And yet even the launch of the Apple Mac, social media and the iPhone will not come close to the impact of AI on your business, people and society.

At Unfold:AI, we simplify the AI landscape using a straightforward model, categorising it into three essential types.

Sensing – AI that performs, or understands the input from the real world, such as computer vision, data reading, temperature gauges (this is the software that when you search for images on your phone, recognises your cat!).

Thinking – AI that performs decision making, transformation, translation or language processing, this includes chatGPT, Siri, Alexa.

Acting – AI which is capable of interacting with something else, robotics, processes or other computer systems.

Often an ‘AI’ solution will combine elements of each of these three domains.

The Pace of AI Adoption

The last change of this magnitude was probably the launch of Windows and Word in 1984, or the introduction of steam into mill production. The difference this time is the pace of adoption.

Let’s consider the adoption of AI, compared to a model such as Rogers Innovation Curve.

Currently, we’re in the ‘Early Adopters’ phase, with approximately 2 million chatGPT users in the UK – just a fraction of the 28-million-strong workforce. It’s likely that by the end of Q1 2024 the adoption rate will have moved to ‘Early Majority’.

By the end of 2025, we will be at the start of ‘Late Majority’ and by 2028 we will be in laggards.

So, about five years from innovation to maturity. This is really fast. For comparison, the digital transformation took about 20 years, and according to McKinsey only 12% of companies have declared that they achieved all the objectives of that transformation.

“AI's just a trend, right?"

“It’s in Photoshop, so what more is there for design agencies to do?”

Recent research suggests a significant part of the workforce will be impacted by AI, as non-routine tasks (typically knowledge workers) can now have activities automated and augmented.

As much as 85% of all of these roles could be improved by up to 50% (World Economic Forum, 2023). Rapidly adopting AI is going to provide competitive edge within organisations, and allow for previously un-economic but valuable projects to now be achieved. The net end position is that a greater number of jobs, of better value, of greater productivity and improved satisfaction to do, will be created.

To sum it up, AI could handle the equivalent of two workdays per week in the near future. The real challenge lies in strategically delegating tasks to AI – those you either don’t want to perform or that AI excels at.

It’s likely founders and leaders in the design industry are currently really intrigued (and perhaps even a little concerned) about how AI will impact on design teams and agencies, and the design process as a whole.

“That’s okay, AI can’t do ‘creative thinking’. Humans are better at that”.

Repeatedly AI has proven to be excellent at starting the ideation process, or helping people get ‘off the blank page’, but not for the whole creative activity. The key to maximising the potential of AI is in taking a ‘Human + AI’ approach; an augmentation process to generate AI powered super humans, if you like.

Taking a ‘Human + AI’ approach

Let’s consider some of the typical day-to-day activities of a design team/agency, and the different ways AI has the potential to help across these areas:

Creative Ideation: We all believe this is the majority of our activity. But in raw time and effort, is it? It’s certainly an area where each agency provides its unique business DNA, and it’s also the area where AI will support and allow greater options. However, it’s probably the least impactful place for AI within an agency day-to-day.

Asset Production: Having creatively ideated, AI has the potential to assist in creating variations, enabling the rapid re-working of concepts and the creation of additional assets. This is probably the main area of work in the ‘creative’ teams by hour of activity. In this space you will find an explosion of AI tooling in existing workflows, such as Adobe. There are emerging solutions which can lead to further productivity gains. Particularly emerging AI, such as translation, multi-lingual, video editing, video style transferal. This is a key area for AI exploration.

Execution: The execution of activity, campaigns, social media posts, short form content, and the re-purpose of assets for other channels. This is an area where AI will be highly impactful. It is highly process orientated, predictive, data driven. The core strengths of AI when combined with any form of tooling from the ‘Act’ segment of AI.

Administration: The day-to-day running of the agency, including email follow up, calendar management, staff reviews, expenses management. This is an area where AI will definitely be available to help, particularly as the cost to automate and build some of these tools is lowering every day. They will also be baked into tools like ‘hubspot’, ‘xero’, and other common administration systems. Just watch that the licence fees on things like ‘co-pilots’ don’t escalate for you, versus the proven measured productivity gains.

Helping people to help themselves

In addition to segments of activity like these, you need to consider the implication of AI helping people to ‘Act Upwards’. For example, helping less experienced people to do the work of more experienced (40% gain in capabilities and quality). If you are the most experienced (17% gain in output quality) if you work at your own level.

So, what is stopping you from ‘acting upwards’, and lifting the bar of what can be done?

