Design Sense
- Home
- Skills & Tools
- Design Sense
Design sense is the ability or instinct of a person to plan the final look or functionality of something before it is made, usually by preparing a blueprint or some drawings.
In organizations, design sense is mostly known as an individual’s awareness and ability to match consumers’ needs with something that is technologically feasible as well as has the aptitude to provide customer value. Ideally, design sense of an individual is his ability to convert consumer need into demand, by offering something that not only satisfies the consumers but delights them.
Design sense is also believed to be the ability to focus on the solution instead of the problem. It allows for the combination of critical as well as creative thinking that helps in organizing information and ideas, making decisions to improve situations, and gaining knowledge.
Why is design sense important as a skill
Although design sense as a skill is mostly appreciated for its effectiveness in the development of new products and services, organizations interested in innovation are able to recognize and apply it on anything that needs improvement such as the business processes or the entire business model.
Without having design sense as a skill, employees conform to the processes governing the company so strictly that bringing about even positive changes can be very problematic. Collaboration and brainstorming become uncommon causing lack of innovation. Improper organizational structure and task overflow can become the reason for the inefficient use of organizational resources such as machines.
In order to fill such voids of new pathways and overcome the chaos of inefficiency, design sense as skill is important as it helps in crafting more efficient business models, processes, and organizational structures that help the company achieve organic growth.
How to improve design sense as a skill
Following are some of the ways you can improve your design sense:
- Be more inquisitive. Design sense of a person is more of a mindset than his skills. Therefore, improving design sense requires cultivating a mindset such that it makes you grow uncomfortable with the status quo and encourages you to do as much research as possible. You must be more curious to learn the causality and must see in everything a potential to improve.
- Improve your observation. Improving design sense as a skill requires improving one of its most important components i.e. observation. You should, however, remember that observation is not limited to what you see with your eyes, you must employee all your senses to observe and then inquire.
- Accept criticism. Your design sense as skill will never improve until you encourage feedback and be open to criticism. Be friendly and approachable so that people share honest opinions. Whether it is the prototype of a product you have designed or changes in the business processes, remember that your design sense can only improve by being open and flexible enough to incorporate the changes suggested by important feedback or criticism.
