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North Star

What are the fundamental factors of a design-led approach?


Let's face it, people are attracted to well-designed things, valuing them more than poorly designed ones.

However, as Steve Jobs clearly understood - design is about more than how something looks. It’s even about more than how something works. Design is as much about a process as it is about a product. It’s a way of thinking and working; importantly it’s an attitude that says, ‘how can we make this thing the best it can be?’

Market-leading businesses have long seen the value of 'design thinking'. We call our approach to it 'Design-led Change'. What it means for us is, helping our clients deliver remarkable services and experiences by FIRST reimagining the products and services they SHOULD provide, and THEN how they should REORGANISE with the goal of delivering them.

Four fundamental factors lay at the heart of achieving and maintaining this shift.

From a customer experience perspective, a design-led approach is about:

  1. Envisioning the service experience you should deliver.
  2. Scoping what’s needed to deliver the target level of service.

And from a business perspective, the focus is on:

  1. Scaling the customer experience function by inspiring and enabling your team to sustain and evolve the target experience.
  2. Shaping the company culture through developing and embedding teams at all levels with customer-centred and design-led ways of working.

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