🎧 Webinar: Why Good Design is Good for Business

👤 Ashton Snook, Head of Design & Research at Vodafone

🔊 dscout

đź“… April 22, 2025 | 11 AM ET / 4 PM BST

⏱️ Full Webinar Viewing Time: ~60 mins

⏱️ Summary Reading Time: ~8 mins

🧠 Key Concepts

“Design could have a degree of influence over whether the company lives or dies.”

  1. Design as Strategic Partner, Not Just Delivery

    – Vodafone moved from “make what product tells us” to risk-mitigation and strategic insight, challenging assumptions early and saving wasted investment.

    – Building trust with SLT sponsors unlocked a seat at the table for design/research to influence product direction.

  2. Speak Business Lingo

    – Designers/researchers must learn the language of revenue, cost-efficiency and fiscal responsibility—or risk being seen as “pretty-picture people.”

    – “Run the design team as if it’s your own business” means managing budgets, negotiating contracts and retaining talent with commercial rigour.

  3. Embed Shared Metrics

    – Vodafone’s Clarity Framework uses three scores to track ideas from concept to market:

    1. Customer Proposition Score (“Is this idea worth investing in?”)

    2. Customer Effort Score (ease of use, a la CES)

    3. Usability Expert Score (design/researchers’ own observations)

      – These simple, repeatable metrics let non-designers grasp performance in 2 mins, then drill into the rich qualitative insights.

  4. Future-Ready Culture & Skills

    – An evergreen “Future Design” programme explores consumer trends, talent/community, AI tooling and new team structures.

    – Teams must embrace low-code/no-code prototyping, prompt-driven concepting, and blur lines between design, research and product.

🛠️ Methods & Frameworks

Framework / Practice How to Apply It
Clarity Framework Score by proposition, effort & expert lens; benchmark through dev cycle and market.
Cascading Goals Align design goals with SLT KPIs and group strategy to secure buy-in and funding.
Democratised Research Train product & design teams on low-risk usability testing for rapid insight loops.
Strategic Sponsorship Cultivate a senior ally who understands design’s ROI and can champion your agenda.
Future Design Programme Rotate focus on consumer trends, community culture, AI impact and skill evolution.

🤔 My 5 pence

I love how Ashton reframes design accountability as “running your own P&L”—a bold way to earn traction. The Clarity Framework is great for any large organisation tired of “we’ll fix it later” hand-offs. And the push to blur research, design, product and even low-code prototyping is exactly where UX needs to go to stay indispensable.