Design isn't just another pretty interface

If your design team only gets called in when someone says,

“Can you pretty this up?”

…there’s a chance your most crucial secret ingredient is hiding in the back of your break room pantry.

Design isn’t the icing on the cake. It’s the flour in the batter. Without it, the whole thing collapses in a sugary mess.

Case in point: back in the day, I designed and built Discover Xbox—an interactive Flash experience (back when Flash was still cool. RIP).

Sure, it looked slick for its time. But under the hood, it solved big business problems:

• Showcased Xbox Live (when online multiplayer required a telephone)

• Positioned Xbox as your living room’s mission control

• Boosted subscriptions (surpassing 350k in the first 3 months)

• Helped parents understand why their kid needed a second “controller thingy”

The point? Good design isn’t decoration. It’s direction. It works well, sells smart, and makes your audience the lead character in the story.

Want to make the most of your design superpower? Here are 4 things executive teams can do:

• Bring design in early. Before the roadmap. Before the deck. Before you’ve said “MVP” three times in a row.

• Make designers part of strategy conversations. Not just design reviews. Give them business problems, not just buttons.

• Measure what matters. Adoption. Retention. Clarity. Joy. (Yes, joy.)

• Protect the space to explore. Great design isn’t born in chaos. Give it room to breathe, break, and rebuild.

Design isn’t just another pretty interface. It’s your secret ingredient for clarity, connection, and competitive edge.

I help executive and design teams speak the same language—so strategy flows faster, and design delivers real business impact.

Let's talk.

Got a bold idea? A product that needs a serious edge? A design challenge that’s got you stuck?