Don't forget the power of design

I generally don’t pay a lot of attention to company blogs; maybe I should.

I was sent a link today to Tim Hoechst’s blog about the importance of good design. Hoechst is the chief technology officer of Agilex. He’s also one of the 2011 CTO of the Year winners, an award given by Washington Technology and the Northern Virginia Technology Council.

Hoechst’s gives a review of Bloomberg BusinessWeek’s Design Guide, and how design can be “strategic, transformative and disruptive.”

What I liked about Hoechst’s blog today is that it tracks well with a blog I did after I visited Deloitte’s HIVE in January.

I’m not going to rehash Hoechst’s piece, or my own, but the point I was drawn to at Deloitte, and with Hoechst’s blog, is that design isn’t just about making something look good; it’s about function. It’s about bringing insights that couldn’t be made before. It’s about ease of use.

Deloitte talked about this, and Hoechst touches on it too. Good design can increase efficiency and lower costs.

A poorly designed interface, one that isn’t intuitive to use and touch – this is the smartphone era after all – increases inefficiency and raises costs.

No one likes to use a clunker. It’s hard to use, the user is frustrated, they need training, and costs begin to rise.

That’s my good design epiphany. Read Hoechst’s blog for some more.