It’s our belief that there are two big challenges:

The Talent Gap in AI Expertise: As of now, AI experts are a rare breed; research suggests that less than 10% of the workforce has in-depth AI experience in a commercial setting. Premiums on salary of circa 20% are already appearing in the job marketplace.

If 80% of your workforce could be made 40% more efficient, this is the challenge you should be considering as a priority. Greater productivity, reduces operational costs, and increases profitability. How are you going to reskill, retrain, upskill yourself, your team, your organisation?

The Challenge of Time-Based Billing: Customers may start questioning, “If AI can do this, why am I being billed so much? I could probably do it cheaper myself.”

It’s time to do the difficult pivot, as rate cards are likely going to become a legacy activity, or at best a race to lowest cost.

Agencies need to modernise to be based on ‘product’ and ‘outcome’, rather than billed hours per job.

The challenge on how to do this will be unique to every organisation, but requires thought today.

If you consider leaders in this will outperform laggards by 35% within 36 months (World Economic Forum, 2023), can you afford to not start on the most impactful generational change in technology?

Start now.

• We asked for the top three skills or competencies that members are looking for in their designers now, and then we discussed what these might look like in 2030 which is when a current GCSE student is likely to enter the workforce.
• Craft skills were discussed as was being able to articulate the rational behind work, the need for curiosity and consensus building.
• ‘Softer’ skills around really listening and being able to get to the root of a problem before solving it, curiosity, enthusiasm and adaptability were also important across the board.
• And what might we need in the future? Use of AI was a popular response along with more digital design capabilities and being able to utilise technology to our advantage. Discernment, problem-solving, and remaining human above all else.
• Some kept their skills and competencies the same, with the caveat that the context they’d be operating in would be different.
• We then went on to discuss how many of the group were seeing the quality of talent they were looking for at the moment – the responses showed a rough 50/50 split.
• There were interesting views from a few who were seeing the skills they need as a business as they were finding them recruiting from outside the design industry. A drama student and a philosophy student currently excelling as a copywriter and developer respectively – there’s certainly something there about casting our net wider than design students and applying our creativity to recruitment. 
• We finished by asking the group to ‘sell’ working in design to someone – how would you have answered that question? Do we know we’re an attractive industry to work in? Prepare your elevator pitch – we’re going to need it if we’re going to secure the future workforce we need. 
• If you’re keen to get involved in practically inspiring the next generation to choose a career in design, we’re supporting Creative Careers Week and applications close this Friday 6 October to take part. You can find out more here. 
• And if you missed us live last week, you can catch up on our webinar with Lady Frances and Sir John Sorrell here.

There was much, much more covered in the hour – you really had to be there. Do make sure you join us in our next DBA Members’ Forum on Monday 6 November at 4pm GMT, look out for an email from me in a few weeks with more details. If you would like to attend, get in touch here. 

It’s real, but who cares?

Today, six of nine of our ‘planetary boundaries‘ for environmental self-regulation have been crossed with unknown but possibly catastrophic consequences for our natural world. An overriding global growth agenda has created an addictive consumption system with no value for nature, making money from ‘selling waste’ that consumes more resources than can be regenerated creating a zero-sum outcome. The same message delivered in Dr Suess’s ‘The Lorax’ a half century ago is now more than a cautionary tale.

Starting as a product designer, Dr Leyla Acaroglu (who is now a United Nations ‘Champion of the Earth’) had a formative experience that led to a powerful insight into the human mindset; why does one person care about the environment and another doesn’t?

Armed with this, she initially saw design as part of the problem until concluding that we need to be inside the system to change it, to understand the desired and undesired impacts of our choices and adopt ‘lifecycle thinking’ through a design mindset.

If not you, then who?

Asking ‘if you were accountable for your actions what would you change?’, Leyla highlighted the agency (power and influence) designers have. If united, we would have tremendous opportunity to disrupt existing systems and business models. ‘After all,’ Leyla reminded us, ‘we know how to manipulate people,’ but we need to close the knowledge gap without shaming others. Swivel Skills, a learning platform founded by Leyla to help educate and train business on circularity and sustainability is a good place to start.

Flagging one of the systemic problems with design – that it doesn’t always interrogate the system it is working in fully, it just deals with the intended outcome – Leyla discussed how design innovation is often focused on consumer behaviours that are locked into the established consumption system. Her recommendation: we should suspend the need to solve these from the get-go and have deeper curiosity about the system itself. 

With companies increasingly required to report into Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) frameworks, design can be a key sustainability line item. From a design perspective we are uniquely positioned to do the appraisal and deliver more value than a tool to create demand for business.

