Why the Design Industry is Rapidly Growing

Ever since the early days of technological inventions, technologists have been competing with one another. Battles span across functionality, horsepower, intelligence, robustness, and more. Techies make things work, and naturally, they compete on whose creation works better. They’ve competed on which device solves the problem more effectively, what features triumph the other set of functions, and so forth.

This competitive environment has led to a decade of ultra-rapid development, especially in digital technologies. For example, there are now 900,000 apps on Apple’s App Store. This (somewhat) new market opportunity created a huge demand for technical talent. More than ever, people want to learn coding. Junior developers are enjoying salaries of 60k – 80k, right out of school.

The result is that functionality has become standard. Everything must work, simply because everything else works. There is no longer excuse for functional shortcoming. As new smartphones come out, we begin to realize that their actual functionality have become marginally different. The competitive metric is no longer “which works best”.

So what is the new secret weapon? Design.

Market leaders (in digital media) these days are seldom those who excel in functionality alone. This is because functioning software has become standard, it has become a simple expectation, and no longer a differentiator by any means. The companies that succeed nowadays are those who tend to invest heavily in design. The winners are those who are absolutely meticulous about every minor graphical detail, every piece of user experience, every corner of visual appeal, and endlessly more. Great examples include Evernote, Mailbox, Clear, Haze, and etc.

The growth (and arguably, plateau) of developers has given birth to a huge demand for designers. Design is the new differentiator. The commercial world has become, literally, design or die. Seldom will you find successful software without offering an absolutely delightful experience. Function was the focus of yesterday, design is the star of tomorrow.

Not only has this trend become increasingly clear amongst startups, we’re beginning to see this on an enterprise level as well. Companies like Google are consistently paying closer attention than ever to the fine touches of design, and Apple continues to pride themselves on designing every single product to be “insanely great”.

How much emphasis do you put on design in your own business?

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Posted by Michael Cheng

Michael is the Cofounder of Needle, a platform for hiring creative talent. Prior to Needle, he spent over a decade in the creative space as a freelancer, worked at agencies, and founded numerous companies providing creative services. Michael is an award-winning entrepreneur who has been featured on news publications around the world. He is a thought leader within the creative hiring space as well as an active blogger on the subject.