Venturing Hoyas Design + Venture MeetUp!
To recap the Venturing Hoyas Design + Venture Chat, it was a great event with a strong panel that featured @AnthonyDAvella, @uxceo (Grace Ng), @eleanor_morgan, and @jeffdomke -- who all shared unique insights from different perspectives on the role of design in startups.
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What is the role of design?
Design in venture centers on taking an iterative approach to solve problems to improve products or service. A human-centered approach and rapid iterative prototyping have changed the playing field and strengthened a company’s (startup or Fortune 500) ability to deliver the “right” product for a given market. Functionally, the most practical role of design is to actively surface needs and solve for them.
“Design is about problem solving” --@uxceo
“Design is making a current situation better” --@AnthonyDAvella
“Product design is seeking out bad ideas and killing them” --@jeffdomke
Successful companies leading with design
In response to the question “What services / products best lead and execute with design?”, panelists provided interesting examples.
@eleanor_morgan led with Paper from @FiftyThree for its thoughtfulness and care in execution and of course Apple, citing how both have design lead product development approaches that focus on human-centered solutions -- where tradeoffs come at the expense of engineering. With respect to Apple, Eleanor stressed that while we mostly notice the outputs of design in the actual products, it stems from how they are uniquely organized internally to empower the role of designers in the decision making process.
@AnthonyDAvella described the emotional focus of Canary’s connected home design and the user experience focus (hi-res photography, featured listings) of the supply side of airbnb: their hosts.
@uxceo introduced a product that’s using brilliant design for social good. @UnchartedPlay’s SOCCKET is a soccer ball that generate clean energy and has great potential in the developing world.
Challenges of design-thinking
When asked about the trade-offs of design thinking in startups, three key challenges emerged:
Sacrificing speed -- an iterative approach is naturally slower than dedicated full resources to a singular decision.
Addressing too large of a problem at one time -- when problems are complex or too future-forward, attempting to find a solution through a human-centered design that is difficult for people today to conceptualize can be tricky.
Lack of content expertise -- designers are great at addressing unstructured, white space problems, but sometimes content is critically important to achieve the understanding necessary to deliver a solution.
The event was well attended with over 40 Venturing Hoyas present lasting almost two hours, representing a mix a designers interested in entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs interested in design. Stay tuned for the next event...
-- Akili Hinson