Design and Business Gaps: From Literature to Practice

It is undoubted that design is of great importance for companies at present. Therefore, an increasing number of companies decide to align their offerings with user needs and desires and deliver recognized design values in final products or services. Nevertheless, the role of business is to deliver profitable products or services, which bring return on investment as well as meet other company requirements. Although a high interest in design deliverables might be distinguished, in practice design values tend to fall behind business decisions and overall low awareness of user needs can be observed throughout the company. Finally, there is the gap between the design and business. This article describes work in progress aimed at investigating and systematizing the understanding of the gaps between the design and business. On the basis of the literature review and conducted interviews it identifies relevant research gaps and questions that would benefit future scholarly attention.