Why Design Deserves More Credit

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey everyone, I'm your host, Ava Hines, and today we're getting radically candid about something that doesn't nearly get enough credit in the business world, design. In this episode, Runuka breaks down how great design closes the gap between a product and the people using it. We're looking at real-world examples from companies like Amazon, Google, Duolingo, and Spotify to show what happens when design is done right. Runuka also explains why design is a growth lever and how investing in it early can reduce churn, increase conversion, and build trust faster than almost anything else. Whether you're a designer or someone who's ever wondered why some apps feel effortless and others don't, this is the episode for you. Welcome everyone to our third live stream of the year. We are with Renuka, and I'll have her introduce herself. She's our senior UX UI designer at Cognition. So I'll let you take it away.

UX Is Function Before Aesthetics

Empathy Plus Gmail Mistake Proofing

Canva Templates And The Blank Page

Airbnb Photos That Doubled Revenue

Amazon One Click And Conversion

Give Designers North Star Goals

SPEAKER_01 1:01

Thank you so much, Eva, for giving me this opportunity to share something about design. And hello everyone, I'm Renuka. As Eva introduced already, um introduced me already. I'm senior UX designer at Cognition, and today I'll be sharing my perspective on how UX design contribute to your business and specifically for startups. And I believe this talk will genuinely shift your perspective on how you see UX design and how you can utilize it in your own startup. And in this talk, I will not be covering designing with AI or designing AI features and designing for B2B products. These are broad topics and I think they need a separate discussion. So let's start with UX design and understand that UX design is an important part of a software development process. So if your company is building a software product, you need to understand what UX design is. And a lot of times when people hear design, they think it's something that comes in the later stages of software development. That you can ask a designer to make things prettier and add colors or clean up the UI. That's not true, and UX design is not just about aesthetics. Yes, aesthetics matter, but function comes first, and functionality is more important than if you are in B2B uh uh site. So and you can create the most beautiful screens in the world, but if your product doesn't function and doesn't match with user expectations, they will not use it. And I always describe software product as something like a tool, not a piece of art. And when I say tool, that means people are using it to either achieve a goal or solving a specific problem. So, for example, we all use Gmail to send an email, we use some sort of project management app to efficiently manage our projects. We sometimes use a budget tracker to solve issues, um budget issues, we use apps to deliver food, and if these tools do not function the way you want, what you're gonna do with the beautiful screens. So now the question comes like, what does UX design actually do? And this is my simplest definition is that it closes a gap between your product and your user, and the most important tool designers use to do that is not um technical knowledge or a particular tool, for example, Figma or AI. I think the only thing designers and specifically UX designers use is their ability to empathize with the users. And let me give you some examples to prove it. So our first example is Gmail. Most of us use Gmail and we have all experienced this at some point where we mentioned an attachment but we forgot to attach a file. When we hit the button to send, Gmail reminds you that there is an attachment you mentioned, but you forgot to add. So what is exactly happening here? We are not seeing any beautiful screens, we are not seeing beautiful buttons, but here a product is preventing you from making a mistake. It is closing the distance between the user and the and the product by covering a very basic need of a user that don't let me make mistakes, specifically when you are sending a professional email. And not just that, um, the product is doing, it is also building a trust, and that's why we always go back to to certain tools where we know that this tool is is is not going to uh fail me professionally, and and the second uh example is Canva template. I think we all have used Canva at some point, and now Canva gives you three options to start with. One is that you can start with your own designs, or you can start with templates, or you can start with Canva AI. But if you are if you're opening Canva for the first time, you're staring at a blank screen, and you do not have design skills, you do not have an idea of where to start, and that also the same thing happens with designers. Um at some point, it's not always that we know what we are gonna do. So, but that blank screen is a gap, but Canva closed that gap with the templates, hundreds of them already designed, already sized correctly, already looking good, and you just have to replace the text and the image, and suddenly someone with zero design knowledge can produce a professionally looking template or design within five minutes. And this is not aesthetics. Canva templates are not there to look pretty, they are not there to um to impress you, they are there to remove that paralysis of blank page, and and that's UX design, that's understanding user psychology, understanding their need, and matching that need. The other thing I always feel, and this is my personal perspective on on the word design, is that the design word in UX design creates a lot of confusion. When people hear design, they immediately think visuals, they think the person who is a UX designer can only add colors, create just screens, and and all about aesthetics. But that is only a small part of the role actually is, and I think um using words like UX strategy or UX architecture gives people a clear picture of what this work really involves. Uh, I'm still looking for a better word for it, but but because design is only seen as like a visual layer, it will never get the influence it should, and it will never help the product to grow or to shape the product. So now we understood what UX design is and how a UX designer closed the distance between your user and your product. I I want to share some, I want to share actually two case studies. Uh, one case study for like Airbnb's early days, and the other case study is for a big company in their later stages. So let me tell you uh a story about Airbnb. And it was 2009, Airbnb was almost dead, and they were making about$200 a week in revenue, and they had listings on the platform, but nobody was booking, and it was hard for the team to figure out what's going on. But one day the founders flew to New York where most of their listings were, and they knocked they knocked the doors off their host, and when they walked inside these apartments, they immediately saw the problem. The photos were terrible. People were taking pictures from their phone in bad lighting, the apartments look decent in person, but online they look dark, small, and almost uninviting. So they did something really simple. They rented a professional camera, went back to those apartments, took some beautiful, professionally looking photographs. And you know what happened next? Within that just one week, the revenue doubled. And now look at the chart on the screen. The blue line is night booked, the pink line is professional photo shoots, and the moment Airbnb started using professional photography, you can see exactly where both lines started climbing together. Same platform, same listings, same city, just better photos. So from 2012, uh 2010 to 2012, bookings went from almost nothing to nearly 5 million nights. Not because they rebuilt the product, not because they changed the algorithm, they closed one gap, the gap between what a guest saw online and what the apartment actually felt like in person. So one design decision, millions of bookings. Let's see other example. And most of us already know about the one-click buying feature on Amazon. It's not something new, but what's interesting is not the feature itself, but what it did for the business. People already knew what they wanted to buy. The problem was the checkout process had too many steps, and it is on every other e-commerce website. And that's where users take longer to make decisions, and that's where the drop off happens. And this is where UX design made a real difference. Amazon reduced the entire checkout to just one click. That means less thinking, less effort, and no unnecessary steps at the moment of decision. And the impact was huge. Their conversion rate increased by around 300%, going from 2.5% to over 10%. So more people who wanted to buy something actually completed the purchase. And before I close, I just wanted to leave you with one practical thought on how to actually utilize design and give your UX designer the North Star goal and not a feature to design. Let them understand your business, make them part of your product strategy. And as I shared earlier, Airbnb's goal was to increase bookings, Spotify's goal was to keep users listing longer, Duolingo's goal was to bring users back every day. So none of these are feature requests, these are real business problems, and that is exactly where design should start. And when you give a designer a goal instead of a task, you get a product that closes the distance with the user. And that is when design actually moves your business forward.

