How Data and Creativity Work Together in Value-Based Design

In this interview, we’re joined by Nick Disabato, the founder of Draft, a design consultancy focused on driving business growth through value-based design. With over 18 years of experience in the design industry, Nick has helped numerous businesses optimize their online stores and improve key metrics like conversion rates and customer lifetime value. His approach combines creative strategies with data-driven insights to deliver measurable results. We’ll dive into his process, insights, and the challenges he’s encountered while building his consultancy.

The Inspiration Behind Draft

SBS – What inspired you to focus on value-based design, and how do you see it evolving over the next few years?

Nick – As my career has progressed, I’ve moved further & further away from learning about what design is and closer to how it’s practiced. How much more do I need to know about color or grid systems? What I really need to know is how to ship design, how to get an impact, and how to make sure my career has a future.

Value-based design came as the most natural answer after years of inquiry into why design is bought and what people do with it. It still incorporates elements of classical UX design, but it’s focused on the outcomes that people have come to expect from design.

I certainly hope that more people embrace value-based design over the next few years, especially considering what’s happened with the layoffs and commoditization of the practice. One of the brightest lights in our field is the book Why Design is Hard by Scott Berkun, which teaches many designers (including myself!) how to embrace our impact and create brighter futures for ourselves. Some of it is hard medicine; we have a lot of challenging questions to ask ourselves.

Balancing Creativity with Data in Design

SBS – How do you balance creativity with data when making design decisions for your clients?

Nick – Design needs constraints to thrive, so we use many different forms of upfront research to define an issue and create some expectations around success. Sometimes, the problem is an “unknown unknown,” where the research reveals new issues for us to focus on. Most of the time, though, we’re using research to solve existing issues.

Once we’re in the measurement phase, we usually err on the side of retaining design decisions that are shown to have negligible impact since we’ve just proven that they’re unlikely to hurt us. That way, the design improves without significant risk to the business.

Designing for Diverse Industries and Audiences

SBS – How do you approach the challenge of designing for different industries with distinct customer bases?

Nick – We get this as a frequent objection from our prospective clients. “You don’t know X, how can you help us?” The answer is that everyone starts from zero, and we figure it out. Almost all design agencies work like this. I’ve worked like this since 2006.

Gosh, that’s the best part! I love learning new businesses and understanding what makes them tick. People look to us for our expertise in practicing design, not our knowledge of a specific industry — although, of course, we attain deep knowledge in every new industry that we come to work for.

In fact, I think that this “challenge” is actually a strength because it allows us to come in with a fresh perspective and beginner’s mindset that often hampers our clients from outsized growth.

Common Mistakes

SBS – What’s the most common mistake you see businesses make in their design and user experience strategies?

Nick – Ripping off competitors or famous figures in the industry without staying in their lane and understanding their own positioning.

Aligning Design with Business Goals

SBS – How do you ensure that your design strategies are aligned with your client’s business goals and long-term vision?

Nick – First, I have to figure out what their business goals are, and I do this on our very first call before we even start working together. Why hire me? Why now? Are they open to being challenged?

Usually, their goals are realistic, but sometimes they want to hockey stick the business because they took on investors who told them to, etc. So, if I hear of anything that sounds unrealistic to me, I ask why, what the motivators are, and so forth.

I work hard not to be the sort of person who promises the moon when working with a business. I math out the expected impact of our work in any proposal, which anchors our fees realistically, but ultimately, value generation is going to be contingent on our ability to do our work well and be flexible about the final goal.

I’m sure we’re not for everyone, but those we are for are deeply receptive to our work and trust us as co-creative partners.

Major Shifts in Design Trends

SBS – What’s the most significant shift in design trends that you’ve observed in the past five years?

Nick – I think the biggest shift has been in understanding that anyone can practice design, including the janitor, and it’s incumbent on designers to be stewards and governors of high-quality work. This is done to protect customers from platform decay. In doing so, we’re likely to keep people from fleeing to competitors.

I just watched hundreds of thousands of designers get minted, hired, and fired, mostly for doing their jobs. It’s been quite interesting to watch this play out in practice since it will presage some deeper structural shifts in how we practice over the coming years.

High-Impact Design on a Limited Budget

SBS – How do you approach working with businesses that have a limited budget but still want high-impact design strategies?

Nick – We offer work at many price points. You can buy our books for cheap. You can enroll in our workshops on your company’s petty cash card and train yourself or your staff. You can buy a video teardown for less than a grand. Or you can go for the deluxe wash.

The lower price points exist to begin a conversation. Oftentimes, budget is a choice, so if people have been burned in the past or think design isn’t “worth it,” we sell them a teardown, let them implement it, get a few wins, and then ask if they’d like to work any further together.

Measuring Success

SBS – Can you discuss how you measure success in your projects? Are there any metrics or KPIs that stand out for you?

Nick – With our e-commerce clients, we usually measure average revenue per user as our primary metric. Conversion rate & average order value are nice, but ARPU blends the two. Everybody wants to measure CLTV, but it’s quite hard to do without widespread account adoption. And no, you can’t force account adoption without tanking the conversion rate.

When we’re working with software businesses, we get a lot more metrics because people tend to sign up for accounts with these. Churn & lifetime value are really helpful.

Handling Client Resistance to Design Changes

SBS – How do you handle situations where clients are resistant to change or skeptical of design recommendations?

Nick – It depends on the nature of the resistance, but ultimately, this is the nature of critique. Designers need to know how to operate within critique. They need to understand that they are not god, and they are not going to have every single thing ship unchanged. Sometimes, design decisions sound simple but are hard to implement.

We’re a consultancy, so our work is consultative. If they’re hiring us so we can perform design theatre and make them feel good, then they shouldn’t hire us.

Lessons Learned

SBS – What’s the most valuable lesson you’ve learned in your 18 years of experience in design consulting?

Nick – That everything is a human problem, and expertise in a problem space is immaterial to the human problem. I guess that’s two lessons, but they’re rather closely related.

Overcoming Challenges

SBS – What are some of the biggest challenges you face in running a design consultancy, and how do you overcome them?

Nick – There’s what happens when we get in the room, and there’s what happens before we get in the room. I really can’t help what happens before we get in the room. I can’t help you when you hired someone who sucked at their job. I can’t talk you out of ripping off a business that’s 40,000 times larger than you. I can’t tell you why AI is never going to be the same as design.

Our biggest challenge, then, is our current broken world, with its own set of conditioning and its own expectations. Our clients come in with broken cultures and inaccurate perceptions of how design can & should be. We do a lot of work to unwind all of this and show them the path to a brighter future.

Advice for Aspiring Design Consultants

SBS – If you could give one piece of advice to other entrepreneurs looking to start their own design consultancy, what would it be?

Nick – Like any business, you’re seeking a good market fit, so you need to position yourselves as effectively as possible to meet the needs of those who are buying design from you. Learn the fundamentals of business, especially positioning, as soon as possible.