How design thinking can drive businesses in a digital-first world

There is a famous Chinese proverb, 'May you live in interesting times', and without a doubt, that time is now. While digital transformation and rapid innovation have been steadily unlocking a prism of opportunities for businesses world over - the pandemic has meant reimagining strategies, accelerating on plans, adapting to customer needs, and in some cases, pivoting to a completely new way of conducting business.

At the heart of this transformation lies 'Design Thinking', an aspect that is imperative for businesses to nurture as they march forward towards their digital ambitions.

The amalgamation of digital technology and Design Thinking offers a larger canvas for innovation, engages the audience and balances the creative imperative with business goals. Let's understand how.

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Design is Good for Business 
 
It all starts with strategy and strong creativity. A great design will take into account the audience's interests along with the sentiment of the market. For example, COVID prompted a huge shift to empathy, diversity and inclusion. A good design must also take into account cultural affinities. 
 
Design has become even more important given the shift to remote working over the past two years, helping to connect communities, customers, colleagues and business partners assisting firms to achieve their strategic objectives. 
 
A research conducted by Forrester about the value of design backs this up. The study found that 75 per cent of respondents agree that design teams impact strategic business decisions. These include identifying unmet customer needs a product should address, as well as how to speed up tactical visual and user interface decisions. 
 
Great design also hangs on a robust brief - provide clear instructions and outline the objective of the piece. It should include information about market trends, data and insights into the macroeconomic environment so the designer can understand the project's required outcome. In fact, the importance of design kicks in at the conceptualisation stage and continues to play a role in translating all efforts into final business outcomes. 
 
The pandemic has also helped to democratise creativity. Design has been prominent during this time because it's been essential to roll out marketing campaigns faster.

Businesses have enabled more people to create engaging content that can go to market quickly. This also makes creative collaboration a key priority.

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In today's hybrid work environment creativity knows no bounds and the ability to collaborate within the organisation and with clients online and in shared cloud documents is of paramount importance. We have to be able to empower everyone - from professional designers to consumers - to create good content. 
 
In a digital-first economy, content velocity is at an all-time high. Great design enables businesses to stand up and stand out, supported by cutting-edge digital tools. But to achieve this, it's vital to provide designers with access to great tech and support them to leverage its benefits. 
 
Technology Matters 
 
By implementing collaborative technology, businesses like strategic marketing and advertising agency Prakria have been able to streamline administration, achieve productivity gains and pursue growth.

Results include faster creative design workflow, easily edited design components in different formats, designed workflow to enable quick turnaround and better use of resources. 
 
Technology has to be deployed in a way that supports designers to be more efficient and help them deliver consistent branding.

It should also be used to measure a marketing campaign's success, for instance through mechanisms such as A/B testing, which is a way to compare the design performance in a campaign. We can track how every rupee is spent and whether it converts to revenue. This benefits effective design and improves return on investment. 
 
Designing for the Future of Customer Experiences 
 
According to Forrester's research, 62 per cent of respondents said the role of design was extremely important in customer satisfaction, 48 per cent said it was extremely important in brand awareness and 42 per cent said it was extremely important in competitive differentiation. Here, adapting to new creative technologies and capabilities will be key to delivering standout customer experiences. 
 
There's been a huge boost of immersive design technologies and 3D design tools throughout the pandemic and increased use of our creative solutions overall. Disruptive businesses are finding ways to be creative amid restraints.

For instance, for much of this time, we have been unable to conduct photoshoots. So, designers have become creative in developing engaging interactive content that can resonate across multiple media and digital channels. 
 
Today, the importance of innovation has never been more pronounced. Design thinking is a more mature and assured approach to innovation that can help any business stay relevant to customers in a fast-paced, digitally connected world.

Developing creative thinking and skills should be embedded in the way we work. The future belongs to those with creative and digital skillsets and it's essential for leaders to support this and bring their team along on the journey. 
 
(The author is Director & Head, Digital Media, Adobe India.)