The end of the world party

There is no waste in nature. Nature creates regenerative systems where everything optimises life. Yet nature is treated as if it has no value.

We heard how design led lifecycle approaches can help to uproot us from the ‘extractive economy’ to move to a circular and regenerative economy. But it can be hard to convince clients and their customers that it is better than the currently disposable status-quo.

Leyla was clear that design must focus on ‘elegantly disrupting the business model’, yet still needs to stimulate desire the same way when we execute commercially, to deliver a beautiful and frictionless service delivery experience that invites consumer participation. Ultimately, it’s a people and behaviour problem so design should ‘create the party everyone wants to go to,’ says Leyla, ‘as no one wants to go to the end of the world party’. This requires a holistic approach taking in all aspects of design from product and content to positioning and style.

Be the change, redesign everything

Start by identifying the primary and secondary purpose of the product, whether it’s protection, performance, status etc, and assess the product’s current linear lifecycle, from material extraction to end-of-life scenarios. From there we can work out how to transform it.

Leyla’s design toolkit features five main lifecycle stages. And data based lifecycle assessment tools can help map impacts to further enable the design process. There are plenty of tools out there from Plan A to Greenly and they can help build business arguments and justifications.

Design circular business models to underpin ‘product as service’ systems that focus on reuse. Consider everything from packaging design and material specifications to takeback programs, subscription services etc. And if you can’t make it reusable, how do you make it repairable, or enable materials to be recaptured and remanufactured?

Further design strategies from upcycling to recycling can help keep materials in the system for as long as possible. And if you can’t find a circular pathway then make sure design considers the product’s end of life destination.  From there you must figure out how to implement the circular system in place of the linear system and manage the trade-offs. And don’t forget that you still need to make the product and service experience enjoyable to create consumer participation.

Ultimately, it’s about action. Right now.

5 tips for greater impact

The agency website can be a frustrating subject. I’ve lost count of the agency managing directors who have said to me, ‘Don’t look at our website. It’s not really representative of who we are and our current offer.’ The website is a job that’s never completed and it’s best to think of it as akin to a living organism – constantly evolving, never standing still. So, whether you’re looking to completely reassess your website or just sharpen it, these 5 thoughts might help:

1. This is serious

When it comes to our own websites, agencies are frequently guilty of starting with the styling, not the message. Exactly the type of thing we warn clients against. It can quickly become a one-dimensional creative project that people get excited about in the studio, rather than a brand positioning and design project. The website can be a great vehicle for re-thinking the agency’s difference. So, before a creative gets near the website, get the thinking right. Research what clients are looking for, review your competitors’ sites, run a workshop to look at some key questions. Who are we, what do we do, how do we do it and why do we do it are very simple questions, but they can be incredibly difficult to answer. Do all those things that you’d normally do for a client project that can easily fall by the wayside for an internal project. Treat it with the same rigour.

2. View it through a client’s eyes

88% of clients want a website to quickly show them what an agency is best at. With so many agencies offering so many services, this can be difficult. Nailing and articulating how and where you excel is crucial. Remember that this isn’t necessarily a particular service. It can equally be the way you think or the way you approach challenges. In a new business context, clients need fast extraction of useful information. In other words, they are looking for speedy answers to questions such as what the agency is best at, do they have relevant experience that fits the client’s strategic challenges and what would they be like to work with? 59% of clients stated an increased need for creative work to demonstrate a return on investment, so clearly flagging up your work’s commercial effectiveness is always powerful. Above all, never lose sight of your website’s main purpose. It’s really about whetting the client’s appetite enough that they might want to meet you. Primarily, the website is there to sell a meeting. We need to make it easy for them. Clear and compelling messaging is key.

3. Case studies – keep them short

Most clients don’t have the time or inclination to wade through dense case studies on your website. 91% of clients prefer agency websites with less copy, so keep them short and concise. It’s more about sharp, pithy statements and a visual story. There are two other reasons for keeping case studies ruthlessly short. Firstly, if you’ve already told the detailed story of the project, what are you going to tell them when you meet? Secondly, agencies need to tell client stories differently, depending on who you are talking to. Keeping web case studies short gives you the flexibility to do this when you actually meet the potential client. The days of having a pre-prepared bank of case studies, applicable to multiple potential clients, should be over. We’re not librarians. Instead, the modern agency should be a curator of case studies, re-engineering case studies to be pinpoint relevant to a particular client and the strategic issues they are facing.

