Why It’s Time To Start Valuing Expertise.
A positive visitor experience is an absolute prerequisite for any successful destination these days. To achieve this, good design and a sound strategy needs to be adopted by the asset owner. Good design is outcome led. That is to say that when framing the success of a design or strategic solution, it is the outcome that the solution delivers that should be scrutinized when evaluating success, as well as when evaluating potential collaborative partners.
Expertise Counts & Experience Matters
Expertise is built on delivering positive outcomes which builds vital experience and demonstrates track record. Experience and track record combined underline one’s expertise. Expertise is hard to gain in any field, it typically involves a significant investment of time and practice in developing and refining one’s approach to delivering tangible results and positive outcomes for others.
This is especially true in the design business. Reputation is even harder to build than expertise and this involves not only delivering positive outcomes and having expertise but also looks at the manner in which the design practice applies itself and works with others both interpersonally and professionally, including matters such as ethics, reliability, transparency, ability, track record and trustworthiness. For instance, if you were in need of medical intervention, expertise, track record and reputation are probably the three most important factors that you would consider when evaluating potential surgeons. This of course holds true in almost any domain where person A requires the expert advice of person B. Although this is obvious to many, something currently seems amiss when it comes to procuring design expertise.
Sadly, it would appear that as the path to engagement for design consultants is steadily leading down the road of nonhuman to human contact that resides within the bubble of each procurement department’s oracle cloud, the conversation around expertise is swiftly overlooked in favor of arbitrary forms and endless field filling. Regrettably, this almost immediately jeopardizes the level of expertise to be delivered to the client by virtue of the system getting in the way of genuine conversation and appraisal of needs. We have seen this over and over within the realm’s wayfinding consultancy, where it many cases the actual processes and outcomes involved seem misunderstood.
Design Is More Than Numbers
Despite the seeming intent of some, designing for people and the built environment like we do at Creative Dialog as a leading regional consultancy is not a box ticking exercise and the expertise of doing so does not live in an excel spreadsheet.
Designing for people involves people and those people need to be at the table to discuss the issues not hidden behind IT systems second guessing relying on uneducated procurement departments seeking the lowest bidder. While we understand and appreciate the procurement process as being absolutely necessary for all involved, bringing destinations to life requires person to person, team to team collaboration and discussion across multiple business segments and stakeholders to get right and that conversation has to begin before the start of the engagement, it has to transcend a one size fits all procurement approach that’s conducted at arm’s length.
Destination provides a positive visitor experience is paramount to its commercial success. So, a simple question arises out of all of this: If expertise is not being valued at the time of procurement, then how can it be expressed during the lifecycle of a project? The simple answer is – it usually doesn’t. In recent times, we have seen the outcome of this firsthand where a combination of poor partner evaluation and lowest bid first approaches have led to a litany of poor outcomes when it comes to visitor experience and wayfinding programs across the region. An outcome that has clearly not been helped by various practitioners who lack expertise and continually undermine the good work of other more experienced and reputable firms through cutting corners and fees in order to secure work. This trend only seems to be accelerating and we see this occur across various design disciplines from interior design to landscape architecture as well as wayfinding and it is highly detrimental to the viability of all design businesses across the region. As the old saying goes – no one ever got rich winning a price war.
And herein lies the issue: If consultants don’t value their own expertise, then how does anyone expect the client to? Price cutting, blind bidding and online auctions are a one-way ticket to ensuring that the outstanding work provided by quality orientated design practices remains undervalued and underappreciated. Clients always like to indicate that they want the best – and some truly do – however, more often than not the temptation to appoint the cheapest option seems almost irresistible under the false premise of saving money.
Cumbersome, disjointed and non-personable procurement paths that fail to value a practice’s expertise only make matters worse for both practitioner and client, even if the undesirable project outcome takes years to manifest.
Avoiding Avoidable Mistakes
Regrettably, this is an outcome that occurs far more frequently than one might expect. Within our own field of expertise such as wayfinding, we have seen the business damage that occurs where a destination suffers from poorly applied design and strategy. In such instances, not only does the end user suffer inconvenience across the entire visitor journey but the business also suffers commercially and in many instances is then forced to rectify the issues at further expense due to poor partner selection. Ironically, in the process this destroys any perceived cost savings made through selecting inexperienced, low-cost operators in the first place.
While the barriers to entry in the business of design appear to be lowering day by day, quality and application of the design tools is what counts – not the tools of the trade themselves. This is where being strategy forward really makes a difference to outcomes. Despite what some might think, showcasing the work of others captured from Pinterest is not a concept, and signage without a strategy is not wayfinding. Of course there are many more examples. We’ve never seen cookie cutter procurement approaches or auctions for design services serve the interests of a project well, which is why as a practice we focus on providing our partners tailored, thoughtful advice backed by years of experience and expertise that drive positive outcomes and deliver real value to each destination we work on.
In many instances through a lack of valuing expertise upfront of a project and though limiting the focus on discussion to commercial considerations, the client ends up with a subpar outcome that in many instances could have been avoided. Sadly, the bottom line here is when ill-informed buyers make poor decisions through not valuing expertise it causes untold problems for the entire client-side team and strains the industry’s credibility through reinforcing negative perceptions of vendors.
Equally, low quality service providers who predominately operate within the wayfinding consultancy space in the region who habitually undercut fees and deliver poor outcomes create a double whammy of negative effects for the industry. Firstly, such practices wildly dismiss the value of the work provided by all practitioners and this greatly reduces the client’s perception and importance of what quality-led wayfinding and design practices actually deliver for their partners. Secondly, the poor outcomes result in the client more often than not needing to redo the work all over again, these further strains the integrity of the wayfinding genre as a serious design service and also necessitates the client having to pay for the work twice.
Taken together this is not a wise mix. In simple terms – buying wayfinding design services is not akin to buying bulk goods and commodities and we firmly believe that it’s time for the relationship between buyer and consultant to bring considered, face to face conversation back into the procurement process to ensure that valuable, effective outcomes can be delivered for both employer and end user on any given engagement. This approach would actually deliver better value and better outcomes for all industry stakeholders.
Bottom Line
At Creative Dialog with more than 25 years of industry experience across wayfinding, signage design, placemaking and destination branding we not only put people, strategy and expertise at the forefront of what we do, we also spend the time to work with our partners to explain best practices and the pitfalls that can be encountered when expertise is not valued from the get go. At times it seems like this approach is the road less traveled but it’s a journey that more and more of our partners are joining us on.
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