If you want to sell design, don’t sell design - A qualitative study on effectively communicating the value of design to investors and business managers
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School of Arts, Design and Architecture |
Master's thesis
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en
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72 + 10
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Abstract
Effectively communicating the value of design has been a long-standing challenge for designers, design managers and design consultants. The need to understand and measure how design can create value in organizations is also increasing in the management domain. Multiple studies have been conducted both from design and business, for effectively communicating design value with varying results from, tools and indexes built on existing business frameworks, to positioning design to distinct roles according to the cultures and practices of business managers. Even though a plethora of research exists, design agencies are still in need of finding new and more effective ways to communicate this value. This study aims to find ways to effectively communicate the value of design to investors and business managers. The perspective of taking investors and business managers as the stakeholders comes from Pentagon Design, Helsinki as the partner for this thesis. In Pentagon’s view a new investment in a company can act as a catalyst for bringing in new services, this period of change can accelerate the implementation of design at an early stage of the investment by effectively communicating design value to investors and business managers. Further, this thesis, through its approach and findings, argues that limiting the stakeholders to investors and business managers produces a more valid outcome than attempting to communicate the value of design universally. This is due to the impact of professional role, practices and culture of investors and business managers on their perception of design, and its implications on effectively communicating the value of design. The thesis draws upon literature on why the value of design should be measured and the challenges faced in implementing design, further through the literature, the study shows the impact of cultures, attitudes and perceptions of management professionals and their impact on communicating design, and a few studies done on communicating the understandable value of design. For data collection two rounds of interviews were conducted, first round of open-structured interviews to gain understanding of the world of investing and management with six participants, and then second round of semi –structured interviews with ten participants from investors with different investment strategies and board managers. Based on the findings the thesis abductively and deductively proposes three core themes 1) the current perceptions of design and design value for investors and business managers, built on the discrepancies due to their professional roles and practices, (2) what investors and business managers value during an investment, and how positioning design as a value creator in these practices can improve its perception and understanding, and finally (3) methods and best practices that can be used to communicate the value of design to investors and business managers. The thesis identifies challenges and enablers associated with the professional practices and preferences of investors and business managers and their implications on communicating the value of design: Ambiguity of design terms, lack of measurability and granularity, lack of understanding and participation from the board, need for relevant references, positioning as a value creator, translating design terms and processes to understandable business terms, aligning design as part of the investment criteria, honesty through activity, and storytelling as a method to communicate a service. Thus, the thesis proposes a story-telling framework for effectively communicating the value of design, which acts as an integrator of the enablers and navigates the hindrances by aligning them according to a script. The script compromises of 1) Foundational elements that act as background and create guidelines for the story telling framework, (2) Actionable insights that align the script according to the interests of the investors and business managers based on relevant references from the industry, and (3) The Premeditated outcomes and implications that are intended from the storytelling script. Through the framework, the thesis aims to educate the investors and business managers by creating their own conviction of the role, function, and value of design.Description
Supervisor
Björklund, TuaThesis advisor
Klenner, NicoHyytiäinen, Heidi