Hello INNOVATEwest Community,
From times of antiquity to modern technology, we often marvel at the results of great design. But we forget that design is more than visual beauty—it’s a mindset that applies to innovative business building. Edita Hadravska knows this well, being in design for her whole career and currently as Head of Product and Brand Creative for publicly-listed eyewear company KITS. Speaking with INNOVATEwest, Edita shared her framework for design thinking.
Key takeaways:
- Design is a problem-solving discipline that stretches to every element of a business.
- Design starts with asking the right question, requires contextualization through research, then must be permeated through every part of the customer journey.
- Everyone is a designer in this problem-solving sense; it’s not just about shapes, proportions, colours, or product platforms.
Dave Tyldesley
Co-Founder/Producer SAAS NORTH & INNOVATEwest
Editor INNOVATEwest PULSE
Only three years after its founding in 2018, KITS launched a $55 million initial public offering in 2021. Bucking the trend of many high-flying tech companies that faltered soon after, KITS actually became profitable in 2022 and expanded its margins in 2023.
While it would be naïve to attribute all of KITS’ success to one thing, it’s clear that design played a role; the company is popular in part for its creative eyewear that customers love. For Edita Hadravska, KITS’ Head of Product and Brand Creative, design is more than how frames look, feel, and function. Instead, it’s a problem-solving discipline that permeates every area of the company.
Speaking with INNOVATEwest, Edita explained more about how she approaches design.
The discipline and process of design
According to Edita, the purpose of design is to answer a burning question about your organization’s deeper purpose or needs as it relates to delivering something amazing for customers.
“Without a purpose and without a need, there is no design,” said Edita. “Maybe there’s styling … but design is really driven by the purpose.”
For leaders in any size company who want to bring this definition of design into their work, Edita said the process looks like this:
1. Ask the right question(s)
It’s crucial to understand who you’re talking to (audience), the pain-point or need you are trying to address (problem), and the promise of your brand or of the project at hand (value proposition). Then turn those inputs—which ring very similar to the scientific method necessary for AI innovation—into a question.
For example, this might be, “How can we reduce friction in the online buying experience?”
“We have to look at who we’re designing for,” said Edita. “We have to look at when the product will be dropping, in which context, and all of that.”
2. Let the design team contextualize with research
Continuing with the example of reducing friction in the online buying experience, the design team needs time and space to research the whole process. This might look like customer interviews or walking through the existing buying process with them to find what friction points exist and how they manifest.
This is the core of design as a true innovative business function. If the team is not allowed to contextualize, or if they are instructed to adjust a certain part of the buying experience in a certain way, they might “simplistically remove a step or add a step,” but that doesn’t mean they’ve actually solved a problem.
“Design, in how I think of it, is really a problem-solving discipline,” said Edita. “It’s not about painting a skin over something.”
3. Build an expression of common values
When the team identifies the best way to solve the single, discrete problem—the buying flow experience—Edita said the next step of true design thinking is to bring that same concept into other areas of the business.
If the goal is to reduce friction and provide a great buying experience, for instance, you have to think about how that comes up in the actual product delivery, the unboxing experience, return policies, customer service, and more.
“It’s an execution of a holistic solution to a particular problem that’s underpinned by values and should ladder up to the bigger purpose,” said Edtia.
Where design goes wrong
Done well, design is a true partner in business growth because it helps solve problems. But getting to that end requires avoiding a few obstacles that can hinder innovation, the first of which is starting with an answer rather than a question. This might look like a request for a hyper-specific product feature set. While this might be a good solution, the problem at hand might be served better by a different one.
“That’s a form of an answer,” said Edita. “But we are still missing the question.”
The second issue is a designer being unable to move forward because you’re stuck in your analysis—the solution being creative confidence.
“Part of creative confidence is actually understanding when to use your judgment and just go with the information that you have,” said Edita. “There’s a bit of instinct and wisdom coming out of the mileage that you’ve earned.”
A third potential issue is when companies (of any size) prioritize processes over customers. This might look like a conflict about how to move ahead, and team members argue over how the company typically does something rather than which path is better for the end-user.
“The times where I feel process gets really stuck is when companies start being self-centered as opposed to human centered,” said Edita. “When we stop thinking about ‘who are we designing this for?’ And we start thinking about, ‘oh, this is how we do things.’”
We can (and should) ask more of companies
Edit’s last comment was that “design” is not restricted to the class of people who know how to sketch and use design software. She describes a designer as someone who solves problems with rigor in order to deliver an amazing output for customers; any future-looking entrepreneur or company leader can do that.
The important part, said Edita, is to continually use your voice, whether as a designer or as a customer. That’s how, in her words, we become capable of providing “amazing, revolutionizing, industry-changing input.”
“It’s really important to ask more of companies and demand more, because that’s what pushes innovation,” said Edita. “As a customer, I know sometimes we feel really powerless… but our voice really is what drives innovation because we define the needs. And we might not know what the answer is, but we know what the need is. And it’s really cool when we find powerful ways to express it and somebody jumps on it.”
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