DEGREE PROJECT IN COMPUTER SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING,

SECOND CYCLE, 30 CREDITS

STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN 2020

Bridging Business and

Design
A Business Thinking and DesignOps
Centralization Approach

PETTER JAKOBSSON

KTH ROYAL INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

SCHOOL OF ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING AND COMPUTER SCIENCE
Abstract
Creating and communicating the business value of design is a complex task. This case study set out to bridge the
fields of business and design by investigating how design consultants can communicate the value of design to
their clients. More specifically, the study investigates (1) how desirability can be linked to viability by using
Strategy Maps and Conditional Statements, (2) how to quantify design output by calculating ​Return on
Investment of Retention ​and (3) how to verbally and visually communicate design through relevant terminology
and communication techniques. To do this, a Business Thinking approach was applied.

A first research phase consisting of 12 interviews were conducted, focusing on understanding the work
environment of design consultants at the digital consultancy firm Futurice and how they collaborate with their
current project clients. The results were used as a blueprint for the second research phase, consisting of
one-on-one co-creation workshop sessions between design consultants and their current clients. The sessions
were evaluated in Business Thinking experiments and interviews.

Physical co-creation canvases were implemented and used in the workshops. The experiments demonstrate that
tools and methods inherited from Business Design and Business Thinking can be integrated without disrupting
the existing DesignOps at Futurice. Further, the results indicate that the Business Thinking approach can be
applied both to the design process of individual design consultants and into DesignOps management, which
encourages application beyond the case of Futurice. To what extent is profoundly dependent on the design
maturity of the individual designer and the organization. This is assessed and discussed based on the Design
Ladder.
Abstrakt
Att skapa och kommunicera affärsvärdet av design är en komplex uppgift. Denna fallstudie syftar till att
sammanlänka områdena affärsutveckling och design genom att undersöka hur designkonsulter kan
kommunicera affärsvärdet av design till sina kunder. Mer specifikt undersöker studien (1) hur önskvärdhet kan
kopplas till genomförbarhet genom att använda Strategy Maps och Conditional Statements, (2) hur man kan
kvantifiera design-output genom att beräkna Return on Investment of Retention och (3) hur man verbalt och
visuellt kan kommunicera design genom relevant terminologi och kommunikationstekniker. För att genomföra
detta tillämpades ett tillvägagångssätt baserat på Business Thinking.

En första forskningsfas bestående av 12 intervjuer genomfördes med fokus på att förstå arbetsmiljön för
designkonsulter på det digitala konsultföretaget Futurice och hur de samarbetar med sina nuvarande kunder.
Resultaten användes som ett underlag för den andra forskningsfasen, bestående av one-on-one
workshop-sessioner mellan designkonsulter och deras nuvarande kunder. Sessionerna utvärderades i experiment
och intervjuer baserade på metodik från Business Thinking.

Fysiska a co-creation kanvaser implementerades och användes i samtliga workshops. De utförda experimenten
visar att verktyg och metoder baserade på Business Design och Business Thinking kan integreras utan att störa
befintliga design operationer (DesignOps) på Futurice. Resultaten indikerar även att Business
Thinking-strategier kan tillämpas både vid designprocessen för individuella designkonsulter och vid DesignOps
inom en organisation, vilket även uppmuntrar till tillämpning utanför Futurice. I vilken utsträckning detta kan
göras beror på mognadsgraden för design, både för individuella designers och för organisationer. Detta bedöms
och diskuteras baserat på metoden Design Ladder.

Bridging Business and Design: A Business Thinking and
DesignOps Centralization Approach
Petter Jakobsson
KTH Royal Institute of Technology
School of Computer Science and Communication
Stockholm, Sweden
pjakob@kth.se
ABSTRACT
Creating and communicating the business value of design is
a complex task. This case study set out to bridge the fields
of business and design by investigating how design
consultants can communicate the value of design to their
clients. More specifically, the study investigates (1) how
desirability can be linked to viability by using Strategy
Maps and Conditional Statements, (2) how to quantify
design output by calculating Return on Investment of
Retention and (3) how to verbally and visually
communicate design through relevant terminology and
communication techniques. To do this, a Business Thinking
approach was applied. A first research phase consisting of
12 interviews were conducted, focusing on understanding
the work environment of design consultants at the digital
consultancy firm Futurice and how they collaborate with
their current project clients. The results were used as a
blueprint for the second research phase, consisting of
one-on-one co-creation workshop sessions between design
consultants and their current clients. The sessions were
evaluated in Business Thinking experiments and interviews.
Physical co-creation canvases were implemented and used
in the workshops. The experiments demonstrate that tools
and methods inherited from Business Design and Business
Thinking can be integrated without disrupting the existing
DesignOps at Futurice. Further, the results indicate that the
Business Thinking approach can be applied both to the
design process of individual design consultants and into
DesignOps management, which encourages application
beyond the case of Futurice. To what extent is profoundly
dependent on the design maturity of the individual designer
and the organization. This is assessed and discussed based
on the Design Ladder.
Author Keywords
business design, futurice, business thinking, digital
consultancy, designops, client-centricity, design consultant,
co-creation workshop, design maturity
1. INTRODUCTION
In a fast-paced developing world of technological
advancement, more businesses are using user-centred
1
design and processes in product development to
differentiate themselves from competitors (Brown, 2010).
This adoption is not only being prioritized by businesses
who offer premium digital products and services but by all
companies that aspire to position themselves solidly in
relation to their competitors (Beyer & Holtzblatt, 1999).
Design has proven to be valuable in all sectors, not only to
accelerate innovation and increase profit through product or
service offering but also on a philosophical and cultural
level (Volkova & Jākobsone, 2016).
1.1. Design as a business strategy
Design Thinking is by Brown (2010) defined as a
human-centered approach to innovation that integrates the
needs of people, the possibilities of technology and the
requirements for business success. As design is scaling as a
discipline, companies face challenges in terms of
organization and structure of design work and processes. To
undertake these challenges, design-led companies have
started concretizising Design Thinking by dedicating teams
to establish Design Operations (DesignOps) on an
organizational level (Kaplan, 2019; Malouf et al., 2019). By
orchestrating and optimizing people, processes and craft,
DesignOps intends to amplify the value of design and
impact at scale.
In contempt of design being adopted in a broader fashion
throughout larger organizations, previous research indicates
that design as a discipline is still not understood, yet
contemplated, on a cross-departmental level, with an
emphasis on executives and stakeholders (Beyer &
Holtzblatt, 1999). This is one of the main drivers behind the
conception of DesignOps, but also Business Design. This
relatively new discipline positions itself in the intersection
between business and design and was initially introduced to
complement the upswing of design methodologies and
practices in the world of business (Martin & Martin, 2009).
However, this complementation has proven to be done
bilaterally. Companies who offer design in forms of
products and services have become increasingly aware that
desirability is not enough for successful business (Brown,
2011. This is where leading industries and scholars have