4. Punch above your weight

22% of clients believe that some agency websites defy credibility – ‘Can an agency of 15 people really deliver that long list of services? How on earth are they able to monitor global trends?’ Clearly, you need to avoid hype and over claim, but remember that the agency website is an opportunity to set out your stall for the future. It’s aimed at the clients you want to attract, the types of project you want to win. For small/medium sized agencies, the website is often an opportunity to punch above your weight. So, think about the messages that support that and which messages might detract. For instance, overly humorous people profiles can easily convey your agency as small. Do you show everyone in the agency or just ‘key people’? Does segmenting your work by industry sectors merely show up the gaps in your experience? Is your website just a glorified portfolio with additional news, or are you sharing an authentic viewpoint?

5. Allow clients to get under the skin

We all want to know more about people and organisations more quickly. What really makes the agency tick? This is the agency story, the emotional part of the sell. Also, what’s your view on the world? What are your beliefs? Go beyond the standard ‘About us’ – reveal yourself. Answer the question, ‘Would I want to meet these people?’

• Ask what success looks like – then you know when you’ve achieved (and no doubt exceeded) what was expected, and have metrics in place to track that impact – this is the foundation of proving the value of what you can add through design.
• Getting all stakeholders on board early is key, as is demonstrating the value of sharing data openly to enable you to track results and prove you’ve delivered on expectations. One winner has award wins written into their contracts at their client’s request, and wins earn them a bonus – making it part of the way you work means you can always prove the value of your work.
• Winning a rigorously judged metrics-based award like the DBA Design Effectiveness Awards brings a level of respect to your team within the business when the proof of the impact of design is independently recognised and rewarded.
• I encourage you to dive into entries that sit outside of your specialisms – take a look at what exhibitions are doing, or a digital project for example. You can see all the 2023 winners here and the archive here. 
• It takes a team to prepare a submission – and it’s a fantastic way of elevating the success of the key players within that team, celebrating their impact and strengthening your business culture as somewhere that values the contribution of individuals. 
• Celebrating success aside, one winner outlined the sense of self-worth their team gains from being independently recognised for the work they have done – and they’re sure that contributes greatly to their impressive talent retention stats.
• Don’t leave it too late, book in your entry scoping call now, winners greatly praised the ability of the DBA team to help them navigate the application process and approach their work with a different perspective, you can book a call here. 
• If you want design to be valued in your business and beyond as an equal stakeholder, being able to track and measure the impact of your success is key.

There was much, much more covered in the hour – you really had to be there. Do make sure you join us in our next DBA Members’ Forum on Monday 2 October at 4pm BST, look out for an email from me in a few weeks with more details. If you would like to attend, get in touch here. 

The High-Risk Pregnancy Referral Tool | Philips Foundation and Philips Experience Design | Grand Prix and Gold

Guinness NitroSurge | Diageo and Dolmen Design & Innovation | Gold

Lloyds Bank, 399 Oxford Street | Lloyds Banking Group and SpaceInvader | Bronze

Nuud rebrand | Nuud and Mother Design | Silver

Selfoss Town Centre | Sigtún Thróunarfélag and M Worldwide | Bronze

Solar Energy UK rebrand | Solar Energy UK and Brand Ethos | Bronze

Hockney’s Eye | The Fitzwilliam Museum and Holmes Studio | Bronze

All of the 2023 DBA Design Effectiveness Award winners’ results and full case studies can be viewed here.

Are either, or both, of these scenarios familiar?

It seems to be increasingly the case that companies, especially big ones, are pushing their working capital requirement onto their suppliers by imposing long payment terms on them and then not paying to those terms. Ironically, these same companies are often the ones insisting their suppliers work to improve their ESG credentials.

Long Payment Terms

Payment terms historically used to be 30 days after the date of invoicing but suppliers are increasingly being asked to agree to much longer payment terms as per the real life example above. It is often hard to understand why these companies do this. Surely they are big enough to pay everyone on shorter payment terms.

But look at it from their point of view. In the example of a white goods manufacturer they may be making goods in somewhere like China, shipping them to a warehouse in the UK, distributing them to their client’s distribution centers and then waiting 90 days for their clients to pay them. All the time they are paying out money long before they get paid by their clients.

It is easy to see why companies like this try to pay their suppliers as late as possible. However, they can only do this to the extent that suppliers are able to cope. It is a commercial balancing act between having reliable, good quality suppliers versus ensuring their working capital requirements can be met. If payment terms are too long they will struggle to find reliable suppliers willing/able to work to those terms.

