From The Archives
Prove It: Why Design Sells
The business world is founded on facts and numbers. How can the effect of print, product, packaging, interactive and environmental design be proved?
Alan Siegel, of siegelgale, the international branding firm, believes that while it is hard to measure, the success of a design can indeed be tested and researched. "I would like to see design effectiveness become part of the judging criteria within established AIGA. If competitions are to have any validity they should include among the judges clients as well as the user/customers. In the interest of efficacy, the vast majority of things that (graphic) design do can only be tested by random sampling, to learn whether the design is memorable and conveys information. The problem is that a lot of budgets are small and clients will not spend money on research."
Siegel continues, "For example, gas stations all sell essentially the same product. The design factors include visibility, personality and legibility. In the case of Mobil, success of the brand’s image is contributed by highly subjective elements like advertising, corporate sponsorship of public broadcasting programs, and community involvement which leaves a shared affinity and a consistent, high-quality impression of the company. Design cannot be considered in a vacuum. As a firm that is in the brand performance business, we have created powerful images like 3M and Dell, that probably would not win any design awards because they are too "simple", yet they meet all of the criteria of successful trademarks and have great, enduring value."
Industrial design offers the opportunity of evaluating design of a manufactured product within the parameters of a defined marketplace. It is impossible to measure the success of a new design independent from its advertising and brand equity, but when a company makes design a built in value from the outset the results are dramatic. At Herman Miller, Vice President of Advanced Development, Don Goeman says, "Since the 60’s our company has respected design and has consistently elevated its importance through product solutions, brand identity, architecture, advocacy and our own culture. The life cycle of some of our products is a long one, we still make 1968 product lines, but the more recent Aeron chair has quickly become an icon as well as a commercial winner. Our success in the marketplace is dependent on differentiation, and we attribute a good share of this to design, failures too are attributed to design!
How do we measure this? The simplest metric is to discover what percentage of the business comes from products launched in the past 4 years. Another form of validation comes from focus groups. Other tangible indicators come from third party reviews like awards and affiliate exposure. When we see our products used in television and films, we recognize that Herman Miller has become part of popular culture. Even before we bring products to market there are early signals, a buzz within the company as people here express an emotional response and heightened energy level as they become involved in a new launch. Really successful design produces a crave-able product."
Smart design firms are willing to speak to the profitability of their client’s company and products but find that it is not a simple thing to do. Bill Faust, CEO, Fitch Inc. explains, "I have long been an advocate of measuring performance. Design magazines and competitions focus on style over substance, a very subjective view of design, often showing work that has not been produced or was unsuccessful in the market. Clients don’t ask us for Design, they state a problem, and we try to immerse the client in the process as a participant from the beginning. How the results impact the bottom line is of great interest to us, but it is difficult to track for many reasons. Clients don’t want to reveal their market share, and often don’t feel that the design should be given that much credit, nevertheless we go after the information using the traditional metrics; sales, cost reduction, market share, brand awareness and loyalty. Case studies can reveal a great deal and Fitch leverages this knowledge as a business tool. Our work for Iomega is a good example of how design impacted an obscure, utilitarian product, the Zip Drive, into something customers lusted after. Our conscious effort to make design permeate every aspect of the project saved the company," Faust says with obvious pride.
For clients the EVA (Economic Value Added) is a breakthrough financial metric that explains a project’s results in simple terms calculating the net after-tax profit minus a charge for capital invested. The investment in the newly designed product or brand can be evaluated in terms of hard numbers as part of a company’s research and development process. This metric has been widely adopted by corporations in an effort to manage present R&D budgets and future market shares.
The importance of research and the design process
Darrel Rhea, a principal of California-based market research firm, Cheskin, is a frequent lecturer at Design Management Institute’s seminars for corporate design managers and marketing communications executives. Rhea differentiates between the role of marketing and design research on the design process. His message is primarily directed to the corporate world and unfortunately does not reach many of the independent design firms who are most in need of this information to improve their practice, "The bottom line is that designers are evaluated on the effectiveness of the design outcome, and few things have as much impact as research. If designers don’t get smart about how and when research should be used to help the design process, other people who don’t understand design will be calling the shots. Whether they have been trained in research or not, designers are accountable for it. Research can be a tool for grounding our assumptions in the real world, and it can certainly give us insights that open up new opportunities for innovation."