identified the most challenging turning point when
integrating business with design: high desirability (benefits
for the user) does not necessarily correlate with high
viability (good for business) (Martin & Martin, 2009). The
user-centred design process that is practiced by most
designers primarily focuses on improving desirability of a
product or service, and thus overlooks the viability aspect.
This is distinctly evident in the case of Futurice.
The rise of Business Design and DesignOps are both
starting to increase the influence of design throughout
organizations. Yet, Business Design as a discipline and
DesignOps as a collective term for organizing design are
both new and have still not entirely reached the goal of
influencing strategic business decisions. The aim of a
master’s thesis in Interactive Media Technology is to create
practical implementation and theoretical research that
supports design, development and evaluation of interactive
technology. This makes the challenges of bridging business
with design a relevant topic for this study.
1.2. Futurice
Futurice is a Finnish innovation and engineering
consultancy company that provides a wide range of digital
solutions to their customers. By combining strategy, design
and engineering, the company creates innovation through
digital product design, emerging technology, agile software
development and lean organisational change. The company
was founded in 2000 and is one of the fastest growing
technology companies in Finland. With offices in eight
different locations in Europe, the current number of
employees exceeds 650. Their clients are from different
industries such as finance, media, automotive and energy.
Initially, the company was founded by engineers. The
general offering of Futurice was therefore concentrated in
their tech-heavy competence, but as the company kept
scaling, the need of design and business competence
became more important. Being a consultancy company,
finding new business leads and selling the offering became
necessary, and to develop usable digital products and
services, the design part was introduced as well. Today,
design is part of the core of Futurice’s end-to-end business
strategy. Being a consultancy firm, client satisfaction and
relationship are the most crucial aspects to maintain. This
requires an extraordinary understanding of the clients
business. However, these aspects are not (by default) part of
the designers operational day-to-day work. This has led to
repeated conflicts between clients and design consultants
during projects. Most times, the conflicts are related to
misunderstanding and miscommunication that occurs when
designers are presenting designs to clients.
1.3. Challenges
Hypothetically, the identified conflicts are consequences of
two main challenges that meet halfway. The first challenge
is that the designers do not possess the required basic
2 
business knowledge (in addition to understanding the
specific business needs and goals of the client) to make the
right design decisions. A second challenge is that the client
does not understand or realize the business value in the
communicated design. It can also be hypothesized that the
more both sides of the spectrum can move towards each
other, the more benefit each side will experience in a
project. A third challenge of this case study is to determine
the process and scope of integrating business perspectives,
tools and methods into the design operations and
management. This was done by analyzing the design
maturity of the case company, using the Danish Design
Ladder by Kretzschmar (2003).
1.4. Research question
An internal project was initiated and carried out by one
master student in Human-Computer Interaction & Design.
The goal of this project was to better understand the
challenges encountered in the relationship between design
consultants and the clients in projects. In addition, the study
intended to identify, align and bridge the gaps between the
business of the client and the proposed design by the
consultant. Thus, this study intends to answer the following
research question: How can design consultants
communicate business informed design decisions to
their clients? Previous research provides several relevant
methodologies to better understand these challenges. Such
methodologies could be Lean UX, Contextual Design,
Design Thinking, Design-driven Innovation or even
business and product development approaches. However, to
answer the research question of this study accurately, it
would require combining methodologies from both
spectrums (business and design) which complicates the
research process and reduces reliability. For this purpose,
with its tightly coupled business and design process
properties, the Business Thinking approach was applied as a
lens to better understand how the DesignOps management
at Futurice more efficiently can integrate business
perspectives in operational ways of working with design.
A set of methods and activities from Business Thinking
and Business Design were applied in one-on-one
co-creation workshops between design consultants and
clients, each carefully chosen to answer three sub-research
questions:
1. How can desirability be linked to viability?
2. How can design be quantified and measured?
3. How can the decisions in the design process be
verbally and visually presented?
The first sub-research question is meant to acknowledge
how improved user experiences can lead to business goals
and objectives for adoption. To do this, a Strategy Map with
perspectives (financial, customer, operational and learning
& growth) were used in the workshops. In relation to the
map, the participants were tasked to formulate desirability
 
perspectives (credibility, impact, usability and detectability) looking elsewhere and during recent years realized the
& objectives, discussed in sections 4.2.1, 4.2.2 and 4.2.4). value of Design Thinking and other user-centric principles
Subsequently, Conditional Statements were added to the to drive growth (Sheppard et al., 2018). The foundation of
outcome of the first activity to frame the later activities to Design Thinking, with its highly iterative, forward-looking
the specific business logic and goals and of the client and non-linear problem-solving abilities, is today
(discussed in section 4.2.3). recognized as a key segment of many companies' business
innovation strategies (Volkova & Jākobsone, 2016). This
The second sub-research question focuses on understanding
has led to a democratization of design. Innovation
how proposed design solutions can be translated into
management scholars in the field argue that to access the
numbers. To answer this, Goals Experimentation were
true value of design in business innovation, businesses need
introduced. This activity involved calculating the equation
the right tools, people and technology for complex
Return on Investment of Retention and is calculated by
information management (Battistella, Biotto & De Toni,
using four metrics. To increase reliability of this
2012; Verganti, 2009). When Design Thinking, but also
calculation, real business metrics and numbers were used
design as well-articulated linguistic and semantic aspects of
from the client projects. The results are discussed in section
products and services, are well aligned with other factors
4.2.5.
that influence the customer experience, businesses gain a
The third sub-research question focuses on understanding powerful competitive advantage (Battistella, Biotto & De
how to efficiently communicate for increased trust and Toni, 2012).
influence on clients. For this, a relatively more abstract
Roger Martin, the former Dean and Institute Director of the
approach was chosen, focused on verbally and visually
Martin Prosperity Institute at the Rotman School of
communicating the results from previous activities. This
Management at the University of Toronto in Canada, is a
was evaluated in post-workshop interviews and
renowned writer and strategy advisor recognized through
observations. This sub-research question is discussed in
several business publications. Back in 2017, Martin was
sections 4.3 and 5.1.2.
placed as #1 in Thinkers50, which is a biannual ranking list
One of the main challenges of this study was to identify of the most successful and influential business thinkers in
how Business Thinking can be integrated into the design the world (University of Toronto News, 2017). Martin is a
operations at Futurice. Another challenge that was shown in pioneer in integrating Design Thinking with business
this study is related to how the design consultants are facing development and has been one of the most contributing
difficulties of developing a client-centric mindset. These experts to establishing the field of Business Design. The
challenges are not intended to be answered in terms of Rotman School of Management defines the term as a
measures or quantifications, but rather to be used as an human-centred approach to innovation — which applies the
overarching foundation for discussion of the main research principles and practices of design to help organizations
question. This is mainly discussed in section 5. create new value and new forms of competitive advantage.
In addition, the definition states that Business Design is the
This study will present the identified challenges and results
integration of customer empathy, experience design and
of the case study, mainly in section 4 and 5. In addition, the
business strategy.
results from the tested canvases and experiments are
discussed, followed by recommendations of further work on
the subject.
2. THEORY & RELATED RESEARCH
Business Design & Business Thinking are approaches used
to bring the fields of business and design closer together.
Though, there is not much academic research showing how
the work of designers in digital consultancy environments
can be altered with support of such approaches. In addition,
the prevalent definition of DesignOps is not commonly
associated with the principles of such approaches (Malouf
et al., 2019). This section will therefore initially discuss the
Figure 1: The three gears of Business Design (Martin & Martin, 2009)
two separately and what occurs when they are brought
together. Lastly, organizational and individual design
maturity is discussed. While Martin is recognized as an eminent advisor from both
an industry- and academic viewpoint, the heavily design-led
2.1. Business Design & Business Thinking innovation consulting firm IDEO provides a similar — yet
When R&D and other internal departments reach limits of more commercial — definition that explains their view and
capability to business growth, business leaders have started ways of working with Business Design: “[...]We [IDEO]

