Strategic Design Process

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Strategy

A firm’s theory about

how to gain competitive advantage.

1. Romantic view of leadership

2. External control view of leadership

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Strategy

1. Romantic view of leadership

2. External control view of leadership
Thinking Strategically
The Three Big Strategic Questions
1. Where are we now?
• Study micro- & macro- environments

2. Where do we want to go?

• Business(es) to be in and market positions to stake out
• Buyer needs and groups to serve
• Direction to head

3. How are we going to get there?

• A company’s answer to “how
will we get there?” is its strategy
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What Do We Mean by “Strategy”
• Consists of competitive moves and business approaches used by
managers to run the company

• Management’s “action plan” to

• Attract and please customers
• Compete successfully
• Conduct operations
• Achieve target levels of organizational performance
Answering the Question,
“How are we going to get there”
• How to please customers
• How to out-compete rivals
• How to manage each functional piece of the business (R&D,
production, marketing, HR, finance, and so on)
• How to respond to changing market conditions
• How to achieve targeted levels of performance
Elements of a Company’s Business Strategy
Strategic Management
What is Strategic Management?

Strategic Management consists of the

analyses, decisions, and actions an
organization undertakes in order to create
and sustain competitive advantages
Strategic Management
• Analysis
• Strategic goals (vision, mission, strategic objectives)
• Internal and external environment of the firm

• Strategic decisions
• What industries should we compete in?
• How should we compete in those industries?

• Actions
• Allocate necessary resources
• Design the organization to bring intended strategies to
reality
Strategic Management
• Strategic management is the study of why some firms outperform
others
• How to compete in order to create competitive advantages in the
marketplace

vs.

• How to create competitive advantages in the market place

• Unique and valuable
• Difficult for competitors to copy or substitute
Strategic Management
Process
Strategic Management Process

There are three ongoing processes that are central to strategic

management – analyses, decisions, and actions.

• It is often referred to as strategic

analysis, strategic formulation
and strategic implementation.
•
• They are highly interdependent.
Applying Strategic Thinking to a Design
Strategy
“Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig
deeper, it’s really how it works” – Steve Jobs
• Designers must develop a tactical thinking approach to working with
internal stakeholders to gain a better understanding of business
objectives, user goals, and is able to translate these needs
into meaningful design strategies and solutions.
• Strategic design encourages designers to look at the design process as a
problem-solving mechanism, starting by identifying the problem and
working with both the client and the team to solve that problem.
• It’s a “connecting the dots” approach to implementing a design strategy.
Design Strategy
• A design strategy ensures that every asset is created with the business
goals and objectives in mind. It works as a bridge between those
things, prioritizing tasks and design requests.
• Design strategy is a systematic and intentional approach to creating
solutions that meet specific objectives.
• It involves analyzing the goals of organization, understanding the
needs of stakeholders and developing a plan to create solutions that
are effective, efficient and sustainable.
• Design strategy can encompass a wide range of areas, including
product design, brand design, graphic design, user experience design
and service design. 15
Design Strategy Process
• The process typically involves
conducting research to gain insights into user needs and preferences,
identifying design opportunities and constraints and
producing a clear plan for creating and implementing design solutions.
• A successful design strategy may consider the broader context in
which a project or organization operates, such as market trends,
competition and technological advancements.
• These strategies may also be flexible enough to adapt to changing
circumstances and feedback from users

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Design Strategy Process

Remember Strategic Management Process 17

Design Strategy
• A design strategy describes the gap between a commercial strategy
(the field of play) and how teams might iterate or evolve the
customers’ experience with their products and services in order to
achieve its commercial goals (their plan of attack).
• Typically a design strategy will encompass:

 What success means (and for whom) and how to measure it.
 The specifics of the opportunity(s) (pain, gain or delighter) for a given audience.
 Some analysis of the current proposition and the resulting experience.
 A vision and set of principles that illustrate a desired, future state.

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Forming a Design Strategy

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Forming a Design Strategy

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Forming a Design Strategy

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Strategic Design Vs Design Thinking
• Design Thinking focuses on training business leaders to “think like a
designer,” while strategic design embeds designers in strategic parts
of the business.

• Strategic design is more of a call-to-arms for designers, while design

thinking is a high-level intro to UX design.

• Strategic design seeks to arm designers with 21st-century design

methods, while Design Thinking™️seeks to arm business people with
20th-century design methods.

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Strategic Design Vs User Experience Design
• Strategic design requires a lot of experience, product and service
design skills, plus more.

• Many things change between user experience (UX) design and

strategic design, but four significant differences exist.

User experience (UX) refers to the user's journey when interacting with
a product or service. UX design is the process of creating products or
services that provide meaningful experiences for users, involving many
different areas of product development including branding, usability,
function, and design.
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Strategic Design Vs User Experience Design
1. The space of strategic design is bigger than UX design.

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Strategic Design Vs User Experience Design
2. The time scale of strategic design is bigger than UX design.

• The bigger problem spaces require longer timelines than traditional projects.
Not only will the project last longer, you may also have to “design the transition”
between phases since they last so long.

• Strategic design is informed by futures practices like strategic foresight, futures

thinking, and speculative design. Strategic designers seek to create desirable
futures, but they understand that an element of emergence is at play.

• The solution you conceive may morph over time, and tending to that change is a
vital activity of the strategic designer.

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Strategic Design Vs User Experience Design
3. The problems of strategic design are messier and more
interdependent.
• Rather than simply solving an individual's problem, strategic design seeks to
solve the problems of organizations and cultures.

• Design as a practice has very humble roots. For most of its history, the design
was tasked with swooping in to add artistic decoration at the end of the
process. With no creative control over the product being created, applying
aesthetics at the end was akin to “adding lipstick to a pig.”

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Strategic Design Vs User Experience Design
4. The solutions are system-level and include principle & policy.
• Rather than simply delivering a solution, strategic designers have to design
the system that delivers solutions.

• UX, product, and service design follow a process of working with problems
and solutions (a process known as the Double Diamond).

• In strategic design, you think bigger than the solution, which means designing
on the policy level. Policy doesn’t have to be an internal memo or paper.
Strategic designers often use visuals and objects to get creative with policy
design.

• Strategic designers might think of an object, visual, or concept as more of a

Trojan Horse for the change they seek to bring to an organization.
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Importance of Design Strategy
Applying a strong design strategy does more than just persuasively engage a user.
It creates efficient work processes that are both goal-oriented and cost-effective.

• Enhanced customer focus

• Improved innovation
• Faster problem-solving
• Greater collaboration and cross-functional teamwork
• Enhanced adaptability and resilience
• Increased efficiency and cost savings
• Better risk management
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