation. In either case, I feel that I haven't had the opportunity to prove my worth as Tim Brown advocates, and certainly haven't had access to the sacred, for-important-eyes-only financial information that may allow me to quantify my contribution. The solution to both problems is easy to pinpoint, but much more difficult to act on. I need to be bold. To ask for access to financial information and be able to intelligently explain why. I need to stop thinking of myself as merely a designer and start embodying the attitude that other MBAs and account managers have. I am a hard worker with good ideas (and processes!) that may just lead to a boost in a company's bottom line, whether through increased revenues or cost savings. Thanks to my education as a designer, I can solve a problem. I can work as part of a team. I can be adaptable and learn new skills quickly. I can be Super Designer if I believe it and then back that up with evidence. Even more, I can completely break out of the mold of designer and be Super Employee or Super Entrepreneur if I am willing to take risks and be bold.