| First define what you mean by "quality" and "design" :-) For many people outside the design/ux field "design" is something that happens after the product is defined and created. It's just about the visuals - "making something pretty". For people inside the design/ux field design it's as much about understanding the users, figuring out the problem, defining the product, figuring out the behaviour, etc. Not that the visual design aspect is unimportant - but it's only a part of what "design" is all about. For many people outside the design/ux field a "quality" design is something that looks like something Apple would produce. For people inside the design/UX field a quality design is one that works. You don't design the advertisements for a MacDonald's burger the same way you design the adverts for the latest iPhone. Their aimed at different audiences with different goals. One isn't "good" and the other "bad". So - does quality design help business? It depends (the favourite designer answer :-) If you have a rubbish product then getting in a visual designer at the last minute to make it pretty probably isn't going to help much. "Putting lipstick on a pig" is the phrase you'll often hear designers use about this sort of project. If you have an okay product with a truly terrible visual design - you may find a purely visual revamp can help. I've seen a purely visual revamp of a terrible web app admin system cause users to praise all the wonderful new functionality - which was always there before they just couldn't find it :-) On the other hand - unless the UI is awful - you may find that a purely visual revamp does relatively little beyond make the designer not want to vomit (in the same way that having a big-ball-of-mud codebase doesn't really effect the users experience either, just makes the developers feel ill). You may find that a pure visual redesign can help you reposition your product so that it better attracts the right audience. I worked on a project once where we very deliberately moved to a "less pretty" visual look since the "nice" design was putting off the low-budget end of the market. The real value from design, and folk in the design/UX profession, is when you get them in from the start. All that "get out of the building" stuff that Steve Blank goes on about, all the product/market fit stuff that Eric Reis emphasises. That's what good UX/design folk do - and the good ones are very, very good at it (and have a stack of tools and techniques to help). |