Design Advantage : The Secret to Creating Long-Term Value 13

Design Advantage : The Secret to Creating Long-Term Value 13
Derived from: Roger Martin’s The Design of Business

RAP11 : Designing With Others
PROFIT : The second way to enhance your design skills is to manage the way you work with analytical non-designers. Your best design ideas are worthless if you can’t communicate them effectively. Here’s five suggestions for working with non-designers.

1 Empathize
The different worldviews of the Analyticals and the Designers beg the need for empathy from both parties. Taking the time to get in touch with each other will make it easier to work together.

2 Speak
Designers and the non-designer Analyticals speak a different language. One wants certainty, predictability and consistent outcomes. The other cherishes the new, wants to cause breakthroughs and flourishes on creating change. Both parties need to learn the others language.

3 Familiar
An Analytical will seek certainty in the past. Designers can bridge the past and future with stories and analogies to show similarities and make the unknown more familiar.

4 Size
Designers are not able to prove to the Analyticals their ideas will work. By chunking the problem down, smaller predictions of what might happen will prove more acceptable to the analytical mind.

5 Balance
Remember, it’s all about balance. Neither design or analysis on it’s own is sufficient. A blend of both is best.

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