3

use strategy, analysis, and financial modeling as generative
design tools, and help organizations turn their biggest,
wildest ideas into businesses with long-term viability.”
(Bonsall, & O’Connor, 2018). Concretely, it is an approach
that merges business tools with methodology and mindsets
from Design Thinking (Bonsall & O’Connor, 2018). For
instance, it intends to help businesses break out from the
traditional way of developing business models, especially
for businesses using business models heavily committed to
reliability in contrast to validity (Bonsall & O’Connor,
2018; Kaufman, 2010). In essence, Business Design
employs the value generated in Design Thinking to better
understand how human needs can be translated into
business goals and objectives (Martin & Martin, 2009).
Similarly to a user-centred design process, the Business
Design process uses iterative cycles of delivery by testing
increments of implementation. However, the most
significant difference between the two approaches is that
while the user-centred process primarily focuses on
improving desirability of a product or service, the Business
Design approach is mainly intended to increase its viability
(Kaufman, 2010). For instance, a common task of a
Business Designer could be to create prototypes of business
models and then test them in environments where they are
put into action. This allows for increased viability of the
design outcome (Slywotzky, Morrison, & Andelman, 2007).
A metonym for the philosophy behind Business Design is
Business Thinking. Similarly to Business Design, the
Business Thinking approach intends to bridge business with
design but from a somewhat different angle. While
Business Design is more considered a role an individual
with a business background who wishes to benefit from the
value in Design Thinking employs, Business Thinking is an
approach that any individual with a design background and
role can apply to their current design process (Rumsey,
2020). It intends to build trust and confidence with clients
and stakeholders by acting accordingly in complex business
situations. One of the most important principles of Business
Thinking is the application of behavioural change to the
business challenges that designers may experience
(Ungaretti et al., 2009; Rumsey, 2020). The process can be
applied to help designers, design teams and companies to
reach the business impact by understanding the politics,
culture and other business factors critical for strategic
business decisions (Rumsey, 2020).
2.2. Design Operations (DesignOps)
The value of design has been discussed a lot in recent years.
Businesses and other organizations have realised that
design, like sales, marketing and information technology,
must now be a core competency (Sheppard et al., 2018).
Design has proven vital to business success, whether
reducing costs and customer churn, or increasing revenue
through creation of new value (Sheppard et al., 2018). This
has driven companies to seriously invest in internal design
4 
capabilities. However, efficient utilisation of design is still
unfamiliar to many organizations. This is because many
firms have only through digitalization entered a state in
which they need to actively develop products and services
(Malouf et al., 2019). Today, many banks have design teams
although their core business has remained the same. Many
of the companies that have introduced a design dimension
to their operations fairly recently, aren't realizing the full
potential of their design investments. Design Operations
responds to this profound shift that has occurred within
enterprises over the past 10 years (Malouf et al., 2019). It
helps the company scale and benefit from the design work
systematically as the teams and organisation grows.
DesignOps is inspired by the DevOps movement — but
they are not to be misconstrued. According to Ebert et al.
(2016), DevOps is in contrast to DesignOps a term with a
significantly broader scope which represents more complex
ecosystems of IT-operations. However, both terms are
responses to the same underlying sensations and can
therefore play by the same rules (Ebert et al., 2016). Even
though the common factor among both terms is that they
intend to operationalize processes, they still need to be
separated. As DevOps is a consolidated effort between
software development and IT departments, DesignOps is
about recreating the process of a previously existing design
organization.
The mission of Design Operations is to amplify the value of
design and the investments made inside an organisation
(Malouf et al., 2019). It does this by setting up the design
team for success by establishing a clear design culture,
people operations, ways of working and effective tools &
infrastructure, which allows designers to focus on their
work instead of figuring out how to work. The term
DesignOps is a recently introduced nomenclature for a
previous existing activity. In industries where design is not
as present, it would be referred to as project- or account
management. The main difference is that DesignOps is
solely focused on establishing and managing design and all
its relevant operations in an organization. Since
considerable elements of DesignOps have previously been
externalized in different forms of organizational
management, it can be hypothesized that the term has
recently gained much attention not for its essence but for
the recognition, acceleration and scale of design in
industries.
Kate Kaplan (2019), a User Experience Specialist and
researcher at Nielsen Norman Group defines DesignOps as
a collective term for design-related challenges that requires
continuous management. Kaplan (2019) argues that
growing and evolving teams and structure, hiring the right
people with the right skills, identifying and maintaining
efficient workflows and improving the quality of design
outputs are all fundamental aspects of well-informed
 
DesignOps. With regard to this, Kaplan (2019) implies that such as project management of design, tools and
each organization must define and regulate these activities infrastructure.
according to their organization, depending on factors such
as design maturity, available resources, work culture,
business goals and dynamics in design teams. As Kaplan
(2019) states, poorly structured design processes and
operations, which often leads to segregated teams, is a
common and recurring problem across departments in
organizations. As a patterned design process matures,
organizations require that both specialist teams and
departments work together during the process, aligned with
the strategic business vision of the organization.

Figure 3: DesignOps overlapping focus areas (Malouf et al., 2019)

2.4. Organizational and individual design maturity

The maturity of design varies greatly across organisations.
The term design maturity has widely been used to describe
to which extent organisations incorporate design practices
in their business. Those that assimilate Design Thinking
into their business processes and operations are more likely
to see positive outcomes concerning products or services,
position and profit. In order to understand where an
organization is placed on the design maturity scale, it needs
to be evaluated based on a set of criterias. One of the most
Figure 2: DesignOps layers of Futurice (2020)
commonly used is the Design Ladder. The Design Ladder
was created by the Danish Design Centre in 2001 and
2.2.1. DesignOps structure describes four levels of organisational design maturity
Malouf et al. (2019) argues that companies are only recently Kretzschmar (2003).
starting to understand the business value of design. Many
companies who perceive this value and believe design can
contribute to long-term business growth are investing in
management of DesignOps. When companies invest in
DesignOps, they will not only maximize the value of design
and its impact while seeing increased creative results faster,
but they will also see how improved processes and
standardized operations impact the entire culture of
collaboration (Malouf et al., 2019). An established
DesignOps practice builds on the foundation of three
overlapping focus areas: Business, People and Workflow
Operations (Malouf et al., 2019). These areas will overlap
differently depending on how the state of the leadership
when DesignOps practices were introduced. Concisely, a
focus on the Business area leads to budgetary and political
capital for design facilitation. A focus on the People area
manifests in support, defined expectations and practices for
Figure 4: Futrice Design Ladder, originally by Kretzschmar (2003)
design teams. Lastly, a focus on the Workflow area intends
to improve the flow of production within design and
research teams by utilizing systems that support aspects As the design maturity inside a company increases design
teams need more systematic approaches to doing design.
Figure 4 shows the Futurice definition of the Design Ladder

