DESIGN & RESEARCH Reveals How to Address the '4 Pitfalls' of Rapidly Growing Businesses

DESIGN & RESEARCH Co., Ltd. (Headquarters: Meguro-ku, Tokyo, Representative Director: Yuya Kori) published an article on July 2, 2026, titled 'Filling the Pitfalls of Rapidly Growing Businesses: DESIGN & RESEARCH's Design of Development Processes,' which summarizes the challenges faced by rapidly growing business development organizations and their solutions.

The article organizes the challenges that development organizations often face during business growth from four perspectives: human resources, insights, ideal images, and strategies.

The article also introduces cases where, through approximately half a year of support, internal members were able to improve existing functions and advance new developments, as well as a case where, during the early stages of a supported project, key product indicators improved by 2.2 times within four months of starting.

'Despite continuing development, nothing is being created that customers will use'

DESIGN & RESEARCH's supported development organizations face the following challenges:

'Although we continue with design and development every day, we are always busy and cannot start important improvements' 'Even when we create functions, customers do not use them as expected' 'Even when we hire new personnel, the overall situation of the organization does not improve easily'

These problems are not solely due to a lack of manpower. In the process of rapid business growth, there are cases where the necessary knowledge, policies, and processes are lacking in the development organization.

DESIGN & RESEARCH has organized these deficiencies into the following '4 pitfalls':

Lack of human resources: There is a lack of lead personnel who can design appropriate processes and proactively promote projects. Lack of insights: There is no shared understanding within the organization of who the customers are and what tasks or challenges they face. Lack of ideal images: There is no definition of what kind of products or customer experiences we want to realize beyond the functions being developed. Lack of strategy: There is no consistent policy on which customers or issues to focus on and how to link them to business growth.

When these deficiencies overlap, short-term requests take priority, making it difficult to engage in measures that lead to medium- to long-term value. As a result, despite continuing development, the organization falls into a state where it cannot produce products that customers will use.

Support from two perspectives: Product Designer and Product Manager

The characteristic of DESIGN & RESEARCH's support is that the goal is not just the completion of the project, but to create a state where the deficiencies in the development organization can be supplemented and product development can be sustained.

To fill the pitfalls of the development organization from 'two perspectives'

Therefore, in addition to proposing strategies and policies, we take on the role of a product designer to actually engage in design and improvement, and from the perspective of a product manager, we also handle the organization of customer understanding, priorities, ideal images, and strategies.

While deeply involved in on-site product development, we create the following four states: There is a system in place to proactively promote projects Insights about customers and operations are accumulated and shared There is a consensus on the ideal image that the product aims for Decisions and prioritization that lead to business growth are possible

Instead of having external partners continue to act on the project, we aim for the autonomy of the organization by leaving knowledge, criteria for judgment, and development processes within the company through support.

Improving development and review processes using AI tools

Depending on the situation of the supported organization, we also engage in business improvement using AI tools.

For example, in small-scale UI improvements, we use Claude Code to implement front-end development, allowing engineers to focus on more technically challenging tasks.

We also develop Figma plugins to automatically check text on the UI, systematizing part of the review work that tends to be personal.

We emphasize establishing processes where the team can create products more efficiently while maintaining quality, not just introducing tools for their own sake.

After approximately half a year of support, the organization progresses with improvements and new developments led by internal members

In one supported organization, the following changes occurred in the development organization through approximately half a year of support:

Before support After support Improvement of existing functions Improvements take time and are not sufficiently progressed Smoothly progressed with internal members as the center Customer understanding Due to the complex business domain, customer images and operations cannot be concretely grasped For both existing and new products, a common understanding of customer operations and issues can be held New development Development is stagnant due to high difficulty and uncertainty Issues and priorities are organized, and development can be progressed

In addition, in another case supported during the early stages of the business, we accompanied the initial improvement of the product, and the key product indicators improved by 2.2 times within four months of starting.

At DESIGN & RESEARCH, by supporting not only the improvement of design quality but also customer understanding, decision-making, and development processes, we contribute to business growth through products.

The full text of the article is here

Filling the Pitfalls of Rapidly Growing Businesses: DESIGN & RESEARCH's Design of Development Processes

About DESIGN & RESEARCH Co., Ltd.

DESIGN & RESEARCH Co., Ltd. is a design firm that supports client business growth with product design as its core. Beyond UI/UX design, we support clients in understanding their customers and operations, designing the ideal product image, improving development processes, and making decisions about business and products. We walk alongside client teams to provide comprehensive support.

Company Profile

Company Name: DESIGN & RESEARCH Co., Ltd. Representative Director: Yuya Kori Established: June 2021 Number of Employees: 2 Headquarters: 5-2-5 Hibuya, Meguro-ku, Tokyo, T&A Building 5F Business Content: Product design support, process design support for development organizations

Corporate Site: https://designandresearch.com/