Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium matthew diamanti

When I first started my career in design, it was still relatively difficult to find dedicated teams inside corporations. Design was thought of more as a creative services team, dedicated to marketing materials and making products “look pretty”. There were some exceptions, of course, but, in general, that was the situation.

That’s changed now with centers of design starting to appear in most corporations. It’s been fascinating for me to see design and “design thinking” become so hyped that they are now buzzwords. Even with this new popularity, however, when you speak with a lot of design leaders, you hear a common complaint — integrating design into a major corporation is a struggle.

I’ve spent my entire career helping corporations integrate design into their business processes and organizations and have also found it to be a difficult job in most of the places I’ve worked. Being a designer myself, I’ve practiced the concept of iterative design with my approaches to integrating design to learn what can make my teams more successful. What I’ve learned along my journey is that to successfully integrate design into the backbone of a business, you have to go beyond the org structure, the process, & even the people. You have to understand the culture of business and how it clashes with the culture of design.

Organizational culture

Before we get into that, however, let’s discuss organizational culture. One of the models that I’ve found particularly helpful is Edgar Schein’s (I highly recommend reading his book, btw). Below is a modified version of his model where I’ve added a few examples based on my thinking; they did not come directly from the book.

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In the book, Edgar states that there are three layers of culture in an organization: a layer of hidden assumptions, a layer of declared values, and a layer of artifacts. Each layer is dependent on the layer before with artifacts being based on declared values and declared values being based on hidden assumptions. He also discusses that the two lower layers are largely invisible to the majority of a corporation. The assumptions layer can be so hidden that not even the CEO or original founder are aware of them!

After introducing the layers, he goes on to describe how a lot of organizations focus almost entirely on the artifacts level when trying to fix or minimize an organizational problem and that those efforts are typically unsuccessful because they aren’t focused on the real issue — the assumptions. When a company is facing competitive pressures, for example, they may focus all of their energy largely on a better process or new org structure, when the real reason why their competitor is winning is because they have their organization built around a better set of assumptions.

Another way to think of the layers — the Three Ms

Another model I created and which I’ve found helpful for bridging the gap between business and design is what I call the three Ms — method, message, & mindset. The three Ms are basically a distillation of all of the major systems that a business supports.

Method is the process, tools, roles & approvals needed to work from planning through implementation.
Message is the style of collaboration, camaraderie & communication that is used as the foundational support for the method being executed. Message answers the central question “why are we doing this?” and provides the connections necessary to maintain momentum behind that common sense of purpose.
Mindset is the beliefs, values, attitudes & motivation that drives individuals to create the message, and, subsequently, connect with it.

Conveniently, I found that the three Ms framework maps nicely, albeit not perfectly, to Schein’s model.

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So how does this all relate to design?

Well, when a company decides to “add design” to their culture, the first thing they’ve learned to do from the industry (design consulting firms and agencies) is implement “design thinking” which is mainly focused on process. The majority of design thinking frameworks out there seem to imply that if you add a few design practices into a company’s existing product development process beautifully innovative products will be coming your way.

And guess what? That new design team they’ve hired is likely struggling or outright failing. Why? Because they haven’t first addressed the real disconnect between design and business — the mindset.

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It starts with mindset

Not all design thinking frameworks ignore the mindset layer of culture. Looking at this model from Stanford, for example, you can see that they hint at the values behind design through their segments on beginner’s mind and empathy, but they then move quickly on to the process.

The difference, I’ve learned, is one of focus. You can’t simply teach designers the values of design; you have to teach the entire business organization about the values of design. You have to build a deep awareness with all of the key stakeholders so they can understand how design is fundamentally different from business and how business practices thwart and resist design.

I don’t start that awareness with the designers. Instead I start it by educating the key stakeholders in an organization that will be working with designers or as designers — leadership, product management, marketing, and development.

To help those stakeholders understand how design is different than business, like Stanford’s model, I focus on the two key values of being open, and being empathetic, but I add a third, being playful.

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When teaching each of these values to business stakeholders, I strive to make the connection meaningful to them by going into many examples of how business really doesn’t support these values. I also discuss the change strategies that organization will need to be able to more fully embrace them. In the rest of this article, I’ll be providing a shorter version of that experience.

Be open

The purpose of design is to create the future, and to create the future, you have to be open to possibility. Being open is by far the most important value behind design, and, unfortunately, it is also one of the first values to really conflict with the values of business. Business, if we are honest, embraces being closed.

