Spreading the value of good design: changing minds and cultures through the common language of design

In my career as a service designer I have seen the federal government, along with their state and local counterparts, re-think technology from something “good enough” to an integral part of the long term solution.

For example, a growing number of federal and state contracts now require experience in human centered design and product delivery. While internally agencies are investing in modern design and technology teams like the Digital Service, 18F, and in house innovation labs. This adoption of the common language of design is a clear expression of their desire for products to be content rich, impactful, user friendly, and cost effective.

We must meet people and ideas where they are.

A large part of this change is thanks to the tireless work of embedded designers in government. At the AIGA .gov conference last month, these designers show cased how they improved vital services like the modernization of the VA appeal process (which I am a part) or state wide nutrition sign ups (SNAP). At the core of every project were the hallmarks of human centered design that, with time, resulted in broader systematic and culture change.

The second .gov conference was held on May 6, 2019. In partnership with government agencies and delivery teams, service designers led work shops and gave talks on how they helped improve vital services.

Despite these improvements, the place of “design” in technology and civil tech is not well understood. As someone tasked with spreading the value of “good design” in government, I can tell you the pain is still very real. The most common sentiment I get is design “makes things pretty.” It is the cherry on top. A luxury we do not have the time or money for and won’t for a while yet.

“Communicating design is also an act of design”

At the start of my career I would cringe and move on. I had better things to do than bang my head against a wall. As I matured, however, I have come to empathize with their perspective. Design has developed deep associations over time that lends itself to being seen as “extra.” Who better to unravel these relationships than designers supplied with new examples and perspectives?

Spreading the value of “good design” has since become a key part of my mission. I purposefully seek cultures where design is just forming and help it grow from an idea into a practice. Along this journey, I have learned that communicating design is also an act of design.

In the following pages or “scrolls”, I have documented some of the perceptions that have been the hardest to overcome and the concepts that have been the most successful in inspiring curiosity about design and its value.

Barriers to design communication

Design has a long history. We can start at the onset of human culture or farther back to when our ancestors first used tools. With all of this history comes richness in ideas and artifacts. In it also lies baggage.

Design, particularly “good design”, has developed deep associations through time. Even though many of these ideas have been challenged in modernity, I find that designers still have to contend with these associations daily. Below are only a few.

Good design is extra, we can’t afford it

I once disseminated a one question survey asking participants and students for an example of “good design.” Not surprisingly, the most common answers were the large, grand structures that many collectively admire: the Pyramide du Louvre, the pearl white pillars of the Blue Mosque, the jewels scattered across the walls of the Taj Mahal, or the swirling spirals of the Guggenheim (pictured below). “Good design” has almost always been tied with wealth, luxury, and the highest classes of society. Even now, top design firms are usually employed by large corporations, countries, and patrons.

In terms of architectural cost, the interior of the Guggenheim is a more modest example. Taking full advantage of the Cathedral effect, the upward curving spirals evoke a sense of endlessness. As your eyes reach the top you are greeted with a view of the sky. This design invites people to start from a place of openness and new perspective. However, was the Guggenheim worth the 3 million in the 1950’s (31 million now) and the 29 to restore it later? For me, the answer is clear but that’s for each of us to decide.

This association also exists in higher quality versions of everyday tools. For example, Yasuhiro Hirakawa’s artisan scissors range from 1,100 usd to 35,000 usd. A friend’s response sums up a common reaction, “there is no way any scissor is worth 35,000 dollars, who would ever buy something so stupid.”

A picture of one of Yasuhiro Hirakawa’s hand crafted scissors crafted in the banzai sheer style

I completely understand this sentiment. A Yasuhioro scissor is many times the cost of the 40 dollar one in my drawer. However, what if I told you he is a 5th generation scissor maker. The last of his kind in Japan and a single pair takes him 10 hours a day for a week to make. While a custom one takes him 6 months as he carefully considers how they will be used and relentlessly tests them against the materials they will cut. As for who, this detail is the reason why the world’s foremost banzai masters seek him for their tools.

