The role of design for software success : an examination of design outcome and process

Design, in terms of beauty, has always influenced mankind. With the beginning of the postmodern aestheticization movement in the last decades of the 20th century, design came into the center of attention in society and business. While being restricted to traditional industries like manufacturing in early days, design has nowadays also entered fields of intangible products, like the software in-dustry. Numerous software companies have discovered design as a new instrument for gaining competitive advantage and for increasing the perceived customer value of their offerings. With di-verse activities, they try to strengthen the focus on design within the organization and the offerings. Thereby, software companies have to tackle additional challenges in contrast to manufacturing companies since software, as intangible good, has some specific characteristics which makes it unique compared to physical goods. The intangible nature of software changes consumers’ percep-tion of design and triggers substantial challenges concerning the design outcome. In addition, its intangible nature makes reproduction and transportation virtually free and fast, changes can be im-plemented easily and at any time. This leads to an intensive competition among software companies and the need for efficiency of their development processes, in order to stay competitive. Due to the specific characteristics, existing research results from traditional product development cannot be directly transferred to the context of software. These challenges are addressed in the present work by means of two empirical studies. In a first step a clear conceptualization of design in the context of software is developed and corresponding design outcome is investigated in a large scale quantitative study in the context of mobile banking services. In a second step a hybrid qualitative and quantitative research approach systematically investigates the conditions of software development success concerning the interaction between the functional areas of business and design, i.e. product managers and product designers. The results of the first study provide key insights into the effects of form and function on user satis-faction and ultimately behavioral intention of mobile banking service consumers. In addition, a set of important moderators is revealed, such as usage frequency. The second study identifies success factors for the interaction of product managers and product designers and provides empirical evi-dence for a positive relationship between the identified factors and the success of software devel-opment. The results of the work provide key insights for both the design outcome and the design process from which finally implications for a successful application of design in the context of software are derived