5

and which aspects that are considered in each of the four
layers. Inside layer 1, design is barely applied. In layer 2,
design is used as a visual tool to improve aesthetics and to
some extent the experience when using a product or service.
In layer 3, design is used as an integrated activity in the
development of strategy and general offering. Lastly, in
layer 4, design is used as a driving force of an organization,
making it design-centric. Design Thinking and processes
are integrated in the core of the organization. Thus, the
higher an organization positions themselves in the Design
Ladder, the more crucial design management becomes. This
is where DesignOps becomes relevant.
Design maturity can also be defined on an individual level.
As designers progress in their career, their responsibility
and opportunity to add more value to the organization and
their offering increases (Hambeukers, 2016). The more
mature the skills of the designer are, the more impact the
designer can have on his surroundings. The expectation and
competence can be considerably different depending on the
company the designer works for. In consultancy contexts,
becoming more mature as a designer equals getting a better
understanding of business (Hambeukers, 2016).  
Figure 5: The 7 Levels of Design Maturity (Hambeukers, 2016)
The level of business understanding and application in the
design process of an individual consultant designer working
with clients increases as their individual design maturity
increases. Similarly to the first layer of the Design Ladder,
the first two phases in the design maturity of a design
consultant involves craftsmanship in the form of visual and
interaction design based on user needs. For the third phase,
the designer takes on more responsibility and is now
designing with a user- and client-centric approach, having a
better understanding of not only the whole user experience
but more importantly the goals and conditions of the
business. In the fourth step, the designer is designing on a
service level, still focused on creating the best user
6 
experience possible but often having a bigger impact
(Hambeukers, 2016).
In the fifth and sixth phase, the designer is driving projects
through vision and operational management while solving
business problems through Design Thinking. The designer
is now working on an advisory level, teaching others about
design and applying Design Thinking onto other processes
than just design. Here, the designer is designing the
business itself and knows that the user experience is not
only delivered through usable and aesthetic interfaces, but
more importantly through technology, business models and
organization. The work is done on a strategic level and the
decisions being made are more critical to the business. The
last phase of the individual design maturity is being a
design leader. At this phase, the designer operates by
leading the organization through communication, operation
and attitude. The responsibility includes breaking down
organizational silos and engagement of teams by designing
visions (Hambeukers, 2016).
3. METHODOLOGY
This thesis has applied a qualitative case study analysis on
the design process of design consultants and how they
communicate with their current clients. The case is briefly
described in the first part of the results section. The
intention of this thesis is to reflect on how client-centric
design methods and mindsets inherited from Business
Design and Business Thinking can be integrated into
DesignOps at Futurice for increased design influence on
clients. In order to do this, the case study of Futurice was
chosen, for two main reasons. The first reason is that
challenges of such nature are explicit for consultancy
companies and more specifically for design consultants (De
Castro & Alves, 2005). The second reason is that to fully
understand the identified challenges and how to suggest
solutions, the design process needs to be examined in
relation to the relationship between the designer and the
potential stakeholders involved in a project (Vink, Imada &
Zink, 2008). The work was distributed over a period of five
months. It was carried out by one individual as a
side-project in parallel to working full-time as a digital
product design consultant. However, the insights and
learnings from the consultant project and the thesis project
complemented each other, creating a synergy-effect.
When examining the case study, a Business Thinking
approach by Rumsey (2020) was applied. According to the
author, the Business Thinking approaches can be used for a
variety of reasons and in multiple ways. For this study,
different tools and methods in Business Thinking were
applied when investigating the design process of design
consultants at Futurice. A total of 12 interviews were

conducted during the initial research phase. Each of these
interviews were done with a Critical Incident approach.
For the second research phase, a set of physical co-creation
canvases were implemented, based on Business Thinking
activities. The canvases were used to facilitate the
one-on-one workshop sessions and experimentations:
Strategy Maps (Figure 6), desirability perspectives &
objectives (Figure 7), Conditional Statements (Figure 8),
linking desirability to viability (Figure 9 & 10) and
quantifying and measuring design (Figure 11). As the
activities build on the outcome from previous activities,
they were executed in the exact order mentioned above. In
essence, the initial activities are meant to ideate on design
solutions that aligns with the business of the client. The
latter activities intend to develop an understanding if the
proposed ideas are valuable and viable to invest in or not.
The results were evaluated during the final workshop
activity (calculating ROI on Retention) and during
post-workshop interviews.
3.2. Critical Incident Interviews
Flanagan (1954) defines the Critical Incident approach as a
research method in which the participants are asked to in
detail describe a previous situation when an action directly
affected the outcome of a given task. The Critical Incident
interviews were conducted with design consultants at
Futurice and were meant to develop a deeper understanding
of their design process and relationship with their client.
More importantly, these interviews intended to establish a
blueprint to be used for the second research phase. The
results are presented in 4.1, 4.1.1, 4.1.2 and 4.1.3.
3.3. One-on-one workshops and experiments
In the second research phase, during a later occasion, each
of the interviewed design consultants were paired with their
current project client for a one-to-one collaborative
workshop session. The six pairs were given a group
number: P1 to P6. Prior to this phase, a set of canvas
templates were developed, based on Business Design and
Business Thinking principles. The canvases were meant to
facilitate and drive collaborative work during the workshop
sessions. The clients were asked to prepare and bring
business-relevant information and numbers to be used as a
base when performing the activities during the
workshop-sessions.
A total of 6 workshop sessions were conducted. The
duration of the workshops varied between 1,5 and 2,5 hours
and were carried out on the premises of Futurice
Stockholm. Under supervision by a workshop facilitator,
each pair ran inside-out experiments based on their findings
at the end of each workshop. The inside-out approach was
chosen for its current organizational resource-centricity, in
contrast to an outside-in approach, that rather focuses on
7
examining customers and competitors and then how the
organization can act on this information (Saeed, Yousafzai,
Paladino & Luca, 2015). As the design competence and
implementation within companies matures, Rumsey (2020)
argues that it becomes highly relevant to quantify the value
of design by experimenting, measuring desirability and
viability. In addition, this form of experimentation increases
active learning and trust between design teams (Rumsey,
2020). Before ending each session, the participants were
interviewed again in pairs to complement potential missed
out important information and to gather feedback on the
session. The results of the workshops and interviews are
discussed in section 4.3 and 5. The interview questions can
be found in Appendix A.
4. RESULTS
This section presents the outcome of applying a Business
Thinking approach to the case study. The results were
especially affected by case-specific contextual aspects, such
as the current state of DesignOps at Futurice but also by
more holistic aspects such as ways-of-working and culture.
In addition, the fact that the design process of consultants
varied depending on the intended goals, scope and stage of
each project was taken into careful consideration.
First, the current design process of design consultants and
how they communicate with their client are presented.
Secondly, the results from the chosen activities (Strategy
Maps, Desirability Perspectives & Objectives, Conditional
Statements, Linking Desirability with Viability and ROI of
Retention) are presented. The figures in this section
illustrate examples from the work of different
workshop-pairs. The remaining answers can be found in
Appendix A. Ultimately, results from testing of the
implementation are discussed and described in addition to
future work suggestions.
4.1. The Futurice case
To get a better understanding of the challenges of the design
consultants, the first phase of the study was focused on
understanding their work environment. More specifically,
factors such as design tools, use of office space, client
communication tools and frequency, distribution of time
spent at client and time spent at the Futurice premises were
looked into during interviews and observations. Each
critical incident interview with the design consultants was
introduced by a request to describe a situation where they
had made imperative design decisions in a client project,
both with negative and positive outcomes. Subsequently,
the design consultants were asked to recall a situation where
they had communicated design work to a project client, also
with negative and positive outcomes.
One particular challenge of the case was to get a better
understanding of the challenges of clients. Therefore, in
addition to observing the consultants in their working
context, both the consultants and their respective clients

