How to Prove Your Design’s Value
Nick Disabato
One of the larger open questions in our industry is how to prove the value of our work – especially when others might think it’s hard to measure. Why do we keep hearing about ways to pull up a seat at the table ? Why do so many businesses _still_ hire a fleet of developers first, and then go through the painful and complex process of bolting design onto prior work? Because _we aren’t fundamentally conversant in business value_. Design is obviously capable of improving the businesses that it serves, but successful designers work in a vacuum. In the book I’m releasing this fall, Value-Based Design, I argue that the three essential components of the value-based designer’s practice are research, measurement, and experimentation. This week, you’ll learn how to use these components to frame your work in terms of its corresponding business goals, and how to overcome the most common objection about your impact.
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Pricing Creativity by Blair Enns
If you’re independent or you run an agency, this recently-released book is the best resource I’ve yet seen for how to price your work. Yes, it’s expensive – but if you follow its advice, you’ll make it back in short order. My own consultancy is proof: we followed its proposal process rote, and made $84,000 more than we would have otherwise.
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If you want to move the needle for the business you work for, you need to research how its customers behave – and what they want. If you aren’t up to speed on how to research customers, *About Face* is the first place you should go.
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The Personal MBA by Josh Kaufman
Because design exists to serve business, it stands to reason that you should learn a little about how business works. Unfortunately, most business books are terrible. Fortunately, this one is not. It’s well-written, accessible, and gets to the point – so you can learn the essentials without going too far down the rabbit hole.
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Google Analytics isn’t the world’s most pleasant user experience, but it’s also the industry standard for measuring what’s happening in a business. This post – and its accompanying follow-up – will give you a solid understanding of how to configure & approach Google Analytics to measure the impact of your design work. The more fluent you are in understanding data, the stronger a case you can make.
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Visual Website Optimizer, or VWO, is a widely-used framework for measuring the economic and experiential impact of design decisions. Research is the best way to generate new ideas for what to test. Then, use VWO to trial new prototypes, pitches, design treatments, and UX improvements. Keep what works, toss what doesn’t, discuss the tradeoffs of everything in the gray area.