Adobe Digital Trends 2018: Design makes the difference in customer experience

Good design has long since become a decisive differentiator in the competition for the best customer experience and has a significant influence on a company's success: companies with strong design expertise outperform their competitors, where design only plays a subordinate role, by almost double (32% vs. 17%). More than two thirds of design-oriented companies (69 percent) achieved better business results than planned last year. This is the result of the latest Creative & Design Report from the global Digital Trends 2018" studyfor which the market research institute Econsultancy surveyed around 2,700 creative decision-makers worldwide on behalf of Adobe. "Every convincing customer experience depends on great designed content. But how can this claim be realized in the practical reality of everyday business? This is exactly what we asked those decision-makers who are very close to experience creation - the design specialists themselves - in our latest Digital Trends study," says Katrin Baumann, Adobe Marketing Director Central Europe. "We were particularly fascinated by the following three findings: Creativity is increasingly becoming a competitive advantage. Convincing customer experiences are based on tailor-made content. And: cross-team collaboration in creation is the key to success," Baumann continues.In focus: artificial intelligence and real-time personalizationThe experts surveyed consider artificial intelligence (AI) to be one of the most promising technologies for analyzing the needs and interests of customers and transforming them into tailored designs and campaigns. 54% of companies are already using AI in data analysis. Almost 30 percent use AI algorithms for creative and design processes. According to the Digital Trends study by Adobe, personalized real-time experiences offer the greatest potential for creative and design professionals alongside AI. Almost one in three (31%) see this as the most important trend of the next three years.