Why This Book

A few months ago, the CEO of a 200-person, $25M B2B (business-to-business) company called me. He said, “As a former developer, I understand technology. I’ve learned about running my company’s finances, HR, Marketing, and Operations. I believe design is crucial for my company’s success. But I don’t know about design, and I don’t know how to know. Can you help me?”

What a question! Where to start?

Also, why hadn’t more executives asked me this? Design’s been the “new black” for 10 years!  At least 50 VC and analyst reports tout the value of design. Every new company wants to be the “Apple of” something. 

I started interviewing Business Leaders who were not Designers themselves, but who had seen success after advocating for design in their organizations. I asked how they’d become advocates, why they believed in design, and what value it provided. I discovered some wide gaps in their knowledge and expectations. This aligned with what I’ve learned from 20 years of helping clients design software, run design teams, and uncover opportunities for meaningful innovation; and supporting the design process necessary to realize their ideas. These lessons provided the foundation for this book.

Why It Matters

Design is happening in your organization—and not just in marketing or advertising, but whenever anyone builds a mobile app, web site, or digital product. As Douglas Martin said, the alternative to good design isn’t no design; it’s bad design. When product managers make wireframes, they’re doing design. When Engineers add a front-end so they can see functionality, they’re doing design. When Marketing asks the Engineers to add a logo and the “right” colors, they’re doing design.

The important questions are:

• Are you intentional in crafting your customers’ experiences?

• How closely do customer experiences map to your intent?

• And overall, is design helping or hindering your organization?

 Some companies have succeeded despite fragile or poorly designed software. However, there are innumerable companies in the dead pool precisely because of these issues. So, in the spirit of increasing your chances of success and truly taking care of your customers, you need to focus on both solid engineering and professional design.

As a Business Leader, you choose whether to be intentional in using design to make your company more successful, or to let design self-regulate and cross your fingers that it doesn’t do too much damage.

This book is intended to help you start being intentional.

I write much more about this, and about how to work with Designers at every level, in the book. Please grab a copy for yourself or a friend, or get in touch.