Successful, competitive businesses are often reluctant to reveal their strategies to gain commercial advantage. However, they all embrace design as an essential investment to achieve sustainable results and long-term growth.

To the casual observer of a product or service, it might be obvious that ‘design’ has been considered, though this judgment is often based solely on its visual qualities. This can make design appear rather superficial, a bit ‘final stage’, icing on the cake.

Whilst simply making something look prettier can work wonders, this limits the scope for innovative change. Informed, insightful and strategic transformations are achieved when design is incorporated from the very earliest stages of development.

The transition from a hardware-based product to a touchscreen equivalent or moving a consumables-based revenue model to a service-based system can only be achieved with an open–minded, analytical approach. Visualizing ideas, prototyping and testing propositions with models and video etc., dramatically reduces risk and the costs from later stage changes. Ultimately this leads to products and services with predicted costs and informed outcomes, which people want to own and use.