Good design, tech, and support make products successful.
We love Thomas Sutton’s argument that product design teams need to define what design quality means, take accountability for it, and connect it to user and business value. Otherwise, it’s easy to be misunderstood, undervalued, and ineffective. Check out his article and framework: https://lnkd.in/gSbWdAry
Thomas defines six key dimensions of design quality as aspects of the user value a product delivers:
1. Usability, Can people use it easily?
2. Accessibility, Can all people use it, regardless of ability?
3. Usefulness, Does it help them reach their goals?
4. Enjoyment, Do they like using it?
5. Context-fit, Does it work well in their workflow?
6. Net-simplicity, Does it reduce complexity in their lives?
However, rather than saying “good design = good business,” he explains a causal chain:
→ If the design is good, and the tech and support are good, people will use the product.
→ If people use it and it works, it will lead to user benefits, business results, and societal impact.
Design is one part of a larger system, but it plays a big role in making products both usable and valuable.
💬 We asked Thomas why he wrote the article: “Primarily to address confusion I could see in the discourse about product teams and their goals, which seemed to leave no space for the specific goals and quality criteria of different professions, with everything being poured into one big “product goals” bucket. This leaves no space for any kind of quality criteria- for design or any other profession.
So I wanted to explicitly talk about the causal chain from quality in individual disciplines to product success to business success, and show how understanding the top level business goals doesn’t replace design specific goals, but it shapes them to the context.“
This is great thinking.
Helio helps you test designs quickly with users using UX metrics like usability, usefulness, and enjoyment. It shows what’s working and what needs fixing before you ship.
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