Each of us gives history, tradition, and culture a value and it varies from person to person. Regardless of what that value is, we can see from a relational perspective that “good design ” often sits between what is good and what is extraordinary. Over time, people have learned that extraordinary is expensive and often not for them.

Thankfully in modernity this relationship has been recently and consistently challenged with advancements in manufacturing, material production, and technology. For example, Muji, a Japanese lifestyle brand, has grown to global acclaim over the past few decades. Their ethos of simplicity and cost effective, high quality production has created a new space for “good design” in modern homes — a luxury not of well designed things but the luxury of clarity and transparency that “good design” can bring. Designers in every space or medium must always be ready to show this perspective.

Muji is a popular Japanese lifestyle brand that has grown to over 700 global stores in a few decades. Their product ethos lives at the cross sections of affordability, good design, and quality.

Design is un-measurable, intrinsic, and unique

I remember meeting a bank executive who kept repeating he understood the value of “good design.” He cited the now famous study by the Design Management Institute, which found design based companies out performed their competition by 228%.

The Design Management Institute calculated a design index and that highlighted design centered companies have grown significantly faster and consistently out performed their competition.

He understood the value of design strategically but struggled to measure the value of “ good design” tactically. For example, what is the worth of a well designed button on a mobile application or an intuitive information architecture on a web page? Because of this gap, he believed design was something unique and creative. You either had the ability to produce and scale it or you did not.

Over two months of meetings, I introduced him to UX design and the intricate testing, systems mapping, and analysis that designers do to ensure solutions improve the entire experience. I showed him tools like heat maps, which helped him increase web portal sign ups by 31% in a quarter. He realized that “good design” is measurable and reproducible and has become a strong advocate for design thinking in his organization.

Heat maps provide insights into where people engage the most on a web page or application. They are an example of the design principle of “Desire Lines”. Much like the emergence of a new trail in a park, people naturally create their preferred path through a space. Placing your most relevant information in these areas can drastically improve desired outcomes such as task completion or advertising sign ups.

Design is slow

“Design takes too long” is often one of the last resistances I hear. For some reason, people I work with use this argument as the nail in the coffin to my calls for “good design.” When I hear this, I almost always smile because I feel like I am standing at the last gate with the key in my hand.

The slowness of design is valid. The meticulous detail and refinement over years, centuries, and millennia have led to some of the world’s most used tools. Objects like pencils, chairs, cups, and chopsticks all benefited from the maturing wisdom of time. However, if we look at the true growth trajectory of these products and tools, down to their many iterations over their lifetime, the space between innovation is drastically reduced.

Here is a timeline of the stackable pencil courtesy of timetoast.com. If we look at the growth of the pencil from the 1800’s onward, we see an explosion of progress. If we dive deeper, you will find designers were at the forefront of this innovation. We had an invested interest after all!

The length of time helps “good design” grow and mature but it is not a requirement to birthing it. This principle is embodied in new design frameworks focused on leveraging specific tools quickly and effectively at their maximum point of value.

Our team at Veteran Affairs used a Lean UX model to orient our products and ensure high impact. In three years, among many other accomplishments, we saved the VA over 27 years of productivity, centralized a national hearing process, and deprecated a 108 year old form. The research and design process for these projects were a few weeks to two months not years.

A Lean UX diagram from Dave Lindis at Lithespeed. The goal is to conduct and prioritize research towards a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) or feature. Improvement is achieved through iteration and user feedback not initial perfection. This model ensures products are improved through the lens of its users and is fast enough to adapt to rapidly changing product and customer needs.

Design can be good and fast. The key is identifying the right model to use for your specific problem. If you need quicker results, then use leaner frameworks and tools. On the ground, designers help organizations and teams find the right balance between product efficacy and timely delivery.

What is design and what does it do?

Dialogues about the value of “ good design” almost always come down to what design is and does. This topic is so fundamental that it often becomes an obsession for designers. At some point, we must answer these questions for ourselves. However, regardless of where we land, I have become convinced that this definition must be fluid enough to exist and incubate across different ideas and mental models.

