Venn Diagrams
Without a Venn diagram you can scarcely call yourself an interaction designer these days. One version you may be familiar with has three circles, one each for business, technology and design. The simplicity of these diagrams belies the actual situation, making it troblesome for information work.
Venn Diagram, arrows indicate
management opportunities
With Venn diagrams, what is inside each circle matters less than the interaction where circles overlap. Information design should explain degree of collaborative interaction equals degree of overlap. And, in the wild, projects rarely have equal or productive amounts of interaction. Instead of glossing over the challenges of collaboration between contexts, an informative diagram charts and fosters communication. Areas of overlap focus attention as the opportunity for minimal management to achieve maximum business results.
The Business Case For Design
To get the benefit of design, companies have to embed design into — not append it onto — their business.
— Roger L. Martin, Dean of Rotman School of Management
The Design Council of the United Kingdom, Danish Design Centre and Swedish Industrial Design Foundation have produced separate studies about positive business effects of the design focus. The Economic Effects of Design further distinguished four stages of design maturity, with design strategy as the driver of economic viability.
Design is inevitable, and can happen without a dedicated designer. This is is the first stage, design by default where tools and processes dictate design decisions. The second and third stages move design from a superficial afterthought to ongoing process of branding through design. And fourth, design as the strategy driving innovation, where design achieves a level of interaction equal to business and technology.
A Standard Diagram Is Simple, Neat, and Issue–Free. Information is not
Information worksheet provides
situation awareness
While design is inevitable, a design desirable enough to be economically viable is not. Desirability drives economic viability. Project management requires less of the cutting edge technologies and feature overload which break budgets, profit margins, and development schedules; and more insights into human nature. As the diagram’s center grows in size and symmetry, the project team effectively balances the contexts of business, technology and design. As engagement increases, circles overlap more. Using persuasion techniques, competing interests don’t pull apart the project, they integrate for project success.
Using a short series of questions to gauge the interaction between the contexts of technology, business and design, a Design Crux assessment worksheet visually graphs where the opportunities and potential problems are. When you see the disconnects, management priorities are identified and project management runs more smoothly.
With data processing, silo interaction is simply assumed to be as balanced and functional as the ideal. No mechanism exists to connect the nice ideals in the diagrams with the real situation, so situation awareness is never part of the graphic. Data processors administer and cater to the status quo. Information workers see the word management as more like design than maintenance. Consequently information workers see designing better team interactions as crucial for continuous improvement and job security.
Information demands more. You have to diagnose the situation, prescribe changes and chart progress. Innovation demands management across silos, and an active assessment worksheet makes that process work.
Diagrams can be powerful ways to visually summarize the status and future viability of a project. If the major hurdle is communication across silos to spur collaborative action, information must direct your attention where it does the most good.
Related Articles:
Design Crux Takes On The Alarm Clock
Resources
- Inventoritis Exposed:The Missing Bridge Between Marketing and Engineering is the classic realization that invention is different from innovation. Design Crux uses desirability design to bridge the contexts of marketing and engineering. P&G’s New Innovation Model is called managing across borders — changing from an R&D (invention) model to a Connect and Develop innovation model.
- For the Freedback project, tracking provided some interesting data of a 13% increase in revenue after a design change.
- Patrick Whitney is out to bridge the chasm between the cultures of business and design “Whitney believes that companies today face an “innovation gap.” They have the tools of technology to make virtually anything, but lack the tools of empathy to understand what consumers really want. Filling this gap is the task at hand. It is also the sweet spot for top–line growth and high-margin profit.”
- That Apple predictions are so often wrong is a startling indicator of how confounding design driven companies are to typical analysts and competitors who don’t understand design thinking.
- Dan Pink sees a link between a high level design focus and shareholder value. London’s British Design Council says companies winning design awards outperform the FTSE100 by a mile over a decade.
- Many companies talk collaboration, but structure, rewards, and business models don’t support collaboration. What often happens with collaborative technology is human interaction design takes a back seat to technology. No matter how many Venn diagrams are drawn, they rarely show the level of engagement.
- Designing the Convergent Organization offers 5Cs for developing convergence between silos.
- In User Experience is More Than Design Jeffrey Veen seems to distinguish between design decorating technology and design as driving influence.
- Technique for using Venn diagrams in understanding cultural context, conflicts and resolution.
- Some fairly good examples of how to draw Venn diagrams to highlight the most interesting feature: Overlap.
- Creativity That Goes Deep By Roger L. Martin, Dean of Rotman School of Management, BusinessWeek Online “To get the benefit of design, companies have to embed design into — not append it onto — their business.”
- UK Design Index report, “which showed that the share prices of a group of more than 150 quoted companies recognised as effective users of design out–performed the stock market by 200 per cent between 1994 and 2003.” Design – the business case “Using design helps businesses compete on value rather than price – and it helps them set the pace in crowded markets”
- SVID and The Association of Swedish Engineering Industries 10 observations from the report “Swedish companies on design – attitudes, profitability and design maturity.”
- Danish Design Centre, The Economic Effects of Design “Companies that have increased their design activity (i.e. invested more in staff with design training or in buying design services) enjoyed a 40% higher increase in gross profits than companies where the level of design activity remained constant or fell. …The survey indicates a general tendency towards correlation between high performance and high placing on the design ladder.” Features the design maturity ladder.