SPEAKER_00 13:53

Awesome. And then does anyone have any questions? I actually have a question for you, Ranuka. So long this reminds me of something that you've called dark design, or do you want to talk about that?

SPEAKER_01 14:06

Yeah, absolutely. I am not a fan of dark design, but I have seen a lot of examples, and I think I was sharing this with Tim as well. That some businesses use it for their benefit, but it's not actually in benefit with users. And there are certain um goods and bads about this, but I will give you an example. So I was uh doing this course on interaction foundation, and these courses are lengthy, and this could be good for somebody who has a lot of time, but they claim that it is for professionals. But when I was doing it, it it was taking me a like I was not able to complete those courses, they were lengthy, and that was the only reason I wanted to drop off from that their courses. And and the fees is not like it is expensive. So I was trying to find this button to drop myself or cancel my subscription, but it was super hard, and I had to go through multiple steps until I found there this red button of you can drop off from this course or you can cancel your subscription. It's not great, businesses use that, and in the end, companies have to make decisions whether they want to uh build trust with their users or not. If if your if your values do not align with this design, my recommendation is do not use it. And before using a doc design, define your values. Uh, if you ask my personal opinion, my values do not align with designing a dark design because in the end, I am a UX designer and I have to advocate for users all the time.

Final Thanks And Sign Off

SPEAKER_00 15:59

Thank you so much, Ronika, for popping on this live today. And I hope everyone else learned as much as I did about design and everything. There's so much that like a lot of us don't really know. So thank you.

SPEAKER_01 16:12

Yeah, thank you. Thank you so much. Bye guys.