Justifying design's impact

I’ve been in a few places where there’s been talk about justifying the cost of UCD and similar roles. At first glance it’s a fair point. What impact do we have? How are we helping? How do we ensure we’re doing the best we can?

But the question rarely gets asked in that spirit.

It’s one of the ways I note the health of an organisation or profession. If the organisation is complex or complicated, but the measures and patience for a profession to make an impact don’t reflect that, it’s a bad sign.

If it takes years to build anything. And years more to know if you’ve made things better. It’s unlikely you’ll see the impact you expect due to other bigger cultural problems.

I recall working at an organisation and hearing a director ask teams to capture examples and case studies to illustrate the impact teams have made. But making an impact on things like child poverty, whether people can get a GP appointment or the rate of reoffending isn’t something 1 person is going to easily impact in a team.

Hell, a whole service will struggle to do that.

When that particular ask was put out, everyone was on the backfoot. It was not about building a culture of caring about impact, showing and telling how people’s work helps. It was to justify, backfill and escape a cull immediately.

And if we’re honest most designers and UCD staff are rarely powerful or influential enough to own the outcomes that get measured. Nor do they have the freedom to accelerate when their designs get made.

This may be less so in some problem spaces and in individual products or smaller teams. Where there is a closer relationship to doing some work and seeing it out there in the world making changes.

But in complex and complicated organisations it’s impossible.

Part of the issue lies in that complexity. But it’s also because we can never directly claim updating a website or a flow is really going to be the single thing that changed some numbers for a complex problem.

Child poverty is just too big. And drawing an honest line between 1 strand of work to that is going to be impossible or a lie.

Unfortunately when the question is being asked about impact it’s often a budget thing. Justify the cost. And actual evidence for those big outcomes are going to be problematic at best.

So, what to do?

1. Don’t

I’m a big believer that you’re wasted in proving your impact in these situations. Don’t tell, show. Do it by doing the work to make things better.

Don’t get drawn into trying to claim a slice of a complex outcome and then the mental gymnastics required to pretend you really did all that yourself and it wasn’t a system wide thing.

But what if you can’t not?

2. Try and reverse the ask

If you’re getting someone asking to justify how a profession makes an impact there’s a chance a decision has already been made. Maybe someone needs to sleep well with it and are throwing a fake bone.

But maybe it’s a legit ask. If so, ask them what they think. What’s their expectations? Sometimes money was given with expectations and that hasn’t aligned to what happened.

I’ve been in and seen enough teams try and make an impact but getting chance to bed in is so tough because so many other things have to change to allow it. And maybe those things aren’t well understood higher up?

It might also be because people inherit decisions and teams. And may not know what they’re meant to get back. Or it could be that they don’t know what impact looks like.

A mechanic will know what sounds and things happen when an engine runs smooth. And when it doesn’t. Sometimes people don’t know if they’re getting the right signals.

3. Do the groundwork and know how your outputs contribute to the outcomes

To help show impact do the work to show how a role or roles contributes to outcomes.

I wrote about why designers design forms. Have a model like this for your business and what elements you contribute to.

Be it quality, innovation, experience, efficiency, risk, profit etc

Help yourself and your teams out by creating a basic model of those big, broad outcomes at the top and the common outputs and things you do and visualise how the small things you do impact the big things.

This way you can tell the story of smaller impacts and wins but create the thread between that and the bigger outcomes.

4. Get good at finding smoke signals

With a model being crafted ensure you and your teams get good at identifying smaller, quicker signals that something’s making an impact or potentially contributing.

Not only focus on smaller impacts than those massive outcomes. But also quicker signals.

Something I’ve worked on recently is working with the an organisation to define what it means by increasing quality. By doing this I could give a name to several different components. It’ll take a longer time to measure and understand if the product we’re going to release has done this. But we can cheaply check elements of it as a quick smoke signal that things look like they’re getting better. That we’ve made an impact in a much smaller way.

If quality has 12 ingredients, can we see we’ve made 2-3 happen? Or made it stronger?

5. Talk about it all the time

Know how you do stuff and what outcomes they support you need to talk about it all the time.

Ensure all activity has clear threads to why we’re doing work.

This round of research? It’s about derisking a policy landing wrong. Or maybe it’s about ensuring we reduce calls to contact centres. Or maybe it’s about exploring new ways of working that will lead to xyz.

Maybe it’s even smaller scale. It’s about derisking a policy by just getting everyone aware and on the same page.

The key is to talk. And to sow the seeds of contribution all the time. Even when it’s collaborative. To own your fair share.

Because you can bet your ass other professions and teams are taking credit. As they should. But so should you.

You’re not claiming that you’ve solved child poverty. But you can say you’ve make it clearer to get help. That satisfaction has increased or that people are more likely to find the information they need first time.

A few summers ago when MPOX (previously called monkeypox) broke out I did this in very cheap way. It was an emergency ask and I helped a bunch of clinicians, call centre teams and tech people come together and make the heath protection teams response more sustainable and effective.

As I did the work I reported up and out at all times. Starting with daily notes and then weeknotes to directors.

I ensured that directors and teams knew it was the work I was doing that contributed to other things they heard about.

It was my work to get people together, map out the existing service and insights and help plot 3 or 4 changes we could make. Another team put the solution in place. But without the design and facilitation that didn’t happen. So I could (justifiably) claim that credit and my part to play.

We got early estimates of the time saved and I shared those too.

This built up the links between other work and my work. Between what I do and better outcomes.

A few weeks later a very UCD sceptical director calls myself and my director in for a chat. They had more they want to do together.

It was easier to then build a relationship and “justify” the sorts of roles and how they work as they’d seen it work.

6. Make sure everyone in the profession knows the impact we have and how to explain it

When a design team is small it’s easier to do this. To tell stories and keep the story going. As a team grows or you’re in a big organisation where ways of working can be so different everywhere do the work to make sure people are mapping how they contribute through small contributions to bigger outcomes.

Teach, train and hold people accountable. Talk about it a lot. Give people the tools to talk about it. And do so before you need to justify your impact as a profession.

7. Find friends and the right places to make an impact

Find the sweet spot between what your organisation really cares about and where your skills and those of your teams can really contribute.

Find friends and allies. Be okay with less ideal situations that let you demonstrate value. And exploit those to build the relationships and trust you in need to make an impact. And it be easier to demonstrate that value next time