{"id":12680,"date":"2016-02-24T20:30:45","date_gmt":"2016-02-25T04:30:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uxpin.com\/studio\/?p=12680"},"modified":"2021-07-20T15:09:20","modified_gmt":"2021-07-20T22:09:20","slug":"what-all-ceos-should-know-about-design","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uxpin.com\/studio\/blog\/what-all-ceos-should-know-about-design\/","title":{"rendered":"What CEOs Should Know About Design"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 2014, I joined\u00a0Khosla Ventures<\/a>, focusing on design for the portfolio companies.<\/p>\n

These are the principles I try to instill into\u00a0every CEO in our portfolio.<\/p>\n

Design\u00a0Is As Important As\u00a0Technology<\/h2>\n

Today, design is as important as technology. I was meeting with a startup last week when the principal architect asked me why is design more important now than ever before?<\/p>\n

To answer that, let\u2019s reflect on the evolution of automobile design.<\/p>\n

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In the beginning, the Model T was only offered in one style, one color. As technology matured, design became the differentiator in the car market.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When the Model T first came out, the focus was on getting the technology right. We labored over getting the car from point A to point B and laying infrastructure down to support automotive networks. Back then, consumers did not have much choice in the design of their car. Cars were offered in black, black, or black, in this style only. Then, as technology and infrastructure became good enough, design became the differentiator. It wasn\u2019t enough for your car to be fast, but it also had to look fast, or expensive, or powerful. Design has become the differentiator for the car market.<\/p>\n

Similarly, in the early days of the internet, the major challenges of the day were focused on getting it to work, reliably moving packets from A to B across proxies and servers and operating systems. Technology was so expensive that it required a lot of capital to form a company, and the technology was not yet widely in the hands of most consumers.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve reached a stage where technology is now good enough. We have sensors and chips where we need them when we need them. We have compute cycles either in the device or in the cloud. We have storage for us to save every moment of our lives in high definition. Bandwidth is now fast enough that the internet just feels like it works. Not to say all the problems are all solved or that this future is evenly distributed across the planet, but the challenges of product development are now shifting towards building useful and emotional experiences that people get from using and interacting with technology.<\/p>\n

Another factor driving the rise of design particularly in enterprise markets is the consumerization of IT. As consumer users, we enjoy the simplicity and power of applications like Google Docs and Gmail, and we don\u2019t want to spend 10 hours a day in Microsoft Office and Outlook anymore. Google had an explicit strategy of spoiling users at home so they would demand the same tools at work. Moreover, younger generations are just living on the internet, and this is what they know and feel comfortable with.<\/p>\n

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Microsoft Office and Outlook vs. Google Docs and Gmail<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Design Is Brand<\/h2>\n

Let\u2019s play a game\u2026 I airbrushed the logos out of some car pictures. Can you identify what these cars are?<\/p>\n

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Some of these cars are easily recognizable. Why? They include design elements that get carried over from generation to generation, and across each model car in the portfolio. The design of these cars is so consistent that you instantly recognize what they are. The cars that are less recognizable suffer because they lack this consistency. Some car companies, for example, changes their designs every 2-3 years, which makes our mental models of what the car looks like less stable in our minds and thus harder to recognize.<\/p>\n

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Logos do not make a brand<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When we think of brands, we think of logos and identities. But these are just symbols that represent companies. A company\u2019s brand is consumers\u2019 perception of that company, and that perception is built up over time, through experiences.<\/span> When a consumer is interacting with your company through any capacity, you are literally in the process of creating your brand. Because consumers are interacting with companies mostly through their products, the fastest way for companies to build a strong brand is through design consistency. Thus, design is the brand.<\/p>\n

Design Is Simplicity<\/h2>\n

Here are some products designed and sold by Muji. Muji is a Japanese company that sells common affordable household items with better design and lower cost packaging. Muji refers to its design philosophy as \u201cKanketsu\u201d, which translates into \u201cSimplicity\u201d. Their aim is to \u201cbring a quiet sense of calm into strenuous every day lives\u201d. There is a Zen-like quality to their product design, and even though these products are simple and affordable, they don\u2019t feel disposable.<\/p>\n

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Muji product design<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u2026But Simplicity\u00a0Is Very Difficult to Achieve<\/h2>\n

Simplicity is easy to say but hard to do. Let\u2019s look at the evolution of the Google home page as a case study, starting with Google in 1999<\/p>\n

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1999<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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2001<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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2002<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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2006<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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2007<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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2011<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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2014 – Present<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It wasn\u2019t until 2014 that Google truly achieved a simple home page, even simpler than what it looked like when it first launched.<\/p>\n

It took 15 years in the making of a company to achieve this level of simplicity, and certainly not because of lack of will or talent. That it took this long shows how difficult it is to achieve simplicity in the face of many people\u2019s opinions, competing agendas, and growing product requirements and features. It\u2019s a simple design, but was an incredibly difficult journey to get there.<\/p>\n

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