Tips for success

MAKE YOUR ENTRY THE BEST IT CAN BE

Judges are looking at what is written in your case study and they cannot consider facts that aren’t articulated within your case. It is your job to provide clear and comprehensive information.

The importance of the context and overview section

Judges understand that every design solution operates within its own unique market and business context. This is why entries to this Award are judged entirely on their own merit and not compared to other entries.

In order for judges to assess the significance and scale of impact of your work, your entry must explore and explain the business and market context within which your work exists and provide clarity around the original business, societal or environmental challenge, objectives and goals. The information you provide to them in this area is crucial for establishing the level of effectiveness and the link between your work and the results.

If your work is particularly complex, embedded in a larger-scale business environment and/or without a clearly defined start and finish point, think about how you can clearly articulate the original challenge design was tasked with, what you were aiming to achieve and how you can prove and demonstrate the impact your work has had.

Judges will be looking for clear proof of a cause and effect between the design solution and the results. It is important that you don’t simply assume that design created the results – you must demonstrate proof.

When talking about the design work itself, judges are not looking for a description of the aesthetics of the design solution, but instead will want to clearly understand what was created and how the design decisions behind the solution impacted the results.

Writing about results

In order to assess effectiveness, judges will want to fully understand performance over time, as well as the scale of effect and breadth of impact of the solution.

You could consider:

How your results stack up against the objectives? How challenging were the original objectives?

• If relevant, to what extent has the design work influenced business strategy, direction and/or decision making? In complex environments where other parts of the business drove overall change, how has your work made a meaningful and impressive contribution?
• How does performance compare to market norms or against competitive products or companies?
• Can you demonstrate an uplift over time? (We don’t advise entering work with less than six months of post-launch data, unless its context means results limited to the time period immediately after launch are all that is needed to prove effectiveness.)
• If this is a re-design, how does it compare to the performance of the old design? Is there evidence that design has created a shift in performance or created meaningful change?
• Is there data collected after (and where possible, before) launch to establish a causal relationship between the design and its effectiveness?

Use of both quantitative and qualitative measures within your entry is encouraged – qualitative results are often important in supporting the link between your work and the quantitative results claimed for your work.

The metrics, measurements and results you chose to use in your entry to demonstrate design effectiveness depend entirely upon what your objectives were.

Need some ideas for what metrics could be used? See page 12 in the entry pack.

Proof of effect and other influencing factors

Design is rarely the only factor influencing a project’s success and often design activity is intrinsically linked to other business activity.

The aim of a DBA Design Effectiveness Awards entry is to prove beyond reasonable doubt a cause and effect between the design solution and the results. If other activity had an effect on the success of a project, you should explore, explain and evaluate the impact of that activity in order to help prove how your work created and/or contributed to the results claimed. In some cases, design will be just one part of the story, and you need to demonstrate to the judges the impact design had within that context.

If you think there were no other influencing factors, please state this and show the judges why other potential influencing factors did not impact the results.

You must tackle this area head on and ensure the judges aren’t left with unanswered questions. Each entry has its own unique context and judges will need to be able to discern the extent to which your work impacted the results claimed. If you leave them with doubts, it will impact the success of your entry.

Not sure what counts as an influencing factor? Check out page 14 in the entry pack.