Design as a Business Lever

Every company talks about design, but few understand when and how to use it for real business leverage.

Last trimester, I opted for an elective in Industry Strategy and the designer in me took notes. In this article, I share with you ways in which design can help you stay ahead, depending on the maturity of your industrial landscape and product.

The following is the S-curve lifecycle that any industry goes through.

Here’s how design acts as a business lever at each stage of this curve:

1. Innovation Phase

In this phase, the technology is newly invented, there is no consistency in design, and every company is trying to create the best version.

The publicly accepted design becomes the face of the technology with a dominant design. This gives them leadership in that domain. Example: Early Google simplifying search vs Yahoo’s complexity; or early Figma creating collaborative metaphors in a fragmented tool landscape.

Example: The Evolution of Smartphones (Early 2000s)

IBM Simon Personal Communicator was the first touchscreen technology in the market. Now, Microsoft, BlackBerry and LG were all in a race to capture market share with their versions of touchscreen technology.

Until Apple was launched and became the market leader, while others were treating these devices like miniature PCs, Apple thought from the first principle. Apple’s design fits human intuition, lifestyle, and emotional context perfectly. And the rest is history.

Every device before that got the tech right, but the human wrong.

People standing in crowd near the Apple store. Image Courtesy: Cult of Mac

In this phase of technology, users are still trying to figure out the product. How can design help:

1. Designers can map the context and the user’s needs and align the product with it.

2. Think from the first principle (and not design a mini PC as a phone) and design for the target users’ mental model.

Through the language of design product can intuitively explain what it does and how best to use it.

2. Expansion Phase

In this phase of an industry, the design is standardised, and users have recently settled on how to interact with the product.

When the market is in the expansion phase, Scale > Innovation

This phase is more about efficiency; radical innovation takes a back seat. As users have finally settled and learned how to use it, it is not a good move to change the design radically.

The goal of design at this stage must be to be repeatable, efficient, and most importantly, coherent.

Example (2024): UPI transaction application

Once UPI reached mass adoption, user behaviour stabilised:

• Everyone learned: “Scan QR → Confirm name → Enter PIN → Success.”

• Any deviation now causes confusion, mistrust, or perceived “risk.”

So from a behavioural economics view:

The cost of user confusion outweighs the benefit of design novelty.

Designers here can help with:

1. In a balanced market like this, Ease of use = More customers. The goal becomes to refine without breaking the habit, reduce smaller frictions in flow and enjoy more loyal customers

2. Standardisation becomes essential for faster production, streamlining all the assets, like the design system, in the digital product industry.

3. In expansion, acquisition ramps up, but churn kills growth. UX needs to optimise activation, engagement, and retention.

4. At this phase, the feature is standardised in the industry, and experience becomes the moat. Designs that bring delight and resonate deeply are chosen from the bunch, like micro-touchpoints, onboarding, loyalty experiences, AI-driven personalisation, and offline integrations.

3. Decline Phase

The growth slows down and flattens out eventually, the competition wears off, and the market is stabilised and standardised.

But, beneath the surface, companies are trying out the next dominant design/innovation to stay in the game.

At this stage, users have evolved. They have a reference point and some gained experience and behaviours (example: swipe-up gesture for next content became universal after Facebook). It's time for version 2 of the technology or a new market disruption.

Example: TikTok Disrupting Static Social Media (2020ish)

Facebook and Instagram were already well-dominant in the market, and people were already obsessed with scrolling static, follower-based feeds.

Behavioural/context insight: TikTok observed that users cared more about what they want to see and scroll until dopamine hits, not much about who posted. Additionally, social media users cared about staying stimulated and curious.

Disruption: TikTok’s algorithmic “For You” feed flipped the social paradigm, treating every interaction as behavioural data to optimise your next hit. The industry followed with reels, shorts different versions of it.

At this phase, designers can:

1. Streamline, declutter, and emotionally refresh the core UX to combat stagnation.

2. Partner with strategy or innovation teams to visualise and validate new business models.

At this phase, mature orgs often lose touch with their users, they optimise old assumptions, and hence the next startup can become the next leader with a new understanding of the user and hence a more efficient design.

---

Hi, I am Nimisha Das, a UX Designer pursuing an MSc in Behavioural Science. I am on a mission to help startups design meaningful products.

Did I miss anything? Write to me in the comments. Or simply hit me up on LinkedIn!