Principles of fostering a
design culture

Culture before process

When companies focus on fostering a design culture it can pay dividends to producing a more creative environment and a better product.

Educate early

The entire business needs to understand the value of design. Key stakeholders should be brought in and understand how design aids the business.

Autonomy & Experimentation

Companies should give autonomy to explore what's possible and then experiment to find the best solution.
Creating the system and accountability measures to do this should be an utmost priority.

Be design-driven

Lots of companies I've worked in have had an engineering lead culture. While that helps the business, there are key benefits to having a design led culture such as understanding the key needs of the customer and putting them first.

Continuous Improvement

A continuous feedback loop in both the company and the product will lead the path to continuous improvement. Every team member should commit fully to improving.

Empathy rules

Get back to the drawing board to solve most problems. Design can be a powerful tool to transform businesses.

Understand your customer

No really, it all starts there.

Customers and end users are the center of the problem-solving equation

Observe, listen, and learn

Use user research and design thinking methods to uncover hidden insights.

Marry "data" with intuition

Mix data with observations of user behavior. Straight data is not always the answer.

Collaborate and prototype

Great experiences begin with many people's ideas.
Keep and open mindset and be playful.

Co-creating both in product and culture

The underlying culture should align and value constant creation and innovation.

Design thinking is not just for products...

Design thinking can be used to improve organizations as well.  Make it company wide practice to always gather ideas and to get feedback early and often.
Design should be integrated into the company's decision making.

Always be sharing

The design team can share their overall findings with the company so everyone can learn. Especially user research.

"Creating" should be company wide

Getting everyone into the "maker" mindset, will cultivate new ideas and fresh solutions. Some things to consider: Creating a design lab, designing daily rituals for employees to share innovation, casual collisions.

Elevate value-aligned behaviors

Once desired behaviors are identified. Any employee showing these values should be celebrated. Help people see new ways to achieve results.