Secrets of successful design

Design plays a fundamental role in the success of many of the world’s leading companies. But how do those firms ensure that they are getting the best return on their investment in design? To find out, Design Council researchers visited the design departments of eleven companies, all world-leaders in their fields and all with a public commitment to the use of design to improve their brand strength, product and service offerings. The research was made possible through access to eleven senior design teams including Yahoo, Microsoft, BT, BSkyB, Alessi, Sony and Virgin Atlantic.

The study looked at the way design is used in these firms, how designers work with staff from other disciplines and how the design process is managed to deliver consistently successful results. Leading design teams were asked about how they select and organize their designers, and when they bring designers into the product or service development process.

Selected results show that for example Microsoft, the world’s leading supplier of operating system software, has completed a significant evolution in its attitudes to design. Having once been a technologically-driven organization, Microsoft now uses design thinking to focus on developing products that answer users’ needs. With management support, this focus on user experience is also influencing Microsoft’s organizational structure and culture.

Yahoo has grown from a pioneering search engine to become one of the most popular portals on the Internet. An organization that uses technology to focus on customer needs, Yahoo! operates a highly customer-centric design process, with user research instrumental in the development of new products and the evolution of existing ones.

From the in-depth examination, the Design Council researchers aimed to draw out some of the key features that define the state-of-the-art in modern design practice, as well as the unique approaches that set some firms apart: ‘Eleven Lessons: managing design in eleven global corporations’.

Many of these findings (user research, interdisciplinary cooperation …) are already incorporated in the D-LABS approach to software design!

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