Design is not a finish line. When design is treated as a strategic function it clarifies assumptions, reduces wasted engineering cycles, and moves product-market fit from hope to evidence. Companies that integrate design into core decision-making report stronger growth and higher returns. McKinsey & Company

Founders often think of design as visuals or polish. That view creates two problems: teams ship features that look good but don’t change behavior, and product decisions are driven by opinion rather than evidence. Treating design as strategic fixes both problems. It changes what design does and what it is measured by. Design becomes accountable for outcomes like activation, retention, conversion, or cost per acquisition. Research shows that companies with higher design maturity outgrow peers. McKinsey & Company+1

Weekly short reads, to receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

• McKinsey found that top-quartile companies on their Design Index outperformed peers on revenue growth and shareholder returns. That performance gap is not marginal. It reflects organizational practices that make design a driver of decisions. McKinsey & Company
• UX and product teams that track and report UX metrics can make business impact visible, which helps secure investment in design work. Practical frameworks exist to translate design work into KPIs. Nielsen Norman Group+1

Use this three-part approach when you talk to founders or VPs.

1. Align design to a single business question per quarter
   Pick one outcome, for example, increase 7-day retention for new users by 15 percent. Ask: what behavioral change will drive that outcome? Every experiment, wireframe, or usability test should trace to that question.

2. Turn artifacts into decision documents
   Replace purely visual deliverables with short decision artifacts: a one-paragraph hypothesis, the metric you will change, and the stop rule if it fails. Example template below.

3. Run discovery on the metric, not the feature
   Discovery is often feature-centric. Instead start with an outcome, map user journeys, surface assumptions, and run small experiments to falsify the riskiest assumptions before engineering ships heavy code.

Step 0 - Quick alignment (90 minutes)
Invite the founder, PM, lead engineer, and design lead. State the metric you will own this quarter. List current initiatives that touch the metric. Rank them by uncertainty and impact.

Step 1 - Define a measurable hypothesis (day 1)
Use this one-page template and attach it to any ticket before it enters sprint planning.

Hypothesis template (copy/paste)
• Problem statement: one sentence.
• Hypothesis: if we change X, then Y will move by Z within T days.
• Primary metric: [metric name and event definition].
• Success criterion: measurable threshold and minimum detectable effect.
• Risk & unknowns: two biggest unknowns.
• Test plan: prototype fidelity, sample, measurement method, owner.

Step 2 - Run fast experiments (1–3 weeks)
Prefer prototypes, guardrails, and A/B tests over full rebuilds. Keep sample sizes, stop rules, and data collection explicit. Combine simple usability sessions with quantitative tracking so you know both what changed and why.

Step 3 - Translate results into a roadmap decision (48 hours after test)
If the hypothesis passes, add a scoped engineering ticket to production with acceptance criteria tied to the metric. If it fails, capture what was learned and whether a follow-up experiment is warranted.

1. Payments onboarding: reduce drop-off at payment entry
   Problem: many users abandon at the payment screen. Hypothesis: clarifying required fields and showing price breakdown will reduce abandonment 10 percent in 7 days. Test: deploy a client-side prototype and run an A/B test. Measure: conversion from payment page to order confirmation. This is the kind of tight experiment that produces a clear roadmap item. Evidence from multiple products shows that small improvements to funnel friction improve activation and revenue. Nielsen Norman Group

2. New user activation: reduce cognitive load in first session
   Problem: new users feel overwhelmed and never return. Hypothesis: progressive onboarding that surfaces one microtask at a time increases activation by 12 percent. Test: sequence onboarding flows and measure 7-day retention. This is cheap to test with a short, instrumented prototype and five remote usability tests to explain results.

“We can’t measure design.”
You can. Pick event-level metrics tied to tasks. Use funnels to find where users fall off. Combine qualitative sessions to explain why. The Nielsen Norman Group and other UX researchers provide practical cases showing how teams quantify impact. Nielsen Norman Group

“Design needs to stay pure, not be dragged into numbers.”
Design’s craft is preserved. The question is whether that craft is influencing the company in a meaningful way. When design is measured by outcomes it gets resources and a seat at planning. That makes craft sustainable.

• Does design have an ownerable metric this quarter?
• Is the design lead in roadmap planning?
• Are experiments required before major builds?
• Do design artifacts include a hypothesis and success metric?
• Are test results shared in a non-technical readout for leadership?

IBM and other large organizations built enterprise-scale design practices by embedding designers across product teams, creating rituals and templates that scale design thinking beyond isolated studios. That approach shows how design becomes a decision function, not a finish line. IBM+1

Design is a way to reduce uncertainty. If your design team is visible only at the end of the process, you will waste cycles and erode trust. Start with a single metric, prove impact through quick experiments, and make design an explicit owner of outcomes. Which measurable business outcome will you ask your design team to own this quarter?

Bookmark this for the future. See you next week!