Competitions: a new criteria, a new paradigm
Design competitions held by the Design Business Association in the U.K. and National Post Design Exchange Awards in Canada grant design awards based on measurable effectiveness and pragmatic, bottom line results. The panel of judges includes corporate clients as well as distinguished members of the design profession. In the U.S., aside from the annual Business Week-sponsored IDSA Award, there are no competitions that concern themselves with marketplace performance.
Virginia Postrel, author of The Age of Look and Feel (Harper Collins, June 2003) comes to this subject from an economic, social and political background. "A lot of what designers execute is not what the public wants. It is a new notion to get designers to think in terms of basic research, but a lot of important work in any field comes from pushing the envelope. Specific case studies clearly demonstrate that for small companies exceptional design is less costly than advertising and people are willing to pay more for the well-designed product or packaging solely based on appeal. Designers must consider what the value is to the audience or end-user. There are three basic sources of value; function, meaning and pleasure. The added value comes from meaning and pleasure, what I call aesthetics, "the look and feel." However Postrel admits
"Quantifying aesthetic differences is very difficult because they are intangible and so subjective."
Rather than viewing research solely as boring data that limits the designer’s creativity, in fact research provides validity, substance and ultimately greater freedom. How can designers incorporate market research into their practice and what are the benefits of proving that good design is good business?
Learn it, take university business school classes in market research, or go to seminars or workshops. Buy it. Find a consultant to work with you and develop a program for your specific needs. Hire it. Bring onboard a research person as part of your full time staff if you have the volume of work that can support this effort. Marry it. Consider a partnership with someone who has these skills as well as a business background. Admittedly this is not a hard science, but we have to learn to communicate in a way that has meaning to clients not only other designers.
Linda Cooper Bowen Copyright 2003
Alan Siegel, of siegelgale, the international branding firm, believes that while it is hard to measure, the success of a design can indeed be tested and researched. "I would like to see design effectiveness become part of the judging criteria within established AIGA. If competitions are to have any validity they should include among the judges clients as well as the user/customers. In the interest of efficacy, the vast majority of things that (graphic) design do can only be tested by random sampling, to learn whether the design is memorable and conveys information. The problem is that a lot of budgets are small and clients will not spend money on research."
Siegel continues, "For example, gas stations all sell essentially the same product. The design factors include visibility, personality and legibility. In the case of Mobil, success of the brand’s image is contributed by highly subjective elements like advertising, corporate sponsorship of public broadcasting programs, and community involvement which leaves a shared affinity and a consistent, high-quality impression of the company. Design cannot be considered in a vacuum. As a firm that is in the brand performance business, we have created powerful images like 3M and Dell, that probably would not win any design awards because they are too "simple", yet they meet all of the criteria of successful trademarks and have great, enduring value."
Industrial design offers the opportunity of evaluating design of a manufactured product within the parameters of a defined marketplace. It is impossible to measure the success of a new design independent from its advertising and brand equity, but when a company makes design a built in value from the outset the results are dramatic. At Herman Miller, Vice President of Advanced Development, Don Goeman says, "Since the 60’s our company has respected design and has consistently elevated its importance through product solutions, brand identity, architecture, advocacy and our own culture. The life cycle of some of our products is a long one, we still make 1968 product lines, but the more recent Aeron chair has quickly become an icon as well as a commercial winner. Our success in the marketplace is dependent on differentiation, and we attribute a good share of this to design, failures too are attributed to design!
How do we measure this? The simplest metric is to discover what percentage of the business comes from products launched in the past 4 years. Another form of validation comes from focus groups. Other tangible indicators come from third party reviews like awards and affiliate exposure. When we see our products used in television and films, we recognize that Herman Miller has become part of popular culture. Even before we bring products to market there are early signals, a buzz within the company as people here express an emotional response and heightened energy level as they become involved in a new launch. Really successful design produces a crave-able product."
