Last year when we launched the Design Effectiveness Survey our goal was to start exploring the conditions under which design could best make an impact on an organisations' goals.
By surveying designers across the world, our report found three things which greatly increased design's impact:
- Design teams being empowered by executive management to identify and pursue unrequested ideas,
- A physical working environment which supports collaborative design activities,
- Undertaking regular design research.
The power of collaboration, empowerment and research helped form the basis for a new tool we were developing to assess the digital design maturity of a well-known manufacturing brand.
We wanted to be able to quantifiably measure the state of digital design practice within an organisation across five indicators:
- Collaboration — the ability to build shared understanding & alignment,
- Empathy — the organisation’s curiosity in customers and human-centred design,
- Impact — design’s contribution to business success,
- Trust — the organisation’s empowerment, influence and belief in design,
- Purpose — how design is deployed to help solve significant challenges.
We immediately saw the benefit of encompassing all five factors of design maturity into our 2020 survey. This survey will help us get a flavour of how present and important these factors are in organisations across the world and allow us to create a global benchmark.
We would appreciate your support in completing and sharing this survey with your team, friends and partners. We are interested in your opinion whether you are in the design team directly, or involved in design from a distance.
The report will be shared with everyone who completes the survey.