Ten Ways to Measure Design's Success

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They evaluated financial performance by using traditional financial ratios, such as return on assets and net cash flow to sales, for the sample period. They found that firms rated as having good design were stronger on virtually all financial measures from a practical and managerial perspective, as well as from a statistical perspective.

6. Enable Product and Service Innovation

What if a car dealer used design to create the perfect customer experience and increased sales by more than 25%? Open Road Toyota, working with Karo Design in Canada, did just that. They redesigned all their touch-points for a specific customer experience, and in 2006 they became the number-one Toyota (TM) dealer in Canada. The cars did not change but the design of everything else did, and sales skyrocketed. A deep understanding of customers was used to design the desired customer experience and then to design every touch-point so that it would support that experience.

7. Develop Communities of Customers

Many new companies have been tremendously successful in developing new communities of customers. Consider Facebook and Google (GOOG); design not only plays a role but is partially carried out by customers. This is engaging, sticky, and extremely effective. At times the professional designers need to allow the customers to play a part. Hard to measure? Not really, because it's based on individuals. Effective? Yes indeed; consider the usage and rapid growth of online communities of customers.

8. Create Intellectual Property

Another way to measure design's contribution is to consider how much you've lost if it is stolen. In today's economy, a company's intellectual property assets are often more valuable than its physical assets. Consider Coca-Cola's (KO) signature bottle or Nike's (NKE) swoosh. Joshua Cohen, of intellectual property firm RatnerPrestia, notes that IP laws do not give us the right to do things in the marketplace but they do give us the right to exclude others from using our designs. Strategies aimed to maximize the ROI of design efforts by securing comprehensive IP protection, steering clear of the IP rights of others, and integrating IP-building efforts into design processes can be isolated and are of significant value.

9. Improve usability

Very often, the usability of an interface design is measured by analyzing the efficiency of user navigation through observation, click-through, or interviews. Web sites are constantly monitored for user performance, and most web marketers watch our behavior closely and make design adjustments to improve performance. All manner of design-based usability issues can be isolated and evaluated.

10. Improve Sustainability

The creative economy is a greener economy, and we all need to help. Designers and design managers have considerable influence in this area. Valerie Casey suggests a Kyoto Treaty for Design featuring collective and individual criteria—the goal being to advance our intellectual understanding of environmental issues from a design perspective. Undoubtedly, design has considerable impact on our environment, and that impact is easily measurable.

Managing design is a science as well as an art and it requires the integration of the two. In effect it is the convergence of business, strategy, and customer experience.

Provided by Design Management Review—This is an edited version of an article that first appeared in Design Management Review, which explores how great design provides long-term competitive advantage in a changing world. The Review was founded in 1989 and is published quarterly.

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