Rethinking design: From products to workflows

Context

Recently, I found myself inspired by the talk Brian Chesky, the CEO of Airbnb, gave at Config 2023. I became interested in the talk because of the noise the internet was making about it.

“We removed the classic product management function, Apple didn’t have it. either.”

Though the idea of a product marketing manager is intriguing, I found their "journey back to being a design-led company" to be much more interesting. However, the pause Chesky took when asked about how to instigate such a change in an organisation hinted at the complexity of this process.

“Let’s say you’re a designer somewhere and you are not the founder of the company… how do you push for a design-led strategy?”

He takes this long pause, chokes on his words a little, then starts talking about designers curse of self justification. He does go on to talk about what he believes are fundamental principles a designer should follow, but before we get into that, let’s first look at what triggered the change at Airbnb.

Design-led strategy

It took a series of significant events to kickstart the change. First, he had an epiphany, realising they were on the wrong path, he communicated his perceived risks to his co-founders. He collaborated with design leaders from Apple who helped him perceive a new way of working. This was happening while he had the pressure of going public, followed by a drop in value due to COVID-19, which put the company in a state of fight or flight. This is when Airbnb seemed as if they were able to “find the nerve” and momentum, to overhaul the entire way that they worked. Gained a “what do we have to lose?” mentality.

Problem

So at face value, the answer to can a designer change an organisation? would be no, they can’t. Only an organisational existential crisis and a CEO with an epiphany can lead to organisational change. But this obviously is too absolute and defeatist a claim for anyone to jibe with.

Health Action Process Approach (HAPA)

Let’s shift our focus from products for a moment and delve into how individuals enact their own transformational change. This brings us to the Health Action Process Approach (HAPA), a psychological theory developed by Ralf Schwarzer. HAPA is all about health behaviour change, but it’s not just about swapping bad habits for good ones. It’s a framework that explains and predicts how people change their behaviours, such as quitting smoking or improving physical activity levels.

Two phases

HAPA is divided into two phases: the motivation phase and the volition phase. The motivation phase is all about forming intentions to change. This could be recognising a risk and wanting to avoid it, or envisioning a world where you’ve made the change and what that means for you. The volition phase is about putting those intentions into action. It involves planning and initiative, maintaining the new behaviour, and recovering when you slip up. This theory, eerily, aligns well with the product development stages.

Motivation

In the motivation phase of HAPA, individuals form intentions to change their behaviour, this could be in the form of recognising a risk and wanting to change to avoid it, or in the form of outcome expectation or imaging (outcome expectation) a world where you have made the change and what that means for you. This process is akin to the discovery stage in product development, where teams identify market needs and potential risks, similar to a product vision.

Self-efficacy, or the belief in one’s ability to achieve the desired outcome, is a critical component throughout HAPA. This component in product development aligns with ensuring that the “product trio” believe in the value, viability, feasibility, and usability of their solution through continuous testing and validation.

Volition

Unlike in the motivation stage where an individual creates an intention to do something, the volition phase in HAPA is putting that intention into action and is made up of three levels: cognitive – the planning of what to do the work, behavioural – how the work will and won’t be done, and situational – what environment the work is done in. By planning and visualising all these levels, one is better equipped to tackle events that get in the way of their goal, which helps them maintain self-efficacy or belief that they can continue.

This is like the delivery side of the product process where prototypes become shippable software; the work is broken down in a way that delivers value in iterations, as well as establishing and refining how they work, and defining anti-patterns, practices like sprint reviews align with this idea.

Organisational Context

In the context of organisational change, HAPA could prove to be a great framework to use in terms of how do start breaking down the work needed, to change an organisation.

Organisations have to first recognise the risks of maintaining the status quo and visualise a more effective way of operating. Planning can help build confidence in the change process, while effective communication ensures that the outcomes of the plan are understood by the whole organisation.

Problem

One of the most challenging aspects of organisational change is the tendency to revert to old habits, especially under stress or uncertainty. This is where HAPA’s emphasis on anticipating and managing risk behaviours and situations becomes particularly relevant. Organisations need to be brutally honest about their past failures and the poor decisions that led to them. This introspection is not for the purpose of assigning blame, but to learn and create a clear roadmap for avoiding similar pitfalls in the future. It’s about cultivating a culture that not only acknowledges these risks but actively works to mitigate them.

