The WorldBlu Blog

You can’t open a business magazine these days and not see someone talking about how important design is.

The conversation is typically about designing better products in order to provide a good design “experience” for the consumer, ideally solving a problem while resonating with the user emotionally. The iPod is now the archetype of great design. Target’s slogan, “Design for All,” shows the increasing movement toward the democratization of design, making design that has both substance and style available to everyone, not just the wealthy.

The October issue of Fast Company magazine is all about “masters of design,” and features a fantastic interview with Yves Behar, CEO of fuseproject in an article entitled, “All About Yves.” Behar is the award-winning designer of products such as the $100 Laptop and the Aliph Jawbone Bluetooth headset, and consults to companies such as Coke, Johnson & Johnson, and Kodak.

I’ve always been fascinated with design, mainly because I believe that the future of work is ALL about design, and more specifically democratic design.

In the article, Behar says that the simplest definition of design “is how you treat your customer.” I believe that the future of successful workplace design can be defined as how you treat your employees — in other words, the overall employee experience.

As design becomes more accepted as fundamental to companies committed to developing great products, design must also become a top priority for how we design our businesses to operate and how employees are enabled and encouraged to interact.

To that end, entrepreneurs and business leaders take note — you need to spend as much energy and time thinking about the design of your employee experience as you do about your next big idea.

When I talk about good workplace design I’m not talking about open floor plans in offices or traditional this-is-what-makes-a-great-place-to-work programs. I’m talking about designing an employee experience that engages people body and soul in meaningful interactions and meaningful work. The traditional design of business — call it command-and-control, authoritarian, hierarchal, etc. – can’t, by design, achieve this goal. But workplace democracy does, which is why I believe democratically designed organizations are the future of work.

Further in the article Behar says, “If you acknowledge [customers’] intelligence, and treat them well from an environmental, emotional, and aesthetic standpoint, you’re probably doing good design.”

If you substitute the word “customers” for “employees” I think Behar’s defintion of customer-experience design can easily apply to a definition of the employee experience:

“If you acknowledge EMPLOYEES’ intelligence, and treat them well from an environmental, emotional, and aesthetic standpoint, you’re probably doing good design.”

Great design also has an impact on the bottomline. Another article in Fast Company is entitled, “The Design Dividend,” points out how studies now show that, “design-orientated firms in all kinds of industries outperform their peers – that design and innovation go hand-in-hand with financial success.” How might this translate to companies that choose to focus as heavily on the design of their employee experience?

According to research by Peer Insight, companies that focus on the consumer-experience with their products have a tenfold advantage in stock-market returns versus the S&P 500. In another study by the Design Council, a “portfolio of 63 design-driven companies has soundly trounced the FTSE 100 index over 13 years.” (See graph)

If you want to learn more about the “design mindset,” I invite you to check out a fantastic blog on design thinking and management written by my good friend and WorldBlu Live 2005 speaker, Ralf Beuker. You can access it by clicking here.

I believe we’re at the very beginning of a conversation about the workplace and democratic design. As design thinking about products becomes more mainstream, I hope it will begin to influence the way we think about how we design our overall employee experience as well.