Cense Ltd.

Inspiration, Innovation and Impact

Three Metrics for Design Evaluation

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Design is about the creation of products, services, policies, and systems for use and benefit. It’s a structured, creative process that shapes what we do, how we do it, and what impact we create. Design is fundamentally about innovation: doing something different or new for benefit within a context.

Inspiration, Utility, and Values

How should we measure design and its impact on our organization? We suggest three core evaluation metrics above all to consider.

  1. Inspiration. A design has to inspire you. If you’re not excited about what you’re producing, why would it inspire your clients, customers, or users? By inspiration, we mean that it must capture or focus attention, delight, or attract energy. It does not mean a design has to be glamorous, just that it’s noticed for its purpose or appropriately invisible. For example, creating a negative opt-in to organ donation on driver’s license renewal forms vastly increases the donor pool (and reflects the desire of the population to be donors in the process) because it means people have to choose not to donate, rather than the opposite. Even with something benign like a form adjustment, Inspiration is an outcome.
  2. Utility. Use is the second key metric. Design is about being fit for purpose and if there is a poor fit then the benefits will also be poor. A great design fits the purpose for what it was designed for and is useful. It doesn’t have to be the best, just useful and better than the available alternatives. If your design is not used, then no matter how functional, attractive, or conceptually sound it is, it is a failure.
  3. Values. The alignment of your design with the values of your organization is critical to ensuring that the benefits that you accrue are the ones you want. If you value sustainability and responsibility, then your design has to reflect that. To illustrate, if you’re a company or organization that stands for human rights and ethical practices, what you produce (your designs) needs to reflect that. We see a lot of problems with organizations that say one thing and then design for something else.

From Perfection to Fit

There are no ‘perfect’ designs. A design is made within a time and context and the value and benefit of that design will change over time as the context changes. Even if we want things to stay the same and stable, the world around our designs is changing and evolving. Designs are also made with constraints posed by resources, time, and circumstances. However, design is designed — your process and procedures need to aspire and be set up to achieve the results you’re looking for.

These changes are why evaluation is such an important part of design: we need to continue to monitor and evaluate our designs in light of changes in context and circumstance.

We can’t hope for inspiration, utility, and alignment with values unless we design our designs to match that. Models like the Design Helix (below) can provide some guidance on what can be done to facilitate this.

The process of design and innovation is part art and part science. If you’re looking to design better — whether it’s to improve your products and services, make better policies, or build a culture of innovation we can help. Let’s talk.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Inspiration As Outcome

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Anyone working in design or consulting knows that no amount of advice will guarantee action with your clients or colleagues. Great, thoughtful designs are important to success yet are not guarantees for adoption.

What is critical above all is that designs inspire people. Without inspiration and excitement, there is no action.

Designer Bruce Mau came to this realization during his teaching when he was asked by trainees how it was that he designed and while he was able to speak to the production and philosophy behind his work, he was stuck with how to describe the process of the work. It was in reflecting upon this process that he came to realize that without inspiration design was dead. Prototypes would not get realized. Design culture within an organization would not change and the kind of transformation and innovation requested by clients and communities would never materialize.

For our clients, we are recommending that inspiration be considered the primary outcome of any project. No matter what kind of process is undertaken to create something — whether it was co-design, expert-driven, or some other model — the end result must be that what you produce must inspire people.

That will not guarantee success, but without it there is near guarantee of failure.

Consider inspiration as the precursor to any kind of innovation adoption or impact and you may find the correlations between those projects where people felt inspired, saw a future vision and felt motivated to act and their overall success rate in being implemented is close to 100 percent.

Seth Godin on Picking Yourself

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2013/05 Seth Godin | Backwards from CreativeMornings on Vimeo.

One of the most remarkable tools we have is the Internet powered by personal computers or tablets. There is nothing that generates more power to transform than these two tools taken together. When you step back and notice, it’s easy to see how these tools create something that once only large media companies had at their disposal. Consider the notion of writing something original or remixing something else and within moments be able to share that with the world. That is what we have.

Seth Godin is someone who knows how to pick people, but more importantly how to pick himself. By assuming that the responsibility for change lies with others we give permission to not use the tools we have to make remarkable things. It means less knowledge translation, fewer accessible products, smaller reach and more squandered potential. By writing a blog, connecting on social media, write and publish your own book, film your own presentations or create a video or podcast you adopt the power of these technologies to make a difference and change.

No, publishing a blog won’t change the world by itself nor will sharing a podcast, but it’s a lot more compared to having those ideas picked by others for launch (maybe) some other time, some other place when the conditions are perfect. In 20 minutes, Seth inspires us to pick ourselves and make the change happen with small steps, done often to give ourselves permission to create and maybe others credit at the same time.