When clients ‘get’ design

We know clients who use design well, those who integrate design throughout their business, are financially more successful (think Apple). It’s proven: design streamlines processes, explains procedures and builds a brand culture.

And understanding how a client uses design shows how they value design. Those who place absolutely no value on design, are far from an ideal client. Those who place a high value on design are more likely to integrate it throughout the business; they have a level of design maturity.

Realistically, most clients sit somewhere in the middle, with room for improvement. That’s a new business opportunity. And we all know it’s easier to get more work from existing clients than find new clients.

There’s three processes we use to identify a client’s design maturity. How they use design, where they use design, and to what level (maturity) they use design.

The idea of business maturity modelling derived from a U.S. Defence Department model to assess the capability of businesses supplying to the U.S. Government

A maturity model is often shown as structured levels from ad hoc practices, to formally defined steps.

The model describes how well the behaviours, practices and processes of an organisation can reliably and sustainably produce products or services.

The application of maturity modelling to design in businesses was started by the Design Management Institute in 2015 when they launched the Design Maturity Matrix. People from more than 300 organisations have taken the survey, representing 36 different industries.

InVision recently developed a Design Maturity Model that extended the work the DMI did.

The problem we see with these models is they require the organisation to acknowledge there is value added by design. Many businesses we deal with – and many of those that our design studio clients deal with – do not recognise design as adding value.

I can understand this attitude. Businesses owners have an ultimate goal – to make a profit. They have very altruistic goals that help them achieve this but ultimately they HAVE TO make a profit to stay in business.

We have taken a different approach to other design maturity models and based it on Value Chain analysis. This recognises the profit requirement while still measuring design maturity. The process firstly looks at how and where the organisation adds value. This method was developed by Michael Porter in his 1985 book Competitive Advantage.

Porter’s premise is:
The value that’s created and captured by a company is the profit margin:

The more value an organisation creates, the more profitable it will be. And when you provide more value to your customers, you build competitive advantage.

We’ve taken the value chain approach and modified it to become a Design Value Chain Analysis model. This looks at the ten core activities in an organisation and firstly determines how and where each activity adds value. Having done the value chain analysis we look at how design can be added to each of these core activities to further increase value.

The final ‘design maturity’ analysis is done after all the design value additions have been quantified. The more design value added the higher the maturity score.

As we apply this model we’re building up a design value maturity index for Australian businesses.

Contact me if you would like to catch up to discuss how you can help your clients develop design maturity.

Greg Branson
Co-founder Design Business Council.

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