Visual design has long been looked at by many of those in business as a coat of paint to be applied to a finished product to help it sell. In this world view design takes a back seat to advertising and its significance as a discipline is reduced.

This is (thankfully) starting to change, largely due to the universal recognition of the importance of User Interface design. Still, design remains a poorly understood and difficult process for most companies. So much so that good UI design can actually be used as an indicator of a company’s health. This was shown rather effectively by Teehan + Lax and their UX fund.

This is because of two things. The first is that good design, particularly good UI design creates a more attractive, easier to use product. Such a product will sell better than something unattractive and difficult to use. The second is that Design is hard. Design is particularly hard for dysfunctional groups or groups made up of individuals with competing visions or interests.

The execution of a well designed product can be seen as a sign or corporate health in that it is the end result of a series of interactions between very complex systems of needs. Only a well managed organization can sort out these complex systems properly. It is a miracle it happens at all.

So the next time you have a particularly easy and rewarding interaction with a well designed product, think not just of the designers, but also of the executives who had the good sense to pay for quality and the presence of mind not to ruin it.

We have a mission statement here at Graphient. It took us a fair amount of time and a lot of re-writes to work it out properly. One reason it took so long was some confusion on my part about what a mission statement really is. It seemed pretty obvious to me that our mission as hardheaded businessmen was to make huge amounts of money. Or, put another way, to become profitable in a timely manner and maximize shareholder value. Turns out those aren’t missions, and they cannot be used to accurately measure the success of the enterprise or to motivate those involved.

We finally worked it out as “Graphient’s mission is to provide everyone in the world with platforms for the organization and visualization of information that are simple enough for any home user, but powerful enough for research, science, and business.”

There’s nothing in there about profitability, and were we a Silicon Valley company we might be content to end this conversation here and go play frisbee with our dog or something. Fortunately we live in New York, and if living here has taught us anything, it is that if you don’t make enough money for rent and food, you have to move back to whatever provincial backwater you came from.

That’s a round about way of saying that one of the tests for whether or not you are a company or just a bunch of guys sitting in room together engaged in company-like behavior is profitability. Profit is the test that must be met. It is what validates the mission, and without it you don’t have an enterprise, you have a meme.