For a start-up or small business, knowing how, where and when to make those crucial first contacts can be an invaluable, yet daunting prospect. However, collaboration can be advantageous for both parties involved, granting blue chip businesses the opportunity to meet innovative creatives who can make their business more competitive through novel and pioneering approaches to marketing and design, innovative training and development and collaboration with the existing raw talent in their local area.
Design allows you to develop and sell products and services without having to compete purely on cost – a process that will become ever more difficult with the growth of low-cost imports. It also allows you to create niche products – especially where you can protect designs and processes through patents, trademarks and the use of design right - develop strong relationships with your customers and meet or exceed their expectations.
Design can also serve as a catalyst for new ideas, better processes, continuous improvement and new ways of driving your business strategy.
This guide outlines the key stages in choosing the right designer or design agency to work with and how to develop an ongoing relationship with them.
Its general principles apply to the wide variety of design disciplines - from engineering and product design to graphics, packaging, interiors and corporate identity.
When to use a designer
Evidence shows that using design improves business performance. The Design Council has found that a third of the UK's fastest growing businesses see design as integral or significant, while only 11 per cent of shrinking firms agree. Businesses that undervalue the importance of design may be missing vital opportunities.
You're probably making design-related decisions every day - by modifying your products, your brand or the processes behind your services. Using a professional designer will help you strengthen this decision-making and ensure it focuses on your customers' needs.
Bring in the designers
You can draw on a designer's skills throughout a project, from strategy and idea generation to implementation and evaluation. They contribute most when they're deployed from the earliest stages to help generate new ideas. They can then visualise those ideas and test them to shorten time to market and increase the chances of success.
Designers can help you deliver a broad range of projects including:
- a new website to communicate your brand and offer an online sales platform
- a new or updated product to keep you ahead of the competition
- packaging to make a product more attractive or easier to sell
- branding and corporate identity to reposition your business or launch it in a new market
- internal or external communications to keep staff and customers informed
- working or retail environments to boost productivity or sales
- research to help you discover the difference between what customers say they want and what they really want
Decide who'll be involved
It's important at an early stage to identify a project manager who will have responsibility and authority for design-related decisions. This person must consult on an ongoing basis with key departments in your business, such as sales, marketing and production - the design project will benefit from their input.
A project team
A project team within your business can act as a sounding board, take responsibility for the project and ensure it retains momentum. For this group to be effective it needs to include - or consult frequently with - representatives from across your business as well as key people from outside it. Your project team might include some or all of the following:
- salespeople or other customer-facing employees
- engineers - to advise on technical feasibility
- marketing and research staff
- selected key customers - to take part in user-research work
- key suppliers
- third-party resellers
- Management
The project manager should be responsible for:
- defining the parameters of the project
- co-ordinating brainstorming and other design-related teamwork
- setting targets and deadlines
- managing budgets
- assigning specific tasks
- communicating the brief to everyone involved
- determining how the larger team functions
- facilitating co-operation
- debriefing at the end of the project
Planning and briefing
The designer's job is to come up with specific, workable solutions for you. The more information you give them, the better the result they'll produce. This is where the design brief comes in. Before drawing up a design brief you need to consider a range of questions that will inform it, eg:
- How does the design work connect with the strategic objectives of your business?
- What problem do you want to use design to solve?
- Do all your key people agree what the project's outcome should be?
- How will you know the project has succeeded?
- How long will the project take?
The designer's job is to come up with specific, workable solutions for you. The more information you give them, the better the result they'll produce.
The brief
Your design brief should cover the key issues in a clear and concise way. This should include:
- Your business background.
- Who are your customers?
- What are your strengths and weaknesses?
- What are your strategic objectives?
- A clear description of the project and what you want to achieve
- What are the project's objectives?
- How will the finished design be used?
- Any constraints on the design.
- Does it need to fit with any other designs?
- Are there any specific technical or legal requirements?
- What manufacturing processes will be used?
- Project management.
- Budgets and timetables, details of the internal team, how communications will be managed and how success will be measured.