Personally, I have come to see this definition less as a rigid north star and more of as seeds to be planted in the objects and people we design for. Much like a gardener assessing the soil and planting the right crop, we must do our due diligence and guide the process of ideation.

Below are a few of these seeds. Of course, this list is not exhaustive and each one can be changed in many ways. The point is not to find what always works, spreading the value of “ good design” is not that easy, but to find the threads that inspire deeper discussion and thinking.

Design helps solve the right problem at the right time

“We are in a problem, just solved a problem. or heading to another one.”
— unknown

As we grow in our careers, the problems we face get larger and more complex. We are trusted to build ideas and visions beyond our immediate context. For example, our team at the VA was only 11 when I joined and we were tasked with improving a process that served over half a million veterans. In the billions of bytes of information and the tens of thousands of pages of processes and contracts, where do you even begin? How do you find the right problem? How do you ensure you are improving the system as a whole?

“Design helps us do the right thing the right way”

Kenya Hara, a renowned graphic designer, beautifully explains design’s role in discerning the value of information in Designing Design*. He argues that cognitive fatigue and stress doesn’t come from the quantity of information but the work required to find quality information. In light of this, one of design’s primary goals is to help find the right information streams faster by reducing complexity and identifying shared components across systems.

Imagine dozens of cones of yarn, like the one pictured below, tangled with other cones of yarn. Every day you leave it alone the mess gets worse and worse similar to the chaos we face in complex human organizations. You have no idea how things got this bad, but you are tasked with untangling it.

Chaos in a basket

A designer examines this chaos and starts to peel away the complexity layer by layer. We can remove the ones along the edges because they have the least chance of being tangled with the middle. May be we can get rid of the loose yarn because user research found they were mostly thrown away. Are there yarn holders in this environment? If not, why? If yes, why aren’t people using them? Question by question we analyze and get closer to the reason.

Design also helps identify the proper timing and order of product improvements. We use qualitative and quantitative synthesis frameworks like 2x2 prioritization and How Might We’s to turn pain points into solutions.

Designers often use 2x2’s to assess pain points in light of different prioritization lenses, which can range from tech feasibility to process improvements.

In technology, designers often work together with product managers by refining the problem set and ensuring features are actually improving the user experience. While in material, product, and industrial design we research and test features that better the overall usability and appeal of a physical product through time.

Ultimately, “good design” is the process of finding the right problem and solving it the right way. A designer’s vision is long from the beginning as we help ensure the enduring success of the solutions we work so hard to build.

Design inspires and changes behavior

Design sits between the intersection of anthropology, psychology, and economics. We observe the sensory world and learn how humans engage with it. As part of our normal curriculum and practice, we study how environment, space, context, and experience can be used to inspire behavior.

One example is the layout and placement of food at Ikea stores. The positioning of this cafe at the end of a small items section is intentional. So are the large yellow lines and out door escalators that prompt customers to start at the top floor (pictured below).

The outdoor escalators and large yellow entrance at some Ikea stores prompt customers to start at the top floor, which is often where the heaviest furniture is. This path increases the chance of cognitive fatigue and impulse purchases as we reach the lower floors that have smaller and cheaper items.

Imagine browsing through Ikea’s upper levels for hours. Your legs start hurting and you notice you are spending more time looking for an exit than browsing. On your way out and at the height of fatigue you enter a large open section filled with small and cheap items. You’ve been there for four hours and haven’t bought anything. Did you really come all this way for nothing?

If you had the will power to resist this temptation, you are met with the smell of warm pretzels and the refreshing sight of cold beverages and ice cream.

When we are tired, we are more likely to give into our impulses — an effect well documented in contemporary psychology as cognitive or decision fatigue.** I knew what was happening and I still ended up buying a small pencil holder and an ice cream for a combined total of 4.50. Multiply that by just 500 similar purchases a week across 424 stores and you get close to 4 million a month or 48 million a year.

A less commercial example is Kenya Hara’s design of signage at a hospital. He choose white cotton as the medium knowing they would get dirty and need to be cleaned frequently. The goal, which was realized through time, was to communicate the hospital’s commitment to cleanliness and to help them honor this commitment by increasing the physical act of cleaning.