Outcome

Continuous reinforcement of the new strategies and behaviours that align with the envisioned future create a resilient environment that is prepared to counteract the pull of old habits and stay the course towards becoming truly design-led.

Principles for change

If you listen to Brian Chesky’s outline Airbnb’s transformation it does seem to align with the personal change steps outlined in HAPA. However, the narrative he presents suggests that he was the primary source of self-efficacy within the organisation.

Now we have an idea of how change can happen let’s look at what Chesky’s key principles for designers. From my perspective, his answer essentially says you can be a certain way and hope that will make a change.

He provides a set of principles that any designer, regardless of their position within the organisation, can adopt to instigate a more design-led approach.

Being user-centric

This is paramount. This goes beyond aesthetics into the user journey through your design. It’s about understanding the user’s needs and how your design can meet them.

Stubbornness

Or rather, a strong sense of pride in your work. You should only be willing to ship designs that you’re genuinely proud of. If you don’t take pride in your work, how can you expect others to appreciate it?

Simplicity

This doesn’t mean stripping away features, but rather gaining a deep understanding of the problems you’re trying to solve and designing solutions that address the root issues and needs of the users. This requires a profound understanding of the problem beyond a list of “requirements”.

Importance of craftsmanship

As a designer, you should obsess over every detail to ensure the highest quality in your work. Though this relates closely with taking pride in your work but I think there is always room to improve your craft so instead of it being about you being happy with your work, I think it’s about continuing to perfect your craft through continuous learning.

Communication

Another key principle. You need to articulate your ideas and decisions in a language that your organisation understands, demonstrating how adopting your ideas will benefit them.

Chesky also makes an interesting point about “growth not being a goal”, but that’s a topic for another discussion.

First steps to change

Adopting the above principles in one’s work is the first step, but I don’t think it goes deep enough to answer the question of how a designer can instigate organisational change.

Thankfully though, how Brian concludes the conversation offers a glimpse into how a designer can begin to instigate this change.

“I think design is not just about how something looks, but how something fundamentally works. And I think it’s one of the most important skills that we are going to need in the 21st century.”

Chesky sees himself as a designer, but not in the traditional sense. He designs how his company operates and functions as a business. I think therein lies the key.

If you think similarly to Chesky, a designer’s skill is not on Figma, user personas, UX laws, user interviews, or anything a “product designer” would generally do for a product. They have the ability to soak in the world around them, learn fast and obsess over their craft – developing solutions to problems in creative ways.

Solution

Which finally brings me to my response to the question:

“How can a designer, who is not the CEO or founder of the company, instigate change within the organisation to make it more design-led?”

The answer, I think, is rooted in the principles of product development and the Health Action Process Approach (HAPA).

Identify the risks in your organisation’s current approach and design a vision, communicate the desired outcome, build the outcome expectation within the organisation, test these ideas, fostering a collective desire and belief in the potential for successful change. Develop plans to mitigate risks along the way and implement practices to prevent reverting to old habits. Above all, iterate continually.

An organisation is akin to an organism. While the CEO may be the head, significant change can occur when enough members of the body embrace a shared vision. When the body moves, the head must follow. The individuals within an organisation are cognitive agents. The more people who are aware of and see the benefits in design-led principles, the more they understand how they can get there, the greater the likelihood that the organisation will transform into a design-led entity.

As a designer, you have the skills to learn what other colleagues’ issues are within the organisation and how to integrate all your learnings and design a simple solution to solve those problems for your organisation.

When you can illustrate with your solutions that you have considered your colleagues’ issues and problems, they are more likely to begin to want to live in the world your vision pictures.

Like Brian Chesky, designers need to be more than just creators of platform interfaces. They need to be integral in designing the way the organisation functions and design solutions that simplify operations. They must design how they communicate these plans with other stakeholders in a language they understand, addressing their problems and needs.

Conclusion

Whilst going over this article, I’ve started to change my understanding of what it means to be a design-led organisation. I used to understand it within the context of product development, as in making a conscious effort to ensure your product development process was user-centric or incorporated a discovery process, but now I’m starting to think that it actually just means employing some of the same rigour you would within the product development process throughout the entire company’s operations.

So, just as you would approach a product design problem, apply the same principles and methodologies to solve your organisation’s challenges. Think, test, apply, repeat.