were interviewed. Since Futurice is a global consultancy
company, an additional challenge was related to
understanding differences in terms of markets and general
ways of working with clients across the different countries
where the company is established. For this reason, design
consultants in other countries were not observed in their
work, but interviewed remotely.
4.1.1. Design Consultants
There are different design roles assigned to employees at
Futurice. Originally, most designers at Futurice are
educated within the field of HCI or other user-centred
educational design programs — which often does not
involve Business Thinking or business knowledge.
Generally, the designers are assigned the roles Digital
Product/UX Designer or Service Designer across different
levels of maturity, ranging from junior to principal level.
Though, there are also employees working as Business
Designers and some working as hybrids of the roles
designer and developer.
At Futurice, each employee, independent of role, is placed
on a career level ranging from 1 to 7 (including sublevels of
a, b and c), where level 1 corresponds to learning
consultant-related essentials and 7 means having an impact
on societal, industrial and environmental levels. This was
taken into careful consideration when observing and
interviewing each designer. For this reason, the study was
focused on understanding both product and service design
consultants ranging between 2a and 3c (corresponding to
levels 2-4 of the individual design maturity by Hambeukers,
2016). On this level of maturity, the expectation and
responsibility of designers ranges between contributing to
project success and peer support (career level 2a-2c) to
driving goals and leading efforts (career level 3a-3c).
4.1.2. Design Consultants Design Process
One of the main challenges of the design consultants at
Futurice is to quickly adapt to the particular situation of the
project they are onboarded to. Therefore, it turned out to be
a challenge to compare the design process of the observed
consultant designers as they were all working in different
ways with different products and services, attempting to
adapt as well as possible to the client and their needs. An
example of a method included in the design toolbox of
designers at Futurice is the Customer Journey Map. A
customer journey is a tool for planning, managing, and
leading customer experiences. It indicates in an
easy-to-understand way what the organisation's customers
are doing during their service experiences and is always
done from the customer's perspective.
Understanding customer journeys helps an organisation to
develop its operations in two ways: it helps it manage
customer experience and enhances its customer centricity.
Today, the business environment of organisations is
changing rapidly as customers' expectations grow, new and
8 
surprising competitors enter the market, and technology
evolves. Coping in this kind of environment requires
organisations to have both an inside-out and outside-in
approach; they must deliver a great customer experience
and operate in a customer centric way (Saeed et al., 2015).
The way that the design consultants at Futurice work is
balanced between the centralized ways of working
(Futurice’s DesignOps management) and the individual
designer. However, both the Futurice and the individual
way of working is excessively user-centered. To gain a
competitive advantage through digital products and
services, Rumsey (2020) means that they need to be
balanced across viability, feasibility and desirability.
However, desire is complex and requires efficient and
understandable ways to describe its unique makeup
(Rumsey, 2020). Even though design methods such as
customer journey maps are valuable to visualize and
understand desirability, it does not directly show how
improving a customer experience leads to objectives and
goals for adoption. It is valuable for the designer to
understand the big picture, but when insights are presented
in a format that mainly focuses on the users, clients struggle
to connect the dots between desirability and business
adoption (Rumsey, 2020; Brown 2010). The Customer
Journey method is just one example that defines the
user-centric ways of working with design at Futurice.
4.1.3. Clients
A difficult but crucial challenge of this study was to gain a
deeper understanding of the clients and their business
needs. In order to do this, several clients were interviewed,
focusing on their business ecosystem and how the designers
are positioning themselves in that ecosystem. To increase
the understanding of the clients even further, the design
consultants working with the clients were asked to in detail
describe what they knew about the clients business. In
addition, the business goals of the clients and the
relationship between the consultant designer and the client
were studied from an external perspective while facilitating
the interviews and workshop-sessions.
4.2. Applying the Business Thinking approach
Given the work context of design consultants above, the
process of applying the Business Thinking approach is
presented in this section. The section provides a description
of a set of carefully chosen tools and methods and how they
were applied during the one-on-one workshop sessions with
design consultants and clients.
4.2.1. Strategy Map
Each workshop-session started with an introduction of the
session, including the agenda, purpose and planned
outcome. This helped the participants to align and work
towards a common goal. After the introduction, the first
tool was presented to the participants — a printed
canvas-template of a Strategy Map (Figure 6). Rumsey
(2020) argues that the order of perspectives in Strategy

Maps matter as they indicate priority in trade-off-decision
scenarios. The perspectives were the following;
● Financial: To remain in business, what are the
things we must do? Generate revenue? Grow?
Reduce costs? Retain users?
● Customer: To meet a financial objective, what do
we need to give customers to satisfy them?
● Operational: To meet a customer objective, what
things do we need to do well?
● Learning & growth: To meet an operational
objective, what are the things we need to develop,
learn, and grow internally?
Figure 6: Strategy Map with perspectives, originally by Rumsey (2020)
4.2.2. Desirability Perspectives & Objectives
In order to develop a clear understanding of how the
content of the Strategy Map factors influence adoption, four
desirability perspectives were applied to the material. Other
perspectives could have been used as alternatives, however,
the four perspectives were chosen and applied to preserve
simplicity. The participants were asked to consider the
following four desirability perspectives in order;
● Credibility: To drive adoption, what are the things
that need to be credible for the user?
● Impact: To meet a credibility objective, what are
the things that must create impact?
● Usability: To meet an impact objective, what are
the things that must be usable?
● Detectability: To meet a usability objective, what
are the things that must be detectable?
The credibility perspective was chosen as the starting point
since factors such as trust, accuracy and good intentions
matter more than usability on a holistic business level
(Rumsey, 2020). By applying the perspectives in this order,
the participants could achieve an initial vision on what
desirability is the context of their current project.
After establishing the four perspectives, the participants
were asked to define two to three strategic objectives for
each perspective. The intention with adding strategic
objectives to the perspectives was for the participants to
9
align on holistic values (e.g. trust, ethics or diversity) with
the relevance of functionality and usability of the offered
product or service. Subsequently, the participants were
given another printed canvas, containing the four
perspectives, presented horizontally with empty space for
the objectives (Figure 7).
Figure 7: Desirability, strategic perspective and objectives, originally by
Rumsey (2020)
The participants were asked to express the objectives by
phrasing it with a verb and a specific noun (e.g. “improve
trust”) on post-it notes. Once discussed and agreed, the
participants placed the post-its to corresponding four
perspectives.
4.2.3. Conditional Statements
When objectives were defined, the participants started to
see a more refined model of desirability for the project. To
integrate with the business of the client, the participants
were now tasked with creating Conditional Statements. To
do this, the next phase consisted of logical reasoning,
performed by using two specific elements: arrows and
Conditional Statements. To form a Conditional Statement,
the participants were asked to link two separate statements:
one hypothesis and one conclusion. According to Rumsey
(2020), Conditional Statements are useful in this type of
situation as they act as a foundation for a case-and-effect
model. Together, they create a synergy effect — as one
successful statement promotes the success of the other
statement. In co-creation workshop settings, this is
especially efficient, because in contrast to only writing
down the statements, they can be illustrated by using arrows
(Figure 8).

