Dear (none)Designer,
Welcome back to the twenty-fifth Design at Scale™ Newsletter – focusing on innovation and how design drives change in a large organisation or an agency.
We are reaching a very interesting point for Design at Scale™. At this point, we are finalising our two-year research project on 274 design methods that define, drive, adapt, and ultimately influence the way we deliver design in small, medium, and large organisations.
Did I hear that right? Yes, there is a 274 design method that can be combined in many different ways in order to deliver the design proposition. We often hear that there was only a Double Diamond simple Stage-Gate, which some people still use for their job interviews.
There is far more to it. Combining 274 design methods together and knowing when and how to use them creates the main distinction between designers who merely deliver the proposition and those designers who change the organisation through design. Despite the agencies and the in-house design department's near two-decade-long repetition of the Double Diamond, we believe that these methods have reshaped the departments and, to some extent, the organisation itself.
Profoundly influencing business by design thinking, articulating design decisions, and correctly communicating design handover, strengthening the internal flow of information that makes design far more visible and therefore vital for the business. It also allows organisations to refresh their design team with someone from the agency. Equally, the agencies are bringing someone from the in-house team to refresh the agency's thinking.
As this might sound like a perfect opportunity for diversity, it's a disaster for velocity and delivery. Onboarding someone, let's say a researcher who has spent the last 3-6 months researching a project in a large organisation, guerrilla 2-3 day research becomes a massive challenge. Adapting your skills in a different environment and getting familiar with the agency's ways of working, while delivering the work in a short period of time, does not sound like fun.
The majority of designers opened up about these challenges on ADPList, especially during the pandemic. The shortage of jobs and layoffs made all designers equal and recruiters without difference threw the talent to "just get any job". For whatever reason, we believe that the majority of these methods are interchangeable or combinable, and therefore it doesn't really matter whether someone comes from the advertising agency and is trying to sell the Product or Service within the organisation. It did not matter whether you offer an equivalent experience in banking, transportation, telecommunication, healthcare or logistics – you know Figma, you are hired.
It will help the industry profoundly if they are. Every designer from UNI will be reaching the industry that is fully informed and diverse enough to jump from one type of project to another without ever feeling the need to adjust between the methods, only to an agency service or design company.
Unfortunately, it is not so simple. All designers in agencies are specifically trained to turn around quick ideas in order to build something within a week or two. Ship the Product of Service with fast-paced iterations without ever looking back, with one thing working or not. Most of the time, an agency-versed successful designer can get on their portfolio with 20 to 40 clients a year. Experiencing the definition, research, analysis, evaluation, user experience, prototyping, design, branding, User interface, production of desktop, tablet, and mobile screens while building the watch variables or designing the TV app. Looking ahead to the next project delivery and the client's work celebration at the Cannes Lions festival in France.
On the other hand, the designer in a large organisation is able to push life one or two features that are part of the big proposition or ecosystem live. No celebration, no ceremonies, no bonuses – just "delivered". They will rarely undertake all the above-mentioned tasks; they tend to stay within their own discipline, collaborating with a researcher, UX designer, Brand designer, and developer, and are generally experienced in their own role, but not in other areas. On the other hand, if they go a little bit deeper, they will spend 3 to 6 months crafting and perfecting one feature to be deployed and successfully integrated across the organisation's ecosystem.
Now, if you swap these two talents and apply the same methods, processes, and workflows, they will eventually reach the same point. Unfortunately, to some, it will be a challenging experience for both as they will need to unlearn and learn about everything they just knew. We call it – "transform themselves" into a type of designer they have never been before.
After conducting over 3,000 interviews to reflect on the usage of design methods, processes, and workflows, we now have a comprehensive picture of how these methods are used, the challenges they face, and how they address the differences between various environments, teams, and organisations.
It is not a surprise that the design discipline is one of the most profoundly changing occupations out there. The applications we work with evolve every half year. The plug-ins and automation speed up 2x every three weeks. The client demands a 5-10X increase in delivery speed every year.
The ultimate goal of Design at Scale™ is not to create or come up with one single method that serves them all. The Design at Scale™ is here to challenge, transform and combine all the existing methods into a constantly evolving ecosystem that serves designers across all propositions in a team of 001, 010 and 100 (newly 1%). This way, we'll be able to address not only company needs and objectives but also improve key performance identification in a very specific environment and allow designers to become a driving force of the business proposition.
Throughout this journey, we have collected insights from +90 design directors all around the world who are turning challenges into opportunities and improving startups, scale-ups, agencies, and in-house design teams, proving that individuals can shape the future organisations through design.
For more information, please visit Designa at Scale™ – GRID Magazine, where you can find additional relevant articles that explore hyper-performing teams, self-organising teams of one, teams of 10, and teams of 100 that deliver the value proposition within a product-led environment.