- Establishing who owns the intellectual property rights to the designs being produced.
A brief is not written in stone. It may need to change to reflect new circumstances and there should be flexibility on both sides to allow that to happen.
Where to find a designer
Your local Business Link may have a design adviser who can assess your design needs, help you draw up your brief and arrange pitches from a shortlist of designers. Referrals and recommendations from business acquaintances are another useful starting point. If you come across design work that impresses you, find out who did it. But, don't be swayed by one high-quality project you've seen. Ask specific questions to make sure the designer has the capacity to meet your needs. You can search for designers by region and speciality on the British Design Innovation website.
Next steps
Draw up a shortlist of no more than three designers by looking at recent work, perhaps through a credentials pitch. Then invite those on the shortlist to make presentations. To facilitate this creative pitch, give them an outline brief covering the project's key objectives and your business' strategic goals.
A designer's track record is a key consideration. Look for evidence of success at solving business problems - this is more important than whether a designer's work appeals to you on a personal level. Personality matters too - you should choose a designer with whom you feel you could develop a good working relationship.
Don't be sidetracked by detailed concepts presented at this stage - the substantive solutions will emerge later in the process when the designer has a more detailed knowledge of you and your needs.
Checklist: key issues to agree with your designer
There are a number of key areas that should be agreed between a business and the designer or design team before a project starts. Make sure you:
- Agree overall objectives. These should be specific, measurable, realistic and understood by both sides.
- Take into account all the internal resources, people and information the project will require, from materials to manufacturing techniques.
- Discuss with your designers how they inform you about any additional costs they may incur. Design fees are usually quoted as an estimate, fixed price or on a "price-not-to-exceed" basis.
- Include the design team in your schedules and make them aware of any critical milestones along the way to the final deadline.
- Communicate freely with your design team. A steady flow of ideas, for example, between the two will ensure the right design is picked for development.
- Stay in control of the project. If firm decisions are made along the way, then money won't be wasted pursuing ideas that have little chance of making it in the marketplace.
- Hold regular progress reviews to keep everyone up-to-date.
- Agree intellectual property (IP) issues in advance - eg draw up contracts to hold IP in your business, if that's what you want.
- Take legal advice on IP issues if necessary.
- Manage your design project effectively
Once you have chosen your designer, it is vital that your team runs the project effectively. Just dropping in occasionally to check on the design process isn't the best way forward - your input will be important during activities such as research, brainstorming and user testing. You will also need to decide on key review stages for the project.
The various stages of creative work include:
- Concept development - the designer explores various design options as initial concepts. You'll be involved in helping to choose which one goes forward for more development.
- Once the basic concept has been established, the ideas are refined. Again you will be asked to sign off each stage.
- The project evolves to the stage where it can be evaluated, tested and reviewed.
- Then, depending on the project, the implementation stage begins.
- The key review stages of the process may differ depending on your business and the specifics of your project. But there are a number of natural stopping-off points; for example, after the initial designs and after the revised designs. Identifying these review stages in advance helps ensure that any problems are dealt with swiftly.
Throughout this process, your project manager needs to communicate with everyone involved at all stages.
Sign off your design project
Keeping a close eye on quality and costs is vital to the success of any design project. It's equally important to decide when it should end and who should sign off each stage. This is where good project management comes in. From the outset you need to establish who has the authority to sign off the various stages. This might be a team member, the project manager, a senior manager or the business owner.
Winding up a project
You also need to decide when and how the project will end. For example, if issues come up after you manufacture a new product, have you allowed for further revisions to the design? Or are you going to declare that project complete and start a new design phase later?
Design has a role to play at the implementation stage of a project. Designers frequently have valuable experience in areas such as manufacturing, engineering issues, materials and other processes and may play a crucial role in communicating their ideas to the people responsible for putting them into practice.
Finally, if your company is going to learn from the experience and evaluate its design investment properly, it needs to put in place a final review to assess how the project was handled.
Source: Business Link
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