Building Design Maturity

by James Beardmore

6 min read

Treating design as a strategic asset rather than a visual service can be a game changer

Design is increasingly being recognized as a critical factor in business success, helping companies stand out, enhance customer experiences, and drive innovation. However, only a small number of organizations truly embed design into their processes and culture—meaning many others miss the mark on building the design maturity needed for real success. What’s missing? A better definition of what design is.

What is design maturity?

Design maturity is a way to describe how deeply embedded design practices are in an organization. It’s a measure of the sophistication with which a company uses design – how they apply it to solve problems, meet customer needs, and achieve strategic goals.

There are plenty of design maturity measurement models out there, and most follow a similar structure, outlining levels that range from ad hoc or reactive at the low end, to strategic, systemic design at the high end. The progression typically moves through something that looks like this:

Ad Hoc: Design is reactive and often focused on aesthetics rather than function or strategy. It’s seen as a tactical task rather than a value driver.
Functional: Design begins to be recognized as important, though it’s still siloed in specific departments. Design processes may be formalized, but are inconsistently applied.
Defined: Design is seen as integral to certain aspects of the business, such as product development or branding. There is a growing focus on user-centered design and cross-departmental collaboration.
Managed: Design is a core business competency. It’s embedded across teams and aligned with key business goals. Customer insights and data increasingly inform design decisions.
Strategic: Design is a strategic asset. It’s fully integrated into the organization’s leadership and operations, playing a role in defining the future of the business. Design is used to foster innovation and guide long-term strategy.

Which model you want to refer to doesn’t really matter. What’s important is understanding the progression. It starts at treating design as a visual task, and evolves towards embedding design as a strategic tool.

What value does design maturity actually deliver?

Multiple studies show that companies that embed design at a strategic level outperform their peers. These organizations only make up around 5% of companies practicing design. They tend to treat design as an investment rather than a cost, which ultimately boosts profitability and growth. The value they derive from design maturity includes:

Fueling innovation

Companies with higher design maturity can use design not just to address existing customer needs but to anticipate future trends and behaviors. Design at the strategic level empowers organizations to innovate. They can create new business models, products, and services that set them apart from competitors.

Improving customer experience

Good design is about problem-solving. Integrating design into company culture results in products, services, and experiences that are more intuitive, enjoyable, and aligned with customer needs. This translates to better customer retention, loyalty, and satisfaction.

Boosting cross-functional collaboration

High design maturity fosters collaboration across departments. Teams that might traditionally work in silos—marketing, sales, product development, engineering—begin to work together more seamlessly. Design serves as a bridge between functions, improving communication, reducing friction, and creating a more cohesive approach to problem-solving.

How to build design maturity

Understand where you’re starting from

To know where you want to go, you need to know where you are. Getting an honest and unbiased picture of your organization’s relationship with design can help you understand where to focus efforts. You could also consider getting an outside perspective from a consultant or another trusted 3rd party.

Champion design at the executive level

For design maturity to gain traction, leaders need to advocate for design at the executive level. This means ensuring that design is a part of key strategic discussions and demonstrating the value of design. Making this link will lead it directly to business outcomes such as improved customer retention, faster time to market, and increased revenue.

Invest in design talent

Design mature organizations invest in talent, training, and tools. These companies focus on hiring designers, and design partners, with a strategic mindset who can think beyond visuals and contribute to overall business strategy. They build strong ties with like-minded colleagues, peers, and partners who will support their initiatives. They also invest in resources like design systems, prototyping tools, and user research so teams can work more effectively.

Promote a customer-centric culture

Design maturity is deeply connected to how well an organization understands and empathizes with its customers. This works by encouraging teams to regularly engage with customer feedback, user research, and data-driven insights. This will help ensure that design solutions are grounded in real customer needs, rather than assumptions or personal preferences. Just a note: good design is understanding customers and finding elegant solutions, not just doing what they ask.

Encourage cross-functional collaboration

Break down silos by fostering collaboration between design and other departments like engineering, product development, and sales. Marketing leaders can facilitate this by hosting cross-functional workshops, encouraging joint problem-solving sessions, or adopting agile methodologies that emphasize iteration and collaboration.

Measure and demonstrate impact

It’s important to show how design impacts key business metrics. Whether it’s increased conversion rates, higher customer satisfaction scores, or more successful product launches, having tangible evidence of design’s contribution to the business helps make the case for continued investment in design maturity.

This all only works if you define design properly

Many companies who want to benefit from a design culture are stuck at the ad hoc or reactive level because there’s a fundamental misunderstanding of what design is. Deep down it’s still all about how their products and their marketing looks. Design is about how things work, and the more closely connected it is to business strategy, the better. This can then influence beautiful products and interfaces, not the other way round. You can see the same misunderstanding in UX, a discipline that covers a lot of ground. UI design is the top surface layer, but the two terms get conflated. It’s a mindset shift. If you can get teams to start thinking about how design can help solve a problem or come up with an idea, instead of how to present an idea, then the value a company can get from design starts to rise pretty quickly.

At Pilot, our ideal engagement is to not just hand off deliverables but to help organizations boost their capabilities as a business. Our work with Creative Destruction Lab is a good example. They had ambitious plans to more deeply integrate design into their operations when they approached us about rethinking their community platform. Working together, we were able to deliver a great user experience but we also equipped them with a robust toolkit in the form of design systems and workflows. This enabled them to launch new ideas faster as they continued to scale their operations.