Why do redesign initiatives fail?

So many people have been asking why do Redesign initiatives fail ? Well, you have to keep that fear of change from creeping in and speak it in the back of your mind.

Get to Meet Humana

Hey everyone. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of Q and answers. My name is Humana and I’m the general manager and founder of Rocksauce studios. What is rock cells? Where design agency, we help our clients big and small, whatever size they may be, tackle big problems, whatever those problems may be with design product thinking, UX, UI, rebranding, innovation, workshops, design thinking, and of course redesign. And as part of that, one of the things that often comes up to us is why do redesign initiatives fail? And that’s what I want to talk about. On this episode of CUNY answers, let’s start off with the fact that a lot of times, people don’t quite have a strong stomach for change. They have a fear of change. This is natural human behavior. A lot of us like to see change on a broad context, but we don’t like to see change within ourselves or within our specific sphere, our little five dome that we have.

Why Redesign Initiative Fail?

And so as things start to change and get different, we will see that it’s becoming unfamiliar and that unfamiliarity will lead us back to what was familiar. You’ve probably heard the adage. Well, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Well, just because it’s not broken, doesn’t mean you can’t be better. And that kind of thinking keeps you where you are. There’s the same. What got you here? Won’t get you there and you’ve gotta be ready for that. And so a redesign initiative is very much about saying, okay, we have a goal of what we’re trying to get to. What do we need to do to get there? So you need to make sure that you don’t have ill-defined goals. What do you want to accomplish with this design initiative? What are your purposes for making it happen? Are users not coming to your website? Enough?

Wondering why people are not downloading your app?

Are people bouncing from your website really quickly? People are not sending out your form? Is there a certain loss of revenue because you’ve seen your usership just decline over the course of months, who knows? What are your goals that you want to turn around with the redesign initiatives you need? Cause that to define what is actually going to be a good redesign initiative and whether or not redesign initiatives are even what you need in the first place. You need to make sure that you understand why things are happening, the way they’re happening. That means you’ve got to have a certain level of research. You could just look at your website or look at your corporate brand and go, well, this is just old crappy junk. I have no interest in this company anymore. And we need to look fresher because that’s going to get us more clients do it.

“Click here to learn more about Ux Design“

And that may be right. That could be what’s going on. Do you know for a fact now, without the research now, without the investigation of your users of your audience to say, what’s not working, why isn’t this working? What’s not happening the way you want it to happen. You’ve got to have that basis. You must have that foundation for a redesign initiative to work. Why? Because if you don’t, then you just end up with a redesign that’s based on nothing. And there’s no guarantee that redesign is going to be successful. I’ve dealt with so many clients who have come to us saying I hired a company. I really liked their work. They did good stuff. They did a design that we all fought was great. As soon as I rolled it out, adoption dropped off 50%. We lost leads. Traction went away, traffic disappeared. Q what do I do a lot of times it’s because they didn’t understand why they were having the problems in the first place.

Redesign Initiatives Fail Due To Poor Research

They just decided to go haphazard down the road of redesign without thinking of how do they fix it the right way. Even where sometimes they’ve done research two, three, four, five years ago. So they thought they knew the problems, but they hadn’t analyzed that data correctly. Or the world had changed, which happens all the time. What we expect from software, what we expect from interfaces, what we expect from forums or music stations, or television or whatever product, it may be changes all the time. A new leader comes out. They rock the world, man. And when they rock the world, everything changes. Nobody did dating apps. The way Tinder did before Tinder, Tinder changed everything. And not everybody copies Tinder. If you had an app and design for dating before Tinder came out and the Tinder launched, you needed to go back and redesign your app. Why? Because suddenly you’re behind the ball. So you got to know why things aren’t working got to do that research. And that research takes time.

Finding Out What’s Not Working

It takes a strategy to accomplish. Thomas Edison did not sit down and design the light bulb. The first tryout he failed so many times he tried it. It didn’t work. He tried to get you, but to know the Virgin was a little bit better. He kept going until he got to the version of the light bulb that became ubiquitous throughout the world. Do you think you’re smarter than Thomas Edison? I’m not. I may be nicer, but I’m definitely not smarter. And so I’m to rely on my research and I’m going to rely on the concept of trying things out, putting in front of users to make sure that it works, but that requires patients to often see people involved in a design initiative. And because things aren’t moving fast enough because they don’t see a new website up in a month or because they don’t see a massive visual change happening with users within a quarter, they’re freaking out and they’re going, man, we got to get this going, should not take the song.

It Takes Time

All you gotta do is just design the damn thing, make it work, but that’s not true. You can design the damn thing and it could fail again. That happens all the time. You’ve seen these things. Do the work, have patients going down the right road and taking the time now saves more time overall, man, it just saves so much more money. Rolling out a full blown redesign. That’s wrong is going to be a failure. Why do it take some time to do the research? Take the time to make sure it’s happening. None of that’s possible with that executive buyer. You must have somebody in the company, somebody in your organization, who’s an executive who is a high enough on the ladder who will stand beside you and go, I understand how this redesign initiatives should work. And I understand the benefits of doing it the right way.

I’m not going to be breathing down their neck to make sure they’re getting it done in a week. I’m not going to make sure they’re just rolling something out because Hey, I need to see something tomorrow. Or I want to go show a board. They understand that if they’re going to do it, then you can do it the right way. Otherwise it’s going to fail this sponsor. This champion must happen without it. You will run into the situation where those in the middle start to get worried. They start to get scared of all the time it’s taking. And the fear of change will start to lock in and then they will start pushing you to do things the way they have always been done. Well, what’s the problem with that. We can’t get there by doing what we did to get here, right? So we must change things up and we must understand why we’re doing what we’re doing. No one said it’s going to be easy. If it was easy, there wouldn’t be any poorly designed products out there. There wouldn’t be websites that people don’t want to visit. Designers would just come up with stuff and boom, everybody would love it. Doesn’t work that way.

If you’re reading this, you may be facing your need to have a redesign of your own. Well, guess what? You’ve reached the right people. You can either give us a call or you can shoot us an email and we’re going to give it back to you, help you out with whatever you need. We don’t have a one size fits all sort of solution where I’m talking to you and say, Hey, what are you dealing with right now? What’s the answer solution could be a drop down box is missing on a form and that’s it. Hey man, if that’s the case, let’s do it for you. With that. My name is humanity. This has been Q and answers. I’ll see you next time. Contact Rocksaucedev for more information on why redesign Initiatives fail.