How design can drive profits

Since the tech boom of the 1990s, we have been on a technological fast track. Large amounts of information are coming at us twenty-four-hours a day, in the form of phone calls, emails, breaking news, messages, video calls and more. This world is fast and easy to navigate, but it is also causing our attention span to decline. Not only our personal lives are affected by this constant information-overload. We also experience information-overload and an increase in the complexity of issues in the workplace. 

Organizations and professionals are  - more than ever - looking for new ways to deal with this information-overload, for working strategies that help to break down complexity and drive business results. Better, faster, smarter. 

Integrating design.

Interestingly enough, designers often play a key role in finding these solutions. Research shows time and again that organizations able to truly integrate design into their business processes - beyond the level of ‘making things look pretty’ - are more profitable and customer-oriented compared to organizations that do not. The design way of thinking and working is no longer the domain of consumer brands such as Apple and Ideo, but is also rapidly gaining ground within content-driven and text-oriented organizations. Think of the legal profession, where Legal Design has taken off in the past five years, but also the Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis has successfully integrated design in their way of working.

Part of the success of organizations that manage to fully integrate design methods and designers into their business has to do with the way of working that design requires. Designers master the ability to iterate and look at an issue from the user's point of view. In addition, they are often not content owners or experts, which can bring an open mind and a sometimes surprising starting point as an advantage. On top of that we see that through the process of visualization interrelationships are made clear, which enhances analytical thinking and problem-solving abilities. 

The Visual Set-up.

Successfully integrating design teams within non-design oriented organizations also comes with its challenges. Designers work and think in ways that are often in opposition to what the organization is used to. They represent a different ‘blood type’, so to say. The organization will need to adapt to thinking of design as a strategic tool instead of something that is done in workshops. Organizations need to get used to using visualization in their internal and communication with stakeholders and need to adapt to a different way of working. 

So how do you successfully integrate a different way of thinking and working within your organization? The Deloitte Designing Insight team guides teams and organizations in the integration of design (teams) within organizations in order to contribute their business growth. The team has successfully implemented the discipline of information design in content-driven organizations twice. Their Visual Set-up methodology is based on their own experiences and lessons learned. 

The Deloitte Designing Insight team is the most innovative team in the field as they combine design with the scientific knowledge of behavioral psychology and cognition. Designing Insight | The science behind visual design