What do experience designers get right?

If you observe the professional services market wisely, you can notice a trend that management consulting firms – not only Big 4 and boutique consultancy, but also technology companies (like IBM, Microsoft) - intensively acquiring design studios , or at least trying to adopt design thinking into resolving technology challenges.

What is the underlying reason for that? What qualities are they looking for? What do experience designers get right that management consultants don’t, if any?

Here, I will try to tackle that.

There is certainly a common ground around “delivery of solutions”. Being a Client of any of the two, one is looking for consultative advise and creative problem solving. However, it is the approach to tackle these, can make the difference.

Of course, many solutions are grounded in a sound and scalable process , therefore many management consulting firms are not only pursue external acquisitions, but also adopt the process of design thinking, become user-centric, boost the ability to prototype and test, making sure that they have diverse point of views in the room.

However, in the nutshell (as many HR professionals would have predicted) design consulting firms have the advantage coming purely from the DNA of the people they hire.

Management consulting teams, stereotypically, are highly performance driven, achievement motivated (usually proud to be recognized for best graduation grades), and able to establish their credentials around that. Sometimes even presenting themselves as “always busy” can make their work more “attractive” and “valuable” (ie. with greater price tag).

Designers tend to be rather driven by purpose and making the impact within the environment they live. They very often admit not to seek promotion or monetary profits. Working with designers, one would get little more heart, deeper truth and meaning, not to mention the empathy and user-centricity.

On the flipside, when striving for such a deep meaning and impact, one may miss the ability to commercialize and directly test the viability of solutions. Designers community can focus on desirability and solving feasibility – by rigorous prototyping and testing. But when comes to viability model and ability to create profitable business solutions – this may be the area where it would worth to invest in and bring diversity of backgrounds and expertise.

In order to summarize, what qualities can differentiate experience designers and management consulting when delivering the real impact?

Designers’ strength is the ability to personalize their work, putting lots of their heart into it, rigorous process of well cultivated judgement, ability to trust their instincts, instead of looking for answers in hard data. But when comes to business modelling , it does not always tag to the hearts of designers. It would rather be a complimentary skills rather than core.

And this is the reason why interdisciplinary teams are proven to be far more successful in the age when meeting unspoken needs of your current or to-be customer can help you thrive.

If you want to learn more on why diversity can serve creative problem solving, look out for my next blog.

#futureofwork #experiencedesign