The role of design in the new age of experience

Brands today are no longer just creating products, they’re in the business of building experiences, experiences that span all aspects of the customer journey, and drive customer loyalty. These must be innovative, compelling, personalised and, most importantly, well designed, meaning there’s never been more pressure for design teams to channel their creativity at scale.

As the case for stand-out, design-led experiences becomes stronger, designers’ roles are changing. They’re collaborating with the entire business, taking on a data-driven approach to become architects of the customer experience and all facets of external-facing communications.

Here at Adobe, we wanted to find out exactly how the working lives of creative professionals have changed in light of their new-found responsibilities, the increasing pressures they face, and the new technologies at their disposal.

Through this series of interviews with creative leaders from the likes of Microsoft, Sainsbury’s and the BBC, we’ve heard how creative-first customer experiences are changing their working lives, with content velocity, data-driven design, personalised customer-centric UX, and collaborative, agile working arising consistently throughout these conversations.

Emerging technologies, such as Voice Assistants, Virtual Reality (VR) and the Internet of Things (IoT), were also a recurring theme for these creative leaders, who are being challenged to ensure these devices and capabilities can improve the customer experience, and ensure the UX is first in class.

It’s certainly a challenging time to be a creative, but never has there been more excitement, opportunity, or responsibility in the industry either. At Adobe, we believe all businesses should be able to push the boundaries in building design-led experiences, with creatives sitting at the heart of them. We hope this Creative Review inspires you to take your design team on the next step of the creative journey, and for your business to become a true experience maker.

This an extract from the Working Lives of the Creatives report which we recently commissioned in conjunction with Creative Review.

In this report we interviewed a number of design leaders from a wide range of industries and looked at how their design departments are organised, how they collaborate with their internal stakeholders and the skills they need to do their work and set themselves apart from the competition.

The report is available to download here.