Smart design firms are willing to speak to the profitability of their client’s company and products but find that it is not a simple thing to do. Bill Faust, CEO, Fitch Inc. explains, "I have long been an advocate of measuring performance. Design magazines and competitions focus on style over substance, a very subjective view of design, often showing work that has not been produced or was unsuccessful in the market. Clients don’t ask us for Design, they state a problem, and we try to immerse the client in the process as a participant from the beginning. How the results impact the bottom line is of great interest to us, but it is difficult to track for many reasons. Clients don’t want to reveal their market share, and often don’t feel that the design should be given that much credit, nevertheless we go after the information using the traditional metrics; sales, cost reduction, market share, brand awareness and loyalty. Case studies can reveal a great deal and Fitch leverages this knowledge as a business tool. Our work for Iomega is a good example of how design impacted an obscure, utilitarian product, the Zip Drive, into something customers lusted after. Our conscious effort to make design permeate every aspect of the project saved the company," Faust says with obvious pride.
For clients the EVA (Economic Value Added) is a breakthrough financial metric that explains a project’s results in simple terms calculating the net after-tax profit minus a charge for capital invested. The investment in the newly designed product or brand can be evaluated in terms of hard numbers as part of a company’s research and development process. This metric has been widely adopted by corporations in an effort to manage present R&D budgets and future market shares.
The importance of research and the design process
Darrel Rhea, a principal of California-based market research firm, Cheskin, is a frequent lecturer at Design Management Institute’s seminars for corporate design managers and marketing communications executives. Rhea differentiates between the role of marketing and design research on the design process. His message is primarily directed to the corporate world and unfortunately does not reach many of the independent design firms who are most in need of this information to improve their practice, "The bottom line is that designers are evaluated on the effectiveness of the design outcome, and few things have as much impact as research. If designers don’t get smart about how and when research should be used to help the design process, other people who don’t understand design will be calling the shots. Whether they have been trained in research or not, designers are accountable for it. Research can be a tool for grounding our assumptions in the real world, and it can certainly give us insights that open up new opportunities for innovation."
Competitions: a new criteria, a new paradigm
Design competitions held by the Design Business Association in the U.K. and National Post Design Exchange Awards in Canada grant design awards based on measurable effectiveness and pragmatic, bottom line results. The panel of judges includes corporate clients as well as distinguished members of the design profession. In the U.S., aside from the annual Business Week-sponsored IDSA Award, there are no competitions that concern themselves with marketplace performance.
Virginia Postrel, author of The Age of Look and Feel (Harper Collins, June 2003) comes to this subject from an economic, social and political background. "A lot of what designers execute is not what the public wants. It is a new notion to get designers to think in terms of basic research, but a lot of important work in any field comes from pushing the envelope. Specific case studies clearly demonstrate that for small companies exceptional design is less costly than advertising and people are willing to pay more for the well-designed product or packaging solely based on appeal. Designers must consider what the value is to the audience or end-user. There are three basic sources of value; function, meaning and pleasure. The added value comes from meaning and pleasure, what I call aesthetics, "the look and feel." However Postrel admits
"Quantifying aesthetic differences is very difficult because they are intangible and so subjective."
Rather than viewing research solely as boring data that limits the designer’s creativity, in fact research provides validity, substance and ultimately greater freedom. How can designers incorporate market research into their practice and what are the benefits of proving that good design is good business?
Learn it, take university business school classes in market research, or go to seminars or workshops. Buy it. Find a consultant to work with you and develop a program for your specific needs. Hire it. Bring onboard a research person as part of your full time staff if you have the volume of work that can support this effort. Marry it. Consider a partnership with someone who has these skills as well as a business background. Admittedly this is not a hard science, but we have to learn to communicate in a way that has meaning to clients not only other designers.
Linda Cooper Bowen Copyright 2003
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This article is a breath of fresh air. I hope it inspires design firms to push design research as part of their overall strategy for success and to partner with market research firms. I also feel that design competitions are ridiculous. Though I usually love the designs that are declared winners, they rarely seem a viable client approved solution. "Cool" definitely sells to a certain audience, but often doesn't contain clear messaging, legible information, or stay on or under budget.
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Yes, designers have to be taught the importance of marketing to be in control. I believe if we understand our client problems and needs, they will simply trust us and stay with us. For example, from previous experience, to design a heavy metal band logo, I simply went out to many heavy metal bands concerts, listening and understanding what its all about for a few months, on and off and be dressed like one, then I only can understand how I can evolve my ideas in creating that logo. So designers need to be in the clients environment and place...only t discover not only more about the product but to learn from it. Main thing is Relationships and understanding.
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