The fact that payment terms are a commercial decision means they are negotiable. It is a commercial decision for both parties to agree to and should be seen in the context of the overall commercial decisions e.g. price, timelines, deliverables etc. It may well be right to agree to a reduced price for shorter payment terms, or a way of defending against lower prices by agreeing to longer payment terms. The point is, it is negotiable.

Quick takeouts:

• Understand your client’s working capital requirements.
• Negotiate, negotiate, negotiate!
• Look for alternatives such as invoice financing.
• If the payment terms don’t work for you, don’t do the work.

Late Payments

There are multiple reasons why payments may not be made in accordance with agreed payment terms. As often as not, especially with big companies, it is a problem of process rather than a lack of willingness (or inability) to pay. On saying that, any delay in payment is to the benefit of the client and detriment to the supplier.

The process issue could be to do with the client’s processes. In order to get approval for a purchase order, there may be multiple layers of approval required. It only takes one person in the approval process to be on annual leave for the process to be delayed. Also, it is often a task that clients are not fond of doing. They may be under time pressure to deliver and therefore put off raising the purchase order until absolutely necessary. They won’t necessarily think of the impact on the supplier.

On the other hand, the issue could be with the supplier’s processes. Starting work without a purchase order is always going to be a risk and it is often difficult to insist on having one before starting. Alternatively, the instructions provided for invoicing are not followed. Maybe the wrong address is used, the invoice is not being sent in the subscribed manner or the invoice doesn’t quote the requested information. These issues can be especially problematic as often a supplier doesn’t find out there’s an issue until they chase for payment.

In order to minimise late payments, it is important that everyone involved understands what is required. If, however, the client is delaying as a way of increasing their working capital it is important to have a clear policy on credit control, how and when to escalate and having a clear and honest discussion with the client. It is also worth ensuring that any contract is very clear about the ownership of any Intellectual Property. This should only ever transfer once payment has been received in full.

Quick takeouts:

• Be sure all invoicing requirements are followed fully at all times.
• Make sure the right bit of paper gets to the right place, at the right time i.e. get in touch with the client’s finance department long before the invoice is due to ensure it is on their system ready to be paid.
• Make sure the client is aware of the impact of any delay in issuing purchase orders.
• Don’t start work without a purchase order.
• Chase, chase, chase!

Final thoughts

As the saying goes “Cash is King.” It is vital in a commercial relationship that everyone understands the implications of the entire agreement, including the flow of money. The real issue is when big companies agree terms and then deliberately pay beyond the time that has been agreed. This is happening all too often and action needs to be taken against such companies. At the very least they should be named and shamed but there is also a role for governments to ensure there is a legal framework in place to discourage companies from taking advantage of smaller suppliers for their own gain. 

• We were joined by Immanuel Koh, Associate Professor from the Singapore University of Technology and Design who is running the world’s first Design and AI course that equips graduates with a wide range of skills in product, service, spacial and system design, with AI tools at its heart.
• Given the rapidly changing landscape in AI, they keep the course up-to-date with industry collaborators such as Google and government departments, and faculty research.
• They’re finding the government is valuing the skills of these graduates just as much as industry.
• One impact of the advancement of AI on design is that we risk having a skills-gap – if students are being taught to work in this way, when they enter the workplace, how will that work in reality in our studios if we’re not already working like this?
• One contributor’s opinion was that AI integration in design empowers designers to improve and streamline their processes and that using AI boosts efficiency, freeing time for creative exploration – in short it enables them to punch above their weight.
• They’re seeing rapid benefits in the day-to-day work in their team through using Chat GPT-4 with plugins for complex design tasks and ideation. While there are lots of tools you could easily get distracted with, Midjourney for images and Wonder Studio for CGI are the main tools they’re using at the moment.
• One member warned of the security risks of uploading client data to open AI sources, so one to watch out for, make sure you have policies in place to protect both your own and your client’s data.
• Advice if you haven’t tried any of these tools before is to spend time exploring their capabilities, there’s a lot to learn and the addition of the skill of an experienced designer to sort the good ideas from the bad will leave you with a better outcome, and it might just save you some time. 
• There may be big changes coming down the line for agencies, but using AI could help designers get to work on things they might not get to work on otherwise, like environmental or societal challenges, if we had more time, the opportunities are endless. 
• It’s important to make time for exploration and discovery in your business, your team can lead the charge, but you can create the space for them to explore what they could do and how it could impact the work you do. 

There was much, much more covered in the hour – you really had to be there. Do make sure you join us in our next DBA Members’ Forum on Monday 4 September at 4pm BST, look out for an email from Deborah in a few weeks with more details. If you would like to attend, get in touch here.