Cut-rate design might save budget on paper. It usually burns it in delivery.

After more than a decade of running a boutique strategic product design agency, I’ve witnessed numerous finance org-driven strategies to cut costs.

Finance orgs tend to quantify design resources as homogeneous units of Junior/Senior, contract/perm, etc. It’s especially shaky ground when you’re doing this with a design org, where qualitative considerations of talent, experience, willingness/ability to collaborate, wisdom, etc., all play a critical part in outcomes.

Designers aren’t making donuts. Our work has real long-term cost impacts. A design team of three or four may generate output that is built and tested by a dev team of 200 people and rolled out to 5 million users. Both of these downstream realities have the potential to wipe out any savings made in minimizing the design process.

An uninspired and strategically misaligned design can bloat development costs and underwhelm the end users, leading a business back to the drawing board with less budget available to realize the necessary outcomes.

If you’re a designer, you know that all designers are not created equal. We all have differing levels of experience, skill, passion, interest, and career focus. The things that one designer finds interesting may be a cause for utter boredom for another. There are many different kinds of design projects and businesses, and as many different types of designers.

The folks of Futuredraft are fairly unique in that we are passionate about complex, multi-role, multi-user workflow-driven products.

There’s no question that the work we do is not for everyone. We seldom meet designers who share our depth of experience in the work we love doing. We have a passion for the ambiguous, fluid, and highly strategic and creative space that we exist in. It’s in our background and part of our DNA.

Quant blindness

In the last couple of years, we’ve seen a number of finance organizations attempt to save design dollars by buying design services up front in an effort to get bulk discounts from a third party.

These are exclusive contracts that require lines of business, product orgs, etc., to rely solely on the contractors hired by this third party for design support (strategic or otherwise).

A number of my long-term clients are unable to hire us because of these exclusive agreements. We see from experience that this usually comes at a high cost.

These third-party teams, as well-meaning as they may be, may not see the strategic forest for the trees. Our experience has shown that the majority of these individuals are more valuable for applying design system components, re-skinning existing UI/UX, and fixing minor UI bugs, among other tasks.

They are less inclined to:

• Dig in and analyze a complex domain to create a shared understanding of the challenges faced by end users
• Interview and collaborate with end users
• Identify where incremental improvements can create exponential gains in user satisfaction
• Uncover possible revenue opportunities and efficiency gains
• Help synthesize and drive strategic roadmaps with their leadership team and establish broadly adopted MVP milestones

With all due respect to our Big Five brethren, we have partnered with them on numerous occasions. We’ve been recommended by and have collaborated with virtually all of the giant consulting companies.

They know why we exist and the value that we bring. We can, at times, be perceived as a threat to their sales organizations, as we challenge the notion that large teams equate to large value.

Design slash and burn

The unfortunate outcome of this is that discounted design leaves a bad taste in people’s mouths.

Working with a team of maintainers who lack strategic vision, cohesiveness as a team, and often possess minimal service skills or practical wisdom is a recipe for experiences that result in minimal adoption and erode trust in the business’s ability to create value for its organization and customers.

This is often why business leaders place a low value on design. They are invested in the process, but in the end, the impact doesn’t meet their expectations, and the budget that they committed to the work.

To elevate the value of design, designers need to get out of the “studio” and onto the “factory floor”. We need to get our hands dirty and understand how work gets done and how to make users successful and happy with the tools we design with them.

At the same time, design teams need to remember to be flexible, agile, and good partners to both clients and collaborators.

We want the design process to be a fun experience where everyone learns and where everyone feels like they are part of the success.

We know the truth that with minimal resources, smart designers can get a lot accomplished, and with maximum collaboration, we can almost always help lead the charge to success!