It's been quite some time since I read something with such an informed perspective. LinkedIn posts on this subject are out of touch. As a recent design director for a F500 company, it's timely and true. Thanks for sharing.
If orgs need millions of dollars to hire and sustain design, they might be paying the same or even more more already to the engineers. This is about finding the right proportion.
In design, sometimes the investment is too little to see immediate and incremental ROI. For example the time taken to design a poor online form is almost the same as they will take to design a more usable online form. The investment is nothing as compared to the ROI.
Of course there are investments for building those systems, standards, and the teams and I am not even talking about the trade-offs.
My point—not investing in design does not save much, neither the time nor the cost. Not to forget how designers bring their domain intelligence, product intelligence, and the UX and CX intelligence to the product.
ROI is often in the exponential proportion to the small investments—the question is of the timing of those investments.
(Comment updated: Changed *billions* to *millions*.)
Also, My concern is that organizations and even early-career designers tend to develop a limited-dimensional view of this design sentiment (Pricing) and which is not a healthy sign—neither for the industry (who are hiring design) and nor for design.
It's been quite some time since I read something with such an informed perspective. LinkedIn posts on this subject are out of touch. As a recent design director for a F500 company, it's timely and true. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for the kind words. Will keep trying to share these posts 🙏
Thanks, Tom. Fairly comprehensive.
Quick note:
Your thoughts on *Money* are a bit exaggerated.
If orgs need millions of dollars to hire and sustain design, they might be paying the same or even more more already to the engineers. This is about finding the right proportion.
In design, sometimes the investment is too little to see immediate and incremental ROI. For example the time taken to design a poor online form is almost the same as they will take to design a more usable online form. The investment is nothing as compared to the ROI.
Of course there are investments for building those systems, standards, and the teams and I am not even talking about the trade-offs.
My point—not investing in design does not save much, neither the time nor the cost. Not to forget how designers bring their domain intelligence, product intelligence, and the UX and CX intelligence to the product.
ROI is often in the exponential proportion to the small investments—the question is of the timing of those investments.
(Comment updated: Changed *billions* to *millions*.)
Also, My concern is that organizations and even early-career designers tend to develop a limited-dimensional view of this design sentiment (Pricing) and which is not a healthy sign—neither for the industry (who are hiring design) and nor for design.
Where did you get billions from?
Sorry, but my comment applies to millions too. Correcting it there now.