How Business Changes Designer’s Work in Technology Company
By: Freddy Albert Sanjaya
Tags: Business, Design, User Experience, Technology, Designer

It’s great to have new features and a new kind of idea that brings awareness to people. But without seeing the product as the whole product and try to do the cutting I think it’s not a good idea, it has to be another story if the product designer has a validation about a feature that doesn’t seem to work well.

More importantly as a designer — who supposed to solve problems — we need to see something in the bigger picture.

The holistic design might help to see the opportunity on the other perspectives and understand what the company really wants. Not only see the problem but seeing that many aspects can be solved or improved because that’s what a designer does.

Holistic design is a design approach which sees a design as an interconnected whole that is part of the larger world. It goes beyond problem solving to incorporate all aspects of the ecosystem in which a product is used. The focus of holistic design is context dependent; even so, among other things, it considers aesthetics, sustainability, and spirituality. — IDF

At the beginning of my career, I only thought UX designer is a representative of the user, UX designer is the one who tries to give the perspectives on people’s behavior, provide the solution on the design (mostly in digital technology) with the Design Thinking mindset all over the process. I was only aware of the job description and believe that UX designer only does these parts based on the sources I read on the internet/books. And as the time goes by, I assure myself that holistic design or seeing something in other perspectives as a designer is an opportunity to grow.

Design is not for philosophy — it’s for life. — Issey Miyake

Lesson learned: zoom out to see the bigger picture

Once we know the importances of the company business, let’s take more closely to the design, the product. As I state above on holistic design, the practical things in design need to be understood as a whole concept of many areas. I would call the learnings from holistic design as “zoom out”.

Zoom out is to use a holistic design approach that would help the designer to see the bigger picture, something that makes sense all of the ambiguity. It’s also important to know the “why” and the focus of the product for the customer.

As stated by Rob Martens from the Schlage Futurist about how the IoT technology might influence the company: “Being able to have a clear understanding of the use case scenarios and how you can bring value to your consumer will help to create the ultimate smart connected product for your sector.” The goal of zoom out is also to be aware of how we see it as a product.

Now let’s see more on the effect to the company or the place we have been contributed: there are 3 main and crucial things of companies nowadays, especially technology company, they are business, design, and engineering. Those had values on each side; the goal, the vision, and the ideal solution. Everything is in its place.

And to create a new value of it, innovation involves. Each side would be interconnected in a way to make the innovation.

From “UNDERSTAND THE BUSINESS IMPACT OF DESIGN” book by Ryan Rumsey

This is where exploring things works. As a designer, we do the research, seeing the background about what others work. The more we know it, the more we can explore new kinds of innovation. Innovation that included creativity where business, design, and engineer aspects are combined all together.

After that, the why of the business goal ends up with big output, technology must be a practically implemented and well constructed system, also the design (especially UX) must be functional and user-centric. This might help a designer to pursue the significant “assessment”, to do better, and see it as a whole for the better user experience.

Closing as a reminder

I joined one of the biggest and the first e-commerce in Indonesia: Blibli since mid-August as an Associate UX Designer. It’s an honor for me to be involved and contributed here. The first learnings that I got in a few weeks from the business are how digital company (from my side is e-commerce) impacts the ecosystem in the world. It amazes me.

Many inventors/ventures on the high tier level are seeing a lot of competition from the tech companies to be the investee. It’s important to know that the company has to continue innovating, or else, it might be risky for the company to be survived.

Illustration Photo from: Creova Bellinda Series Coffee Table — Stripe Natural White

The investors might stop investing because they see that the company cannot continue to compete, and the “leg” of the table might tremble the “desk-board”. It will impact the core area globally — like the effect of COVID-19; many people might lose their job and the welfare state will be disturbed into economy crisis or…something even worse could happen…

They seem to be aware of the changes and quick adaption of their product with a fast phase execution to compete with every competitor/rivals-to be stable and make the ecosystem as healthy as possible. Or, like how we learned from Nokia: that to adapt and to evolve is a way to grow.

Where once companies embraced new ideas and experimentation to spur growth, with success they become risk averse and less innovative. Such considerations will be crucial for companies that want to grow and avoid one of the biggest disruptive threats to their future — their own success. — Yves Doz in “The Strategic Decisions That Caused Nokia’s Failure” article

I know it is not just the designer’s responsibility to make everything works well. But after knowing more details about the investor, I felt the ownership and finally able to see a probability of how things are influenced if I or we don’t do the job properly. It’s not about the survival anymore, but to see the business as a whole means we can see more choices to improve — the ‘why’ we make more innovation and to contribute well is to make the product(s) and yourself better and better, every single day. :]