The birth of modern business occurred with the industrial revolution, and the industrial revolution was largely about standardization. The goal of standardization is relatively simple — to minimize chance and possibility, and, thus, error. It’s a relatively simple equation. The known equals high margins and the unknown equals risk and expense.

To make matters worse, humans are amazingly good at not being open. The philosopher Justus Buchler has said that to be human is to be judging. Everything we do is a judgement. We love to label, define, categorize, and follow patterned sequences of behavior because it makes life easier. And business loves judgement because, as noted above, judgement is the essence of standardization.

Thus, embracing the value of being open is the first obstacle a company must face. For a company to execute design properly, people have to be conscious of those bias they have and constantly be called out on them by their colleagues. They have to live in comfort with any possibility they may hear, see, or think about and not exclude it outright due to their judgement.

Be empathetic

Once I’ve encouraged the team to be open and have had them do a few activities around it, we move on to discussing the next value — being empathetic. I’ve personally found that the notion of empathy for customers is well known in a lot of business environments today, so I don’t tend to dwell on it excessively. What I have found, however, is how little that notion of empathy is extended to our teammates — the people we work with day in and day out.

Most designers today are trained to be empathetic. They learn how to relate deeply to not only the customer, but all participants in an ecosystem, including their teammates. Teamwork, in design, is based on treating everyone with dignity and respect and making everyone feel valued. Everyone is a contributor and everyone matters.

When I teach this value, I focus a lot on how business practices simply don’t teach teamwork this same way. In business, teamwork is more about control and influencing one’s colleagues than it is about collaborating and caring for one another. Most business meetings are filled with people talking over each other to communicate their position, while hoping to “win” the argument instead of genuinely listening to one another.

To help them overcome these different practices, I have them work like designers do. Everyone has the same role, works on the same step of the process, and co-creates instead of discusses. Co-creation is a great way for people to see how everyone can contribute, rather than focusing on who’s the loudest, or highest ranking, in the room.

Be playful

Now that people have a designer’s open mindset and empathetic style of collaboration, I finally move on to the primary value that drives design method — being playful. Being open is about letting many ideas come to one’s mind, being empathetic is about ensuring those ideas are created with others and being playful is about not getting overly attached to them. When people get attached to their ideas, they are no longer open to revising those ideas. They also get offended when people challenge them or offer alternatives. Being playful is about radically changing your ideas, throwing them away, or letting someone else run with them. Being playful is about embracing failure, rather than being ashamed of it.

As hard as it is for a business to embrace being open and being empathetic, I’ve found being playful to be one of the hardest for business people, and designers, to maintain and act on. People are inherently programmed to get attached to the things they create and inherently afraid of failure. Business reinforces both of those by creating an image of professionalism that goes against what being playful is about. To be professional is to never make a mistake. To be professional is to think of the right idea the first time. To be professional is to take credit for work.

To help professionals be less professional, I have them focus on rapid iteration and taking messy drafts directly to customers or key stakeholders. I’ve found that timeboxing people can be a great way to get around the fear of failure by using the fear of failure itself. 🙂

What’s next?

Once you’ve helped an organization build awareness around the values of design and how they are different from the values of a business, it’s time to put that new awareness to work by addressing the organization’s message and method layers of culture.

For example, when addressing the message layer, look at the overall meeting structures your company is supporting. If it’s like most, the meeting structure is primarily decision making meetings where the work happens behind cubicle walls and the purpose is to persuade colleagues in other departments to do what you want. Try to address that by implementing more team-based, multi-disciplinary, work meetings.

When addressing the method layer, look at where design is being used from a process standpoint. Two common mistakes I see: using design only after requirements have been written instead of to help determine what requirements should be, and using design only for product development instead of for product strategy and roadmap development. It’s hard for designers to be playful when the ideas have already been decided on!

Design begins with culture

I think the design industry is in need of change. I know from my own experiences that talking endlessly about process and toolsets is not going to help companies experience the value that design has to offer. To make that happen, designers, agencies, and design consultancies are going to need to become much more sensitive to the values driving the companies they are working for or partnering with. They’re also going to need to openly address the big differences they see between their values and the companies and then drive forward an agenda of change.

If you’re currently beating your head against the wall and struggling with design in your organization, feel free to reach out to me. I’m always happy to help!

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Design begins with culture, not process was originally published in Prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Design begins with culture, not process

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