What is it? What are the benefits? What are the key success criteria?
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As Robin Siegerman once said, “Design is about making people happy, either functionally, aesthetically or emotionally.”
With time the technology is continuously evolving and being designed. New features and prototypes are being added. These are coming into the market to make our lives easier and more convenient. McKinsey’s 2018 report on “Business value of Design ‘’ clearly shows that 60% of the companies benefited from iterative process of design and proved that launch of a product didn’t stop the iterative continuous design process.
Moreover, today’s technology has opened new doors to innovations, marketing, and more learning opportunities. It gave a new meaning to the world of technology. The continuous process of creating a product or service included the steps of researching, prototyping, designing, polishing, and releasing. This led to the foundation of ‘Continuous Design’. Coming back to the McKinsey report, the researchers at McKinsey tracked the design practices of 300 publicly listed companies over a 5 period in multiple countries and industries. The team collected over 2 million pieces of financial information, recording 100,000+ design actions and advanced regression analysis uncovering the 12 actions showing the exceptional correlation with improved financial performance. That’s the value of design and continuous design is one of the four pillars of that research.
What is Continuous Design?
Continuous Design is simply defined as the technique of constant improvement and introduction of new features while designing a product. It is also known as ‘Incremental Design’ or Evolutionary Design. This helps in the constant evolving of a program’s design. This can make the product more user-friendly and easier to use. As with the constant evolving with the digital age, we must make sure that the design of today will ensure that it is the best out there. The design should be such that it caters to the needs of a user and understands them. It also gives them a world-class user experience that will have a positive impact on them.
Why is Continuous Designing of the product necessary?
The process of continuous designing is essential for the survival of businesses and society. The design could be for any kind of digital or physical tangible products such as apps, sites, connected hardware, a laptop, car, or smartphone. Similarly, it can also be a service developed by a company. These include the addition of new features, marketing concepts, analytics applications, or the newest solution to fix the previous errors.
What are the benefits of Continuous Design?
Continuous Design is primarily concerned with the relationship between the concept of the product or service and the users. In simple words, it means that it helps a user and provides them with numerous advantages. It is like a creation that provides a one-stop solution to all the problems of the users and its consumers. Let us discuss its benefits:
- Customers receive a new value
The biggest advantage of the continuous design is that it provides a new value to all the customers. There is no point in investing or spending money on a new product or design if it does not return value to its users. If it is not reliable at all then it will drive all the customers away.
This will also help a company grow and its businesses will flourish with time. The absence of value is a huge loss for any company and perishes businesses over time, putting it in a difficult position in the market. In such a situation competitors will overtake such organizations and have an edge of difference in value.
- Improvement with the society
The new designs introduced into the product or service will offer an additional improvement to the old version. The new version will have more features and ensure faster performance. These items will keep the company afloat by providing enough new value to generate more revenues and help society. This will also make their user experience more advantageous. For example, Steve Jobs, with his efforts in design-focused product development, project management and zeal for innovation led to the development of a host of products and solutions.
- The continuous existence of the company
As stated, before the additional features of any product or service form the backbone of a company. They are like the lifeblood. No company can survive at all without these, and it will easily become a history in the market. The application of continuous design by these companies helps the company, the society it caters to and all its consumers. It will also improve the success of the company over time.
- Elimination of Errors
Sometimes while designing or developing a product, a situation such as an error has been detected. It can lead to a few problems. So, if there is a continuation in designing, then the errors can be recognized and fixed immediately. Moreover, it can help the designer in understanding more about the product.
- Minor changes in coding
Continuous designing helps in reducing new code development and super incremental non-stressful addition of new codes to the prototype or MVP, little by little. These small codes can bring about simple changes and repair the existing errors. Rome was not built in a day, as they say, smaller code changes thus bring bigger long-term gains.
- Increased Profitability
There is an increase in profit during the process of continuous design as the bottom line of expenses in design and development is greatly reduced. It makes the product more efficient and more reliable by giving its users a memorable user experience journey. As no profit means no business.
- Products and services with a higher level of competition
Continuous improvement encourages the enhancement of both processes and products. Companies that constantly seek methods to improve their operations will invariably raise the value of their products and services. This will result in more sophisticated and economically competitive offerings.
- Reduced employee turnover
It is said that the turnover rate in many companies can be quite expensive. This includes recruiting, hiring and training new people when it comes to their job. For a candidate to excel at their job, it can take them several years to gain the required experience while working. The continuous design lifestyle can help in increasing employee engagement and also lowering the rate of turnover. Active participation of employees who can add value to the company can help them in gaining recognition and become successful.
What are the key success criteria for a continuous approach?
In the past, designers spent time-solving several design problems that were particular to the product’s experience. While the challenges and opportunities of each design problem were being solved, the process was as its name states, a continuous one. However, digital design tasks need to be performed faster than the traditional model. There is a need to adapt and stay ahead of the game. The ability to move from one design challenge to another is the key. But here are a few requirements for establishing a continuous design approach:
- Clear Product Requirements and Vague Ideas
Usually, the people building and running the design projects are stuck between ideas that are too vague and ideas that are too clear. It is not about the number of ideas that one has. It is about the knowledge of the purpose and how to make the best use of the available data. Two types of people can come up with vague ideas: One who is afraid of a threat or failure, and the other one who is not afraid. One who is afraid of a threat or failure, and the other one who is not afraid.
- Design Thinking
The Design Thinking approach should be taken into consideration. This technique solves almost 90% of the problems practically and creatively. It aims for improving the problems that may exist in the future while developing this product/service. Moreover, it opens room for development and success.
- Ongoing Monitoring and evaluation
The product/service which is being designed needs to be monitored and audited carefully to check its progress and seamless service. If this is not done carefully then it is risky as it can result in bugs or errors which may go undetected if not checked properly.
- Teamwork
For any project to be successful great teamwork is required which consists of a group of experts. It also helps solve difficult problems and keep the creative juices flowing.
In today’s market, as companies develop new marketing strategies to understand their consumers, the need to iterate, improve and present enhanced experience cannot be risked with traditional approaches of design. This understanding between them and their users helps them to apply continuous design and become successful in the growth of their businesses. It is therefore highly recommended that the solution components are modular, incremental in their approach and build solution resilience. Goes to prove that respected institutions such as Harvard’s study over 7 years, covering over 50 projects across industries and verticals demonstrated the impact design makes (Read the September-October 2018, HBR article on “Why Design Thinking Works” by Jeanne Liedtka ”), more so as the global industry believes that continuous design is the way to be successful in the post pandemic world.