Designing of Dollars
Designing of Dollars
Great product design is absolutely critical for most consumer products companies. But how do these companies know when a design feature will pay off, especially when every dollar counts? How so they make those tough decisions? That is the challenge that faced Chuck Jones, chief designer for home appliance company Whirlpool. He knew he had to come up with a better way.
Chuck’s realization that the whole process of making design decisions needed to be improved came after a meeting with Whirlpool resource allocation team. Chuck wanted to add some ornamentation to a Kitchen Aid refrigerator that was being redesigned, but it would have added about US$5 in extra cost. When the team asked him to estimate the return on investment (that is, would it pay off financially to add this cost?), he could not give them any data. His “trust me, I am a designer” argument did not sway them either. Chuck resolved to improve the approach to investing in design.
His first step was to survey other “design-centric” companies, including BMW, Nike, and Nokia. Surprisingly, only a few had a system for forecasting return on design. Most of them simply based future investments on past performance. Chuck said, “No one had really figured this stuff out.” With so many smart, talented people in the field, why had no one been able to come up with a good way to make those decisions? According to two accounting professors, one reason is that it is incredibly difficult to discern design’s contribution from all the other business functions (marketing, manufacturing, distribution, etc.). And even the design profession could not agree on how to approach this problem. Despite the obstacles, Chuck continued his quest to find a way to objectively measure the benefits of design.
What he eventually concluded was that a focus on customer preferences would work better than a focus on bottom-line returns. If his team could objectively measure what customers want in a product and then
Great product design is absolutely critical for most consumer products companies. But how do these companies know when a design feature will pay off, especially when every dollar counts? How so they make those tough decisions? That is the challenge that faced Chuck Jones, chief designer for home appliance company Whirlpool. He knew he had to come up with a better way.
Chuck’s realization that the whole process of making design decisions needed to be improved came after a meeting with Whirlpool resource allocation team. Chuck wanted to add some ornamentation to a Kitchen Aid refrigerator that was being redesigned, but it would have added about US$5 in extra cost. When the team asked him to estimate the return on investment (that is, would it pay off financially to add this cost?), he could not give them any data. His “trust me, I am a designer” argument did not sway them either. Chuck resolved to improve the approach to investing in design.
His first step was to survey other “design-centric” companies, including BMW, Nike, and Nokia. Surprisingly, only a few had a system for forecasting return on design. Most of them simply based future investments on past performance. Chuck said, “No one had really figured this stuff out.” With so many smart, talented people in the field, why had no one been able to come up with a good way to make those decisions? According to two accounting professors, one reason is that it is incredibly difficult to discern design’s contribution from all the other business functions (marketing, manufacturing, distribution, etc.). And even the design profession could not agree on how to approach this problem. Despite the obstacles, Chuck continued his quest to find a way to objectively measure the benefits of design.
What he eventually concluded was that a focus on customer preferences would work better than a focus on bottom-line returns. If his team could objectively measure what customers want in a product and then