Figure 8: Cause-and-effect model of desirability objectives, originally by
Rumsey (2020)
At this point, the participants were asked to draw
connections with arrows. In essence, the connected post-its
equals one Conditional Statement. The intention is to
illustrate multiple Conditional Statements by moving from
the objectives and the bottom all the way to the top. The
results from this task varied, depending on multiple factors,
described in the discussion section. However, to clarify, one
example of a Conditional Statement, created by P1was: “If
we change operating procedures then we can decrease
costs which will give us an opportunity to scale which can
complement our current offering so that we can widthen the
customer base and in the end increase profit”. The
remainder of the Conditional Statements can be found in
Appendix A. The intention of this activity is to understand
how desirability is relevant and how this understanding can
be used to understand how business objectives relate to
overall adoption perspectives.
4.2.4. Linking Desirability with Viability
At this phase of the session, the participants were tasked to
use a new Strategy Map to define the relationship between
desirability and viability objectives. To do this, the new
Strategy Map contained two different adjacent columns:
desirability and viability. One isolated Conditional
Statement was put in the column of desirability with the
corresponding perspectives. Concurrently, the viability
column was based on the four company health perspectives
of the initial Strategy Map (Figure 6).
10 
Figure 9: Cause-and-effect model of desirability and viability objectives,
originally by Rumsey (2020)
According to Rumsey (2020) this step is heavily dependent
on the business model of the company (or the expected
outcome of the project) that is being investigated. For
instance, if the company is of a for-profit nature the order
may be the following;
1. Financial
2. Customer
3. Operational
4. Learning & Growth
However, if the company is of non-profit nature, the
Financial perspective may be placed in the bottom of the
column. In order to align with the viability perspectives, the
participants were tasked to enter the objectives of the
product or service in the right column (Figure 9). For this
task, the client had additional responsibility to provide
strategic objectives, however, both participants had to
mutually agree and decide on the objectives. When the
participants had agreed on objectives and entered them in
the paired columns, they were again asked to use arrows in
order to extend the Conditional Statements into the adjacent
column. The intention here is to bridge the two columns and
form a concise and succinct statement that demonstrates
why desirability matters for customer adoption and
viability, including both perspectives. In the specific
example by P2, shown in Figure 9, credibility (top of left
column) was bridged with an objective in the viability
column (in this case, an operational).

Figure 10: Statement that connects desirability to viability, originally by
Rumsey (2020)
4.2.5. Quantifying and measuring design
The next phase in the session was intended to quantify the
value of the design by using different measures and metrics.
To do this, experiments were set up and designed by using
the Conditional Statements from the previous phase. To
design reliable product experiments, Rumsey (2020) argues
that it is essential to consider two viability goals and two
desirability goals simultaneously. These goals should be of
two different sorts: a primary goal that can be changed and
a secondary goal that remains the same. As the primary goal
refers to an achievement the design team desires to reach,
the secondary goal is an achievement the design team wants
to reach while avoiding a trade-off decision situation.
One example, defined by P4 stated: “Our (primary) goal is
to scale to new markets while remaining on the same
level of costs (secondary). In order to validate the ideas, an
inside-out approach was chosen. To be able to go forward
and validate the design ideas created by the participants
thus far, the inside-out approach was designed to be able to
quantify the business value of the design in the form of
Return on Investment of Retention. The calculate the ROI
of Retention, this approach focused on answering four main
questions;
● What do we get?
● How much do we get?
● When do we get it?
● How much will it cost us?
In order to get a criterion for quantification, the participants
were introduced to a third canvas template. The template is
based on an equation that calculates the percentage of
customers that stays loyal to the targeted company over
time. This equation, ROI of Retention, is calculated by
using four metrics;
11
1. Number of targeted customers
2. Current percentage rate of retention
3. Projected rate of retention
4. Lifetime target customer value
Figure 11: ROI of Retention equation calculation, originally by Rumsey
(2020)
The client-side of participants had previously been asked to
prepare and bring numbers and information about numeric
goals that their business is targeting. However, a significant
number of participants (P2, P5 & P6) experienced
difficulties in accessing this information prior to the
sessions. As a result, many of the experiments were based
on assumptions. Fortunately, some groups managed to
integrate specific business metrics used by the clients with
the desirability findings. By doing this, the participants
validated and framed experiments for desirability through
simple math equations. In the example of Figure 11, the
ROI of Retention was calculated by multiplying the number
of targeted customers found in segmentation data with
projected and current percentages of retention. This
percentage is the target to test different design solutions
against, by understanding whether retention increases or
decreases with different design options. The experiments
showed if the previously defined desirability metrics could
help increase retention. The calculation resulted in an
indication of the viability outcome for the experiment
(ROI). In the case of P3 (see Figure 11), a sum of 2,3
million swedish kronor. This sum is a projected earned
amount that project costs must not exceed unless value is
generated from other sources.
4.3. Outcomes
One of the main challenges of facilitating the workshop
sessions relates to the fact that the definition of desirability
is perceived differently by design consultants, but also by
clients. This deficient consistency has previously put many
consultants in difficult situations when presenting or
discussing design solutions with clients. More importantly,
the desirability aspect is often used as the single driver for
design solutions and therefore excludes the viability aspect
when communicating design work (De Castro & Alves,
2005).
As a result, clients tend to understand desirability as
subjective which lowers the trust and willingness of using
and investing in design while facing strategic business
decisions (Brown, 2010). The outcome of the workshops in

