Design Maturity Model 2009 (Beta)

Posted December 8, 2008

So, three years plus since I first published my rough design maturity model it’s still something I get asked about a lot. Some people have (rightly) challenged implications of the model, while others have noted the irony that it didn’t look the greatest for something commenting on design.

A couple things have stood out for me in these conversations:

Design Maturity is *additive*. Each area gets better by including the other areas. Nothing is an island.
Design maturity applies to broad categories *and* in individual products which show elements of Framing, Problem Solving, Function, and Style.
My initial model relegated form with function due to Sullivanesque brainwashing, but form really applies across all areas. It’s in the realization (and form) of a designed product or service that we see these areas emerge.

So I’ve taken another pass at Design Maturity. This time, I’ve included examples from a topic du jour, and suggested that some players in the auto industry are illustrating different aspects of design maturity. Just in case you can’t read 2 pt type, the thumbnail here links to a letter-size, 98kb PDF.

Of course, this is far from perfect, and so I’ve slapped a BETA sticker on it. That’s a bit tongue in cheek, and a bit serious - I’d appreciate your feedback, thoughts, and comments so that we can improve this model.

To that end, as well as opening comments here, I’m releasing the model under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 License. If the linked PDF isn’t enough to play with, email me if you’d like the original Illustrator file. jess AT nform DOT ca

Thanks to all who have commented at various times over the years about these ideas. Looking forward to our continued conversation.

8 Comments so far

bryce on December 8th, 2008

FIRST :-P

I always like the banking model but this is good too :-)
Ralf Beuker on December 8th, 2008

Hi Jess,

and thanks again for openly sharing your model with us! I’m not sure whether my last comment on your posting ‘11 Stories about Canadian Design’ got your attention where I’ve referenced to a similar approach to ‘Framing Design Maturity’ I’m using in my classes and projects: (Flickr!: http://bit.ly/11gNl). Maybe helpful for you as well in developing your model further?!

Greetings from Germany, Ralf.
finn mckenty on December 8th, 2008

i have a question about your design maturity model that is the same question i have of many “design thinking” advocates. i totally understand where you’re coming from with the top of the model, where design redefines the problem rather than just putting a stripe on a widget, but my question is this: isn’t that just “problem solving,” not design? what specifically does design contribute in that arena? without tools like capital budgeting, queing analysis, simulation, data mining, and so forth in their arsenal, what is the best place for designers to add value? for example, you have the toyota production system in there. isn’t that something that operations management has much more of a claim to creating, with TPS’ roots in statistical process controls? if we broaden the definition of “design” to the point at which it includes Six Sigma/TQM/TPS, then isn’t it so broad as to be effectively meaningless? at what point does design end, then?

to be totally clear, i am honestly struggling to answer this question in my own mind. as a (former) designer, i know design and designers have more to contribute than putting a stripe on it, but i’m not sure where the boundaries are or should be. i know it’s a big question, but i’d love to hear your thoughts on it.
peterme on December 9th, 2008

I would argue that in the Problem Solving and Framing areas, instead of showing more cars (standalone products) it would make sense to show services devoted to getting people from a to b (such as Zipcar).
Jess McMullin on December 9th, 2008

@Peter, you’re right, and that’s why Better Place is there (service model for providing electric cars). I’ll add Zipcar too.

@Finn - as we discussed via email, there’s definitely a difference between design as a discipline and design as the innate human activity of planning & effecting change to the status quo. I don’t want to imply that design owns framing or problem solving (lots of other people define & solve problems). But I do see that design can (and should) go beyond style & function.

@Bryce - thanks for being the first ever to ‘First’ a comment thread here at bplusd LOL. And yes, Umpqua bank is an awesome example of framing & problem solving.
Jakub on December 16th, 2008

Hey Jess. Not sure how close you equate maturity with expertise, but if you see them similarly, then there is a nice article out there on “Expertise in Design” (Design Issues).

The article compares novice designers to expert designers, and some of the findings in there match with what you are saying. That being, with maturity (or expertise) designers tend to reframe given problems by stepping back and redefining them (just what you are conveying). Another thing which Nigel writes about is that with expertise designers tend to generate more alternatives, and these “breadth-first” approaches allow them to explore a wider design space. He also continues on and says that with experience, designers also do more evaluation cycles, more iterations, and gain a better ability to tackle ill-defined problems. Just some more mind food. Cheers.

http://oro.open.ac.uk/3271/1/Expertise_Overview.pdf
Adam Richardson on December 30th, 2008

Hi Jess- A little late to the party here, but I wrote some thoughts up on my blog inspired by your design maturity model. Take a look and see what you think! This is an important thing to try and get sorted out as there is way too much vagueness in how the notion of design thinking is getting used.

http://www.richardsona.com/main/2008/12/31/thinking-about-design-maturity.html
Wired To Care » Blog Archive » Design Maturity and Empathy on January 13th, 2009

[...] writing at the intersection of business and design, has revised and reposted his long-in-the-works Design Maturity model, which maps the different roles that design can play for an organization. At the very bottom if [...]

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Design Maturity Model 2009 (Beta)

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