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If you think about the skills you’ve needed to succeed so far in your professional life and compare those to the skills you’ll likely need to succeed in the future, you’ll probably find them to be quite different.
There are several factors at play for this. On one hand, advancements in technology are transforming jobs — and commerce in general — at a rapid pace. On the other, new generations are bringing with them new ways of working and doing business.
One skill that is fast-growing to serve the needs of tomorrow is design literacy. So much so that a study from the Design Research Society found that to tackle current issues — and those coming at us at a fast speed — all knowledge workers should be “versed in design approaches to have a ‘say’ and the ability to meaningfully act on how today's artificial world is shaped.”
So, what does this all mean?
Design Literacy Then and Now
Design literacy isn’t a new concept.
Rujul Pathak, digital transformation leader and chief strategist and advisor at WorkXcellence Consulting, said a design-centric architecture approach has been around for centuries, but the term user experience (UX) as we use it today was only coined in the 1990s by Apple’s Donald Norman when he wrote the book “Design of Everyday Things.”
“As the digital era grew, there was a corresponding surge in digital UX, which focuses on understanding the user experiences of important audience segments like customers and employees in the digital realm,” she explained.
Today, design literacy is often used broadly to encompass a variety of skills that include visual literacy, critical thinking and communication. “In other words,” she said, “it is the ability to understand and evaluate the quality of design and to think critically about how design can be used to solve problems and explain concepts visually.”
Basic design literacy skills therefore mean understanding the reasons for good and bad design, recognizing that design is often about how something works (or doesn’t) and asking the right questions about designed things, she said. It also includes learning the principles of design, such as inquiry, ideation, prototyping and evaluation.
Think of it as the ability to understand and discuss the design of anything, she added — a house, a website, a city park. What makes it good? What makes it bad?
Related Article: Great Design Drives the Digital Employee Experience
Who Should Learn Design Literacy?
It’s easy to talk about the business benefits of better understanding user behaviors, needs and values — like higher customer/employee satisfaction, increased sales, lower attrition and higher adoption, said Stephen Schroth, executive vice president and enterprise design officer at KeyBank. However, he added, there are a lot of other ways design can help businesses.
“Design forces teams to be more intentional in what they are doing,” he said. “It also creates alignment across different stakeholder groups and ensures everyone understands the problem that is being solved and is aligned on the path forward.”
And every organization, according to Pathak, should have design-literate employees, especially as the world becomes increasingly digital and more Gen Zers enter the job market.
“What was once limited to only certain roles and departments, is now a skill that has become all pervasive and quickly becoming an essential skill across roles and across industries,” she said.
And while everyone doesn’t need to be a designer, Pathak added that exposure to the skill can lead to more creative problem-solvers. Why? Because design literacy can help people think more critically about the world around them and come up with innovative solutions to problems.
“It can also help people understand and use digital tools effectively, communicate more effectively and to collaborate more effectively with others,” she added.
Developing Design Literacy at Your Organization
Because design literacy can mean different things in different situations, the first step to adding design literacy skills to your organization is to get a baseline for your specific needs, said Pathak, so you can better understand how far you need to go to achieve your goals.
Start With an Implementation
One way to start is through an implementation. This means going through the entire design cycle — UX research and problem definition, ideation, prototyping and wireframing — before selecting the final design, testing it with pilot groups and the entire organization, and finally, implementing it.
Going through the entire process, Pathak said, allows organizations to introduce employees to a design-centric methodology for implementing a major digital tool, which in turn provides an opportunity to measure success in terms of key performance indicators (KPIs) such as adoption and engagement rate.
Create a Standard for Language & Tools
Schroth recommended creating a common language around design as well as a standard set of design tools that can be used by designers and non-designers alike, something he said will accelerate the learning curve and help quickly build fluency around design terms, methods and models.
He also highlighted the usefulness of introducing design tools and models that can be used independently of other design tools and processes.
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“One of my favorites is the Desirability, Viability, Feasibility (DVF) framework for prioritization. While frequently used as part of broader design engagements, it can also be used independently for prioritization. This empowers non-design teams to integrate design thinking and models into their work with the added benefit of ensuring that the efforts that are being prioritized reflect user-needs, behaviors and values (desirability).”
Support Design Engagements Across Teams
Another tip from Schroth? Find ways to support design engagements for as many teams across the company as possible. “This can be particularly helpful if the engagement is for something for which the conventional wisdom would say it is not a ‘design’ project (e.g. improving risk management),” he explained. “Examples that challenge conventional wisdom help raise awareness and change perceptions.”
Ultimately, he added, designers have years of specialized training, and it’s not possible to turn every person in the company into a designer. “However, that doesn’t mean everyone in the company can’t adopt design tools, mindsets and models that enable them to take a more creative, user-centered approach to solving problems and running their business.”
Related Article: Implementing a New Tool? Don't Forget Usability Testing
Measuring the Impact of Design Literacy at Your Organization
Your organization has taken steps to improve design literacy among employees. But how do you measure the impact? At his company, Schroth said they close out every engagement with an “Impact Story” to capture why they were engaged, the work they did and the outcomes they drove.
Overall, they have four story types to reflect the four types of problems they aim to solve:
- Business Performance
- Operational Effectiveness
- Strategic Validation
- Product and Service Innovation
“The impact of design always has to be told in business terms,” said Schroth. “Our Impact Stories always include partner testimonials so that the impact of the work is told from their perspective. Having partners as spokespeople for the power of design is incredibly powerful.”
You can tell when the company is becoming more fluent, he explained, when non-designers start using design terms and models in their meetings and projects. “It is even more of a sign of progress when this happens even if a designer isn’t on the team but the non-designers start doing things like incorporating ‘how might we’ statements, utilizing behavioral personas or independently conducting user interviews and testing.”
Ultimately, said Schroth, success is not design fluency. It’s the bottom line impact driven as a result of design fluency.