Taken from “Designing Design” by Kenya Hara portraying his white cotton signage for a hospital.

Designers are often employed to inspire certain behavioral outcomes and this aspect of design has attracted a wide audience in the private and public sector. As a quick note and a plug for a later post, the power of design to influence is why I believe designers have a greater responsibility to spread positive behavior.

Design provides a common language

Our preferences are deeply entangled with the conscious and sub conscious decisions we make everyday. For example, why do you buy one coffee brand over another? Do you read digital or physical books? Do you prefer one or does it depend on the situation?

Design provides the language to help us express and examine the reason behind our choices.

Shown below are variations of coffee cups. If we asked a thousand different people to choose their favorite, we would start to see a preference emerge. A preferential or scatter study can then help us determine which product speaks to the largest audience. For now, which one do you like? May be none of them suit your tastes at all? Why?

Which one speaks to you? Is there a part of one cup that you would like to combine with another? May be none of them suit your taste at all. What would you do different? Why?

For some a cup has to be sustainable and eco-friendly while for others its aesthetics are just as important as its utility. Design helps us discover these values. In a similar way, a well designed product usually sparks large interest when it has accurately expressed a common value shared by a group.

“I want a table that matches this chair.”
“I love the design and color of these boxes. Can we make them eco friendly?”
“How do we make our products more fun to use?

In a business setting, the agreement upon and expression of a shared belief system can be the most contentious. This tension manifests in everything from the creation of a vision to a company’s color scheme:

• Why are we choosing this logo over another?
• Why are we using model x over model y?
• What is the vision for our product and how do we get there?

Usually before deeper dialogue or systematic change occurs is an agreement upon a common language. Otherwise chaos halts progress as people stumble over semantics and project their own desired meaning or outcome. Design is one such common language.

Planting the seeds of good design

“Once you see good design, you cannot unsee it.”

Much like the difference between thinking and doing, I personally find communicating “good design” far easier than creating it. Still, I would argue that design has always been an integral part of written and verbal communication. All of language’s variations, inflections, tones, and connotations are like the pallet of an artist. We must choose the right combinations to make the image that we want for ourselves and others real.

I was asked in a recent pitch meeting, what is design and what do designers do? Why should we invest in it?

I took a breath and a quote by Kengo Kuma immediately came to mind:

“We are composed of matter and live in the midst of matter.”
- Kengo Kuma, architect

Our job as designers is to understand matter in its entirety. We observe from different perspectives, challenge convention, and seek new materials in hopes of bringing to light the rich sensory world around us. Translating this thought for a room full of MBA’s, I replied:

“Designers engineer ideas. We uncover your intuitive understanding of the world and make them real, tangible, and reproducible while appreciating both the complexity of the human experience and the sheer joy that comes with using a product you love.”

As with many first meetings, I did not seal a deal or win a proposal. However, just hours after, I received 7 emails from the 10 people in that room. They asked for examples, literature, and ideas about design and how it exists in organizations and cultures. Below is a a snippet from one:

Phillip,
Thanks for the meeting……….
Would you have material or time to discuss some of the following:

What are some specific examples of successful design cultures in large organizations? Why did they succeed? Why do some fail? How do you start?

For every question they ask the seed of “good design” will grow until one day, in an explosion of joy and wonder, they will awaken to the rich sensory world around them. Once you see good design, you cannot unsee it.

Phillip Jo is a UX and service designer currently working to modernize the appeal process at Veteran Affairs. His interests are sensory, affordance, and accessibility design applied to digital and physical spaces.

Further reading:

*Designing Design by Kenya Hara:

A series of essays and gleanings from one of Japan’s most prominent designers tackling topics such as spatial design, haptics, and humanity’s shared relationship with design. A must read for anyone seeking an overview of how designers think and examine the world.

**Thinking fast and thinking slow by Daniel Kahneman:

One of the most comprehensive guides to human thinking and cognition, which helped set the grounds for behavioral economics winning Daniel the Nobel Prize. A book I recommend everyone, especially designers