this study indicates that clients realized that by integrating
design into core business processes, a more intimate
understanding of their business and customers emerges. In
addition, both design consultants and their respective clients
realized the value in rapid number crunching and business
model prototyping. They also showed a changed attitude
towards exploration and experimentation of solutions as
they saw that these activities would increase the sense of
viability in desirable products and services. Multiple
participants on the client side (P2, P3, P5 and P6) described
how they could more safely take informed decisions
through iterative testing of business ideas on design
foundation.
Another critical finding of the workshop relates to the
applied tools and methods. It can be hypothesized that the
tools and methods might have been less successful if used
separately, without any numeric business metrics or other
measurable aspects of the product or service being
investigated. However, when the experiments were carried
out based on specific desirability measures identified from
the previous tasks, the workshop groups were able to
calculate viability, giving the proposed ideas and solutions a
stronger case in trade-off situations. According to Rumsey
(2020), this type of prototypal-experimentation is about
activating continuous learning and converting learnings into
value faster than the competition.
5. DISCUSSION
In this study, a Business Thinking approach was applied in
a workshop setting to understand how design consultants
can revamp their conventional design process to be more
viable and client-centric. Further, the thesis investigates
how the approach can be integrated into organizational
design operations to promote stronger relationships and
understanding between design consultants and their
respective clients. Based on the work of Rumsey (2020),
this study presents a revised and case-adapted design
approach in the form of Business Thinking activities in
physical co-creation canvases. However, the deliverables
would require additional design and development iterations
to yield more reliable and useful results in future research.
How Futurice may integrate Business Thinking into their
organization is based on the design maturity of the firm,
discussed in section 5.2. In addition to the deliverables, this
study provides a set of valuable insights to be used as input
for future work by Futurice and academic scholars in the
field of business and design, but more importantly in
contexts when these fields intersect. In this section, the
results of the deliverables and insights are discussed.
5.1. Business Thinking in consultancy contexts
The results of this study points towards a potential need in
mindset change of design consultants. Even though this
mindset change might evolve over time as designers work
through multiple projects with clients, it does not directly
12 
include which tools, methods and ways of communicating
that would be most efficient to apply for increased viability
in design work (Davenport & Early, 2010). The initial
interviews showed that a lack of business understanding
stimulated a sense of anxiety in design consultants, due to
their inability of taking business informed trade-off
decisions during client consultation. The interviews also
indicated that design consultants feel stressed about having
conversations with their clients about their business, leading
to an avoidance of such conversations. However, as the
designers were brought together with their clients in
one-on-one collaboration sessions where they worked and
communicated on common grounds and with the same
tools, the designers expressed a relief of anxiety and
increased willingness to present alternative solutions as
amendments or additions to the original design solution. As
a design consultant, it is a highly relevant skill to be able to
communicate in a way that gives others the feeling that they
are coming to their own conclusions (Roschuni, 2012). In
addition, as a designer starts developing a client-centric
mindset, they will start thinking as executives, which is
essential for their own professional development
(Davenport & Early, 2010).
Being able to determine the risks and opportunities during
trade-off situations means understanding the desirability
and viability aspects of an idea. As design consultants
collaborate with clients, they will benefit from constantly
clarifying the risks and opportunities for their ideas while
showing calculations, data and justifications that support
the reasoning behind the identified solutions (Spool, 2018;
Turner, 2011).
5.1.1. DesignOps & Business Thinking integration
As discussed, the business knowledge of individual design
consultants and ways of presenting the business value of
design work are crucial aspects for having a stronger
influence in client projects. Therefore, this study intended
to develop an understanding of how Business Thinking can
be integrated into the DesignOps structure at Futurice, not
only supporting designers in their current projects, but
creating an impact of how design is done throughout the
organisation. The goal of this is to solve the problems
upstream by including Business Thinking in the different
layers of DesignOps at Futurice (see Figure 2). Modifying
well-established operations at an international-wide
consultancy firm is a complex, almost inconceivable task.
Thus, the Business Thinking approach may be integrated
into existing ways of working by applying the business
perspective into workflows, communication, presentations,
tools and methods. This approach would be valuable in
multiple ways, as it slowly but steadily changes the mindset
of employees to be more client-centric, while avoiding a
disruption of current DesignOps at Futurice. Therefore, the
Business Thinking approach may advantageously be
integrated into all layers of DesignOps. However, exactly in
which layer the aspects of Business Thinking should be
integrated is depending on the characteristics (e.g.
calculating the ROI on Retention may be integrated into
layer 4 and developing a client-centric mindset into layer
1).
As stated by Malouf et al., (2019), The DesignOps structure
in an organization is generally branched across three
overlapping areas (see Figure 3). The initial research phase
in this study showed that since Futurice is historically built
on engineering competence and offering, most of the
DesignOps management is originating from the Workflow
Operations area. The interview questions and observations
focused on understanding the work context of the design
consultants confirms this, as the tools and technological
infrastructure used in their work was substantial and tightly
coupled with R&D.
The outcome of the workshops showed that the participants
became more comfortable working together, listening and
sharing information between each other in a constructive
manner. Integrating Business Thinking into the overall way
of doing business at Futurice can bring out the client-centric
mindset in designers, changing not only how they
collaborate with clients and their customers but also how
they work with colleagues and managers. To accelerate this
mindset-change, the business perspective requires
integration into familiar methods and practices in
company-wide operational design work. This will improve
the understanding of the benefits in how the clients of
Futurice work, despite the impression of opposition to their
work processes.
5.1.2. Verbally and visually communicating the business
value of design
Proper language and communication are two of the most
important aspects for influencing business decisions —
being able to communicate concisely and effectively as a
design consultant will increase influence on decisions in
client projects and proposals (Tomes, Oates & Armstrong
(1998); Roschuni, 2012).
argument was validated during multiple workshop sessions
as the clients expressed significant understanding of both
business opportunities and risks.
Empathizing with the client improves the understanding of
how to approach them through efficient communication,
which in turn reduces the gap between business and design
(Tomes et al., 1998). At Futurice, many designers avoid the
topic of business and ROI calculations. However, these
calculations are not only critical for showing the viability
level of design — but also how much the business will earn
or save on a certain solution. This tangible result is a highly
relevant factor when decisions about investments are to be
made. Rumsey (2020) argues that as designers start to
understand and use the models and strategies used by
clients and their business, they develop stronger
partnerships and increased influence on business decisions.
This can be seen in the research in this study that points
towards a crucial factor when bringing design consultants
and clients closer together: choice of language and
communication structure. As shown in Figure 12, design
consultants can increase the influence on decisions and gain
more trust by translating design terms and adopting a
language used and valued by the client and their
organization (Tomes et al., 1998). Many clients expressed
increased understanding of what the decisions they had to
make next would mean for them in terms of risks and
opportunities. The canvas-templates implemented in this
study promoted a natural storytelling communication
structure and turned out to be valuable for both the design
consultant and the client.

One particularly distinguished theme identified during the

client interviews was built on the observations and
questions related to decision making. Clients with business
decision-making responsibilities often expressed symptoms
of decision fatigue — a state when the quality of made
decisions become poor due to the uncertainty and amount of
decisions to take (Polman & Vohs, 2016). Rumsey (2020)
argues that it is the responsibility of the designer to increase
trust by showing an understanding of the business and
aligning the design outcome to viability. To reduce decision
fatigue and increase trust, knowing how and when to Figure 12: Design and business terms translation
communicate can thus be seen as one of the most important
competencies as a design consultant. In this study, this

13

5.2. Design maturity
Compared to many other consultancy firms in the industry,
Futurice is positioned on a high level in terms of design
maturity. Even though the company is mainly focused on
software engineering and data-enabling competencies, it is
still competing with other design consultancies that are
using design as their main or only offering. Therefore, it is
appropriate for Futurice to continue investing in design
teams and general offering. An analysis of the research
done in this study shows information about multiple factors,
such as ways of working, culture, global offering, industry
and market competence, shared values and vision. Each of
these factors points towards that Futurice is currently
positioned on the fourth level of the Design Ladder.
However, that does not necessarily imply that there are little
or no opportunities for further design maturity progression
into becoming an even more design-driven organisation.
Often, Futurice aspires to act as design advocates towards
their clients. Essentially all of their clients benefit in
incorporating design into their organization one way or
another. Yet, despite the success of design utilisation in
client projects, the overall business of the client might not
need a high maturity design team for gaining a competitive
advantage. Ultimately, it is to a high extent Futurice’s
responsibility to acknowledge where and how the client
may invest in design. The deliverables and results of this
study can be used to assess this and how to potentially
accelerate the excursion of becoming more design-driven
through increased design maturity levels.
The results also show that this is exclusive for the case of
Futurice. Even though the second research phase, which
included the evaluation of the Business Thinking approach,
was done with 6 different design consultants from Futurice
(working with different clients), the results show similar
improvements related to communication, client-centricity
and business understanding for all designers. This points
towards a potential integration of the approach in contexts
beyond the case of Futurice. Appropriate areas of
application could potentially be for other digital
consultancies and agencies that offer similar services as
Futurice. The target organizations would also require
similar attributes such as ways of working, culture and
shared values. As discussed, the critical factors to
understand the extent to which this integration can be done
is the design maturity of the individual design consultants
and the organizational design maturity. To understand what
aspects of Business Thinking that an organization would
benefit most from, a thorough design maturity analysis is
required, using the Design Ladder (Kretzshmar, 2003) or
similar methodology.
5.3. Limitations
This study was conducted by one individual while
simultaneously working as a full-time design consultant at
the case company. Thus, being in the same role as the
14 
participants involved in this study, the individual might
have established a bias that affected the approach,
understanding and final outcome of the study. Another
limitation of this study relates to the extent of the design
process that was evaluated. First, only a limited part of the
design process was evaluated. Secondly, it is somewhat
difficult to fully synthesize the outcome from the
experiments as the investigated design consultants were all
on different projects, different design process stages and
having different kinds of relationships with their current
client. Thus, some pairs might have been working together
previously to a further extent than other pairs. Lastly,
critical information about the business of the clients might
have been left out during the experiments because of
NDA’s, leading to decreased quality and viability of
quantitative calculations carried out in the final stage of the
workshop sessions.
5.4. Future work
The results of this study indicates that the merge of business
and design inquires further work to be better understood.
This can be done in two different directions. One direction
for Futurice that adapts to the market and can be used to
gain a competitive advantage and another one for the
scholarly field of design and business, continuing the
research in more controlled settings for experimentation.
The outcome of this study points towards a potential benefit
for Futurice to better prepare not only junior designers with
low working experience — but also to educate and cultivate
experienced designers without a substantial client-centric
mindset. Further, future work may involve facilitating
collaborative tools and methods to be used mutually by
design consultants and clients. As demonstrated in this
study, there is not much previous research focused on
merging business and design. More specifically, there is a
lack of research made on the opportunities and risks of
design consultants knowing, understanding and using
business knowledge and tools in their day-to-day work as
designers. This study shows that there is a gap in both
research and industrial settings that needs to be filled.
6. CONCLUSION
In this study, a modified Business Thinking approach was
applied, originally created by Rumsey (2020). The approach
was adapted to align with the intended outcome of the study
but also to fit with the context of the case and scope of the
study. Based on a Business Thinking approach, a set of
physical canvases were implemented and used in
one-on-one co-creation workshop sessions between design
consultants at Futurice and their current project clients. The
results show that business knowledge, tools and methods
are critical for successful work for design consultants. More
specifically, activities that increase an understanding of how
desirability can be connected to viability and how the value
of design can be quantified and communicated are relevant
for the case of Futurice.

