Do you matter? How great design will make people love your company

Do you matter? How great design will make people love your company

One of the mangers in our company handed me this orange book maybe as a “reward” for asking questions with the program that the company is giving to the employees. I never thought it could happen.J I always believed that there is no such thing as a free lunch but now I know there is such a thing as a free book. This is my very first book that talks about design. Initially, I thought this book is about design behavior but later on in my conversation with my boss, I found that this is about design per se. So it created a bit of excitement in my part to read such kind of book. As I was perusing the book, I am amazed with it’s content, the author gave compelling argument as to why Company A succeeded and how great design contributed to their success as a business. It’s in this book that I read (once again) the words “total customer experience”. I realized that this is the goal of many companies today – to be design-driven, because this is the only way that the company will matter to the people. Companies today want to matter to the people because this will ensure success in the business. What does it mean to matter? It simply means as answering a YES to this question, “If your company will be out of business tomorrow will your customers miss you or they will just easily move on to your competitors?” The author gave an example that goes like this, “If Apple will go out of business tomorrow, people will go looking for Apple. Why? Because Apple already matter to the customers and the customer will feel that without Apple life will never be the same” Having a “total customer experience” plays a vital role in becoming a design-driven organization. What is total customer experience? I am positive that if I pick randomly 10 employees in our organization today and ask what “total customer experience” means that I will get more than one answer. I realized that there is a need for everyone in the organization to have one mind as to what this term means. If everyone understands what this means and what role each play in the big picture called – being design-driven, then I think this will make any organization’s transition from technology-driven to design-driven easier.

Design is not just about aesthetics its also about the conversation of the our products and services to the customer. I believe the authors calls this “Design Language” Design Language is very important in developing to be a design-driven company. To simply put it, it’s the emotional connection that your product and services has with the customer. We buy because of the promise that a particular product can give us. And this promise is very much emotional. Take for example, iPod, this gadget promises more than just music and/or video player it carries itself a positive stigma of being in the “elite” if you own one. The iPhone is also another success story of a design-driven organization. There are many examples that was given by the authors and you can read all that in the book.

What hit me the most are the words, “design is not just the design team’s job; it’s everyone’s job”. As a software developer, I never thought of design because I thought it’s not my job but then I realize that I have to make an effort to find out where I am and what role should I play in this move to be a design-driven organization.

As a CEO of my personal service corporation, I realized that I have to keep evolving and I have to continuously deliver new services to my biggest client – LXK. So that if I will be out of business tomorrow my client will miss me. It’s only then that I can say, I matter.