A framework for measuring design maturity

If we want design to be at the core of the business, we need to know how to evaluate its maturity.

It is a long article, ~bear~ with me

If you ask any modern CEO, they will say that design is important to their business. But, in reality, that is not always the case — or, at least, in the same dimension they say it is.

Let’s look at a few examples:

• A small size business might have only one or two designers covering all aspects of the design process in multiple streams of work.
• A mid-size business can have a handful of designers, but the work is only done reactively.
• A big company can have a bigger design team, but they might not have a seat at the table where the strategy is defined.

Although the work gets done, the maturity of the design team can feel stale: the budget doesn’t change much, hiring is slow, the design team doesn’t have a voice in the company’s strategy. That’s when we start questioning how important design really is to the business.

“Why do we need another designer? We are meeting all our deadlines!”

You have likely heard this before. If we want avoid hearing things like this, we first need to understand the…