The results show that the Business Thinking approach can
be integrated from two directions. The first direction is the
consultant designers individual design process. The second
direction is into the different layers of how the organization
manages design operations. This integration is not
necessarily exclusive for the case of Futurice but also
encourages for adoption in other similar digital
consultancies. To which extent this can be done is
dependent on the individual and organizational design
maturity. In addition, the study demonstrates the importance
of developing a client-centric mindset for consultant
designers.
One main challenge of the case is that Futurice is growing
exponentially, which complicates to which extent the design
operations can be adapted. Therefore, the Business
Thinking methodology and perspectives needs to be
integrated into current ways-of-working with design. A
main contribution of this study has been to create a better
understanding of the challenges that arise when design
consultants communicate design work to their clients.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I thank Chris Peters and Cristian Bogdan for their
supervision and guidance throughout the process of this
study. I would also like to thank my supervisor at Futurice,
Cecilia Lövström, who always supported me with insights
and ideas on how to progress when challenges occurred.
Finally, I would like to thank the clients of Futurice who
participated in this study.
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8. APPENDICES
8.1 Appendix A: Interview Questions, Templates and Conditional Statements

Critical Incident Interviews

Introduction and Purpose
The purpose of this chat is to learn more about how you as a designer work with clients, with an emphasis on the
most critical touch-points of how you communicate in certain situations. To do this, we will talk about two different
tracks.

1. The first track is related to how you make business informed decisions throughout the design process in a
client project.

2. The second track is related to not only how you communicate these decisions to stakeholders or clients, but
also how the design outcomes are communicated.

Please spend some time thinking before answering.

TRACK 1

We will start by talking about the first track. For the next series of questions, I’d Interviewer introduces the
like you to focus on how you take heavy design decisions during client projects. focus of the study

● How do you practically work to make sure that your design work is Check tool-use criteria

aligned with the business of the client?

● Please think of, and tell me about a particular time when you made a Critical incidents (positive)
heavy design decision in a client project, and it turned out to be a
success?

● What task were you doing at the time?

Clarification questions
● How did that decision affect the outcome of the design, or the task?

● What information was used in making the decision? How was it

obtained?
 ● Is there another time you can think of when knowing more about your Seek out further incidents
clients business (and goals) helped you to craft more effective design?

● Please think of, and tell me about a particular time when you made a
Critical incidents
heavy design decision in a client project, and it turned out to be a
(negative)
problem?

● What task were you doing at the time? Clarification questions

● What information was used in making the decision? How was it

obtained?

● What information could have helped make the decision? What was

missing?

● If you were training new employees, what would you teach them about

this kind of incident?

Seek out further incidents

Is there another time, when you took heavy design decisions in a client project
that led to problems later on?

TRACK 2

Now we’re moving on to the second track. For the next series of questions, I’d Interviewer introduces the
like you to focus on how you present and communicate your designs to focus of the study
stakeholders (clients): everything from user insights, to visual designs.

● How do you practically present your work to clients? Check tool-use criteria

● Please think of, and tell me about a particular time when you presented Critical incidents (positive)
design work to a client, and it turned out to be a success?
● What task were you doing at the time?
Clarification questions
● How did you prepare for that situation?

● How did that particular presentation affect the next steps of the

project?

● Is there another time you can think of when you communicated your Seek out further incidents
design work to a client, in which they really understood the business
value of your work?

● Please think of, and tell me about a particular time when you presented
Critical incidents
design work to a client, and it turned out to be a problem?
(negative)

● What task were you doing at the time? Clarification questions

● Please describe the format you were using to present your work.

● How did you handle the situation?

● What could have made this presentation/communication more

efficient?

● If you were training new employees, what would you teach them about

this kind of incident?

● Is there another time, when you tried to communicate your work to a Seek out further incidents
client which did not go as you planned?
Initial Interview Questions
Design consultants:

Work environment and context of design consultants at Futurice

- Can you please describe a normal work day for you as a design consultant?
- Can you please provide a description of your current clients business and goals?

Additional questions
- Which design tools are you commonly working with? Why?
- How do you use the office space?
- How do you use the office space of your client?
- What are the differences of working at the Futurice premises and the premises of your client?
- How do you normally communicate with your client?
- Which mediums and channels?
- How often?
- What are the challenges of good communication between design consultant and client?

Clients:

General questions
- Who is the responsible designer in your current project?
- How do you communicate?
- How does the responsible designer in your current project align their work with your business goals?
- Describe the last time you took a critical business decision.
- What were the outcomes?
- What did you base your decision on?
- What did you learn?
- What is working well?
- What needs improvement?
Results from workshop-sessions
In total, 6 pairs participated in the workshop-sessions (P1-P6)

Conditional Statements
P1:​ If we ​change operating procedures t​ hen we can ​decrease costs ​which will ​give us an opportunity to scale w
​ hich
can complement our current offering ​so that we can ​widthen the customer base a​ nd in the end ​increase profit.

P2:​ If we ​stay visible and connected​ we can ​set us apart from the competition w​ hich will ​improve our reputation
which ​can create strategic alliances s​ o that we can ​find ways to leverage referral selling ​and in the end ​drive new
customers.

P3:​ If we ​offer prepaid retainers or ongoing payment plans​ we can ​achieve a stable cash flow w​ hich will ​increase
the total billing amount ​which ​can lock our clients into a longer-term arrangement s​ o that we can ​establish new
relationships.

P4:​ If we ​automate our business​ we can ​answer many business critical questions with data ​which will ​allow our
business to run smoothly w​ hich can ​provide more accurate forecasts and business plans s​ o that we can ​take more
informed strategic business decisions ​and in the end ​accomplish more back-office work.

P5:​ If we ​change to a better CRM software ​we can ​improve our marketing w ​ hich will ​increase networking and
online presence w ​ hich can ​increase our reputation s​ o that we can ​recruit more a​ nd in the end ​grow as a business.

P6:​ If we ​ask our customers for reviews ​we can ​boost sales ​which will ​keep getting new customers w
​ hich can
improve current and potential customer experiences ​so that we can ​increase profit.
TRITA -EECS-EX-2020:773

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