It’s an ambitious goal: to radically reshape our organizations with a singular, unwavering orientation to the user experience—in order to keep competitors at bay and drive business growth. So how do we begin?

We start with a system that we at UXReactor call the bv.d system. It stems from the lessons I’ve learned in working with and observing some of the largest design groups and organizations in Silicon Valley. As I studied the variations between successful and unsuccessful teams, I discovered that the difference came down to four key variables. Successful teams embraced all four traits, and unsuccessful ones were weak in at least one of them.

The bv.d System

Business value by design (bv.d) consists of four key factors that can make or break the intended outcome of becoming an experientially transformed organization:

• The right mindsets;
• The right process;
• The right people;
• The right environment.

Groundbreaking results happen when you have a group of effective and collaborative people following a rigorous process and working in a nurturing environment, all aligned on a shared set of mindsets.

Each attribute multiplies and builds upon the other, generating exponential business value. The opposite is also true: If one factor is missing or neglected, the entire system will falter. Let’s examine each of these four essentials.

The Right Mindsets

Everything in the organization starts and ends with the mindsets of the people and the organization. An effective mindset can overcome most challenges, while an ineffective mindset can mess up even the best opportunities.

The Right Process

A high bv.d relies on a strong process that is replicable, understandable, sustainable, pragmatic, and, most important, effective in driving value for the business and its users. This process needs to be grounded in deep user empathy where variables such as strategic perspective, consistent ideation, design rigor, collaboration, implementation velocity, and above all, governance¹ are factored in.

More on process in Chapter 9: “The Experience Design Process.”

The Right People

Like the adage that it takes a village to raise a kid, similarly, it takes two major groups of people to come together to accelerate business value.

The first is the practitioners (whom we call experience practitioners) who bring the necessary leadership, focus, skills, and accountability to the table. The second group is all the collaborators that work with the practitioners to ensure their work delivers the highest impact to the business and the users.

Read more about people in Chapter 10: “Getting the Right People Right.”

The Right Environment

The last but not least factor for a high bv.d is the organizational environment that surrounds the system.

A highly effective environment is one that is centered on a collective empathy for the users. By nature, it’s collaborative, diverse, and trusting. It shares a strategic vision and values a culture of experimentation. In a nurturing environment, people care about the outcome of their work, and user‐centric ideas see the light of day more often.

In organizations that lack the right environment for people to thrive, BIG DESIGN quickly devolves to small design as teams focus more on product attributes than on user needs and expectations. A lack of true purpose becomes highly demotivating. More on this in Chapter 16.