Check out how we do it Chick.studio or DM me: LinkedIn • X

Design is not a finish line. When design is treated as a strategic function it clarifies assumptions, reduces wasted engineering cycles, and moves product-market fit from hope to evidence. Companies that integrate design into core decision-making report stronger growth and higher returns. McKinsey & Company

Founders often think of design as visuals or polish. That view creates two problems: teams ship features that look good but don’t change behavior, and product decisions are driven by opinion rather than evidence. Treating design as strategic fixes both problems. It changes what design does and what it is measured by. Design becomes accountable for outcomes like activation, retention, conversion, or cost per acquisition. Research shows that companies with higher design maturity outgrow peers. McKinsey & Company+1

Weekly short reads, to receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

• McKinsey found that top-quartile companies on their Design Index outperformed peers on revenue growth and shareholder returns. That performance gap is not marginal. It reflects organizational practices that make design a driver of decisions. McKinsey & Company
• UX and product teams that track and report UX metrics can make business impact visible, which helps secure investment in design work. Practical frameworks exist to translate design work into KPIs. Nielsen Norman Group+1

Use this three-part approach when you talk to founders or VPs.

1. Align design to a single business question per quarter
   Pick one outcome, for example, increase 7-day retention for new users by 15 percent. Ask: what behavioral change will drive that outcome? Every experiment, wireframe, or usability test should trace to that question.

2. Turn artifacts into decision documents
   Replace purely visual deliverables with short decision artifacts: a one-paragraph hypothesis, the metric you will change, and the stop rule if it fails. Example template below.

3. Run discovery on the metric, not the feature
   Discovery is often feature-centric. Instead start with an outcome, map user journeys, surface assumptions, and run small experiments to falsify the riskiest assumptions before engineering ships heavy code.

Step 0 - Quick alignment (90 minutes)
Invite the founder, PM, lead engineer, and design lead. State the metric you will own this quarter. List current initiatives that touch the metric. Rank them by uncertainty and impact.

Step 1 - Define a measurable hypothesis (day 1)
Use this one-page template and attach it to any ticket before it enters sprint planning.

Hypothesis template (copy/paste)
• Problem statement: one sentence.
• Hypothesis: if we change X, then Y will move by Z within T days.
• Primary metric: [metric name and event definition].
• Success criterion: measurable threshold and minimum detectable effect.
• Risk & unknowns: two biggest unknowns.
• Test plan: prototype fidelity, sample, measurement method, owner.

Step 2 - Run fast experiments (1–3 weeks)
Prefer prototypes, guardrails, and A/B tests over full rebuilds. Keep sample sizes, stop rules, and data collection explicit. Combine simple usability sessions with quantitative tracking so you know both what changed and why.

Step 3 - Translate results into a roadmap decision (48 hours after test)
If the hypothesis passes, add a scoped engineering ticket to production with acceptance criteria tied to the metric. If it fails, capture what was learned and whether a follow-up experiment is warranted.

1. Payments onboarding: reduce drop-off at payment entry
   Problem: many users abandon at the payment screen. Hypothesis: clarifying required fields and showing price breakdown will reduce abandonment 10 percent in 7 days. Test: deploy a client-side prototype and run an A/B test. Measure: conversion from payment page to order confirmation. This is the kind of tight experiment that produces a clear roadmap item. Evidence from multiple products shows that small improvements to funnel friction improve activation and revenue. Nielsen Norman Group

2. New user activation: reduce cognitive load in first session
   Problem: new users feel overwhelmed and never return. Hypothesis: progressive onboarding that surfaces one microtask at a time increases activation by 12 percent. Test: sequence onboarding flows and measure 7-day retention. This is cheap to test with a short, instrumented prototype and five remote usability tests to explain results.

“We can’t measure design.”
You can. Pick event-level metrics tied to tasks. Use funnels to find where users fall off. Combine qualitative sessions to explain why. The Nielsen Norman Group and other UX researchers provide practical cases showing how teams quantify impact. Nielsen Norman Group

“Design needs to stay pure, not be dragged into numbers.”
Design’s craft is preserved. The question is whether that craft is influencing the company in a meaningful way. When design is measured by outcomes it gets resources and a seat at planning. That makes craft sustainable.

• Does design have an ownerable metric this quarter?
• Is the design lead in roadmap planning?
• Are experiments required before major builds?
• Do design artifacts include a hypothesis and success metric?
• Are test results shared in a non-technical readout for leadership?

IBM and other large organizations built enterprise-scale design practices by embedding designers across product teams, creating rituals and templates that scale design thinking beyond isolated studios. That approach shows how design becomes a decision function, not a finish line. IBM+1

Design is a way to reduce uncertainty. If your design team is visible only at the end of the process, you will waste cycles and erode trust. Start with a single metric, prove impact through quick experiments, and make design an explicit owner of outcomes. Which measurable business outcome will you ask your design team to own this quarter?

Bookmark this for the future. See you next week!

Check out how we do it Chick.studio or DM me: LinkedIn • X