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What does it mean to be “design-led”?

At Murray, we’re focused on our customers, and our design-led strategy is at the heart of everything we do. But what is design-led strategy and what does it mean for our clients? Digging deeper, it seems that a simple definition is anything but obvious.

Design-led thinking is a strategy and process for problem-solving, rooted in empathy. As a design-led organisation, we combine a design mindset with supporting principles, experience, and genuine feedback to provide uniform solutions that go beyond looking good. To fully deliver on this promise, design-led thinking has to be more than just a simple checklist of activities, for it to yield meaningful results it has to be embedded as part of our deeper culture.

As a design-led organisation, we have to be willing to test our ideas before they are fully formed. This means completing full wearer trials before a uniform is launched at scale. Testing ideas and gathering feedback in these early stages allows us to move forward and deliver a bigger impact and a better return on investment for our clients. Because of this focus on wearer feedback, we are able to see and understand the challenges our clients face and ensure we are optimising our designs for their needs.

During the design process, we start by focusing on the wearer’s experiences. We listen to clients and their teams in order to find insight, challenge our own ideas, and uncover the issues that are important. This approach works across all of the sectors we operate in because it puts the uniform wearer at the centre of everything we do. Whether that’s someone working on the factory floor assembling a vehicle, or the shop floor assisting customers, we’re confident that our uniforms help staff look, feel and perform better in their roles.

Being design-led means we set aside time to understand how a client’s world works and build empathy – without that, it is hard to create something that makes their world better. This works because of the level of detail we go into firstly to understand a client’s challenges and how best we can address them, but also because we gather feedback from the wearer. This allows us to continually develop solutions to new and existing problems, often that the client may have not been aware of.

For UK greetings cards retailer Card Factory, we consulted with staff throughout the process with a full wearer trial and gained feedback through their colleague forum. This enabled us to revisit certain details of the new uniform, ensuring it worked for colleagues across the business. In discussion with colleagues during the wearer trial, we added a dropped hem to both t-shirts and jackets, ensuring the fit was accommodating when colleagues were stretching or reaching during in-store tasks.

Through our design-led approach, Murray Uniforms offers our clients something unique, a fully managed service that puts their staff, the uniform wearers at the heart of the project. Being design-led means that we focus on the issues and experiences of the people we serve, and that shines through in the uniforms we provide.

For more information on the power of uniform and the true impact design-led strategy has, contact us  marketing@murray-uniforms.co.uk