What is strategic design and why do companies need it?
As a Designer, it is common that people, even those close to me, have absolutely no idea what I do. ‘Design’ is such an ambiguous word that means so many different things to so many different people. There are furniture designers, graphic designers, fashion designers, industrial designers and the list goes on, and on. To me, the best way to define design is the act of creative problem-solving. This can then be applied to many different domains including digital products, the physical form, fashion and so on.
There is one type of design, one that I am particularly passionate about, that is hard to explain and define, and that is strategic design. So, I will do my best to explain…
Traditionally companies usually operate on the model illustrated below. They come up with goals and objectives, usually based on assumptions and the previous year’s performance and number. After establishing these goals two things often happen: the long-winded strategy document gathers digital dust somewhere in the filing system and is never really used, OR people jump straight into solution mode building whatever they think might be the best solution.
The ‘might’ is really important as many companies are wasting time and money developing solutions to support the strategic goals. They find out the hard way that they spent many months (and often years), and countless dollars designing and developing the wrong solutions.
Strategic design, on the other hand, works between the high-level goals and what is actually produced to make sure that the RIGHT solutions are designed to solve the right problems and help the company or team achieve it’s strategic goals, adding an important step to the process.
They do this by doing focusing on three main things:
Bridging the gap between high-level strategy and solutions that users see and experience: this requires being able to speak both languages, business, design and if you’re in the digital space, this required being technologically literate too.
Validating and de-risking business decisions using the fundamentals of good design: put the customer at the core, come up with creative solutions and, test and validate to make the right decisions.
Turn ambiguous goals into actionable plans: strategies are often long, number-heavy PowerPoints that focus a lot on vision (if you’re lucky), financial goals and targets with lots of focus on WHAT should be done and no detail about HOW it should be done. Strategic design helps answer both these questions and many more, including who needs to be involved? When should the plan be executed? And most importantly why should these solutions be designed in the first place?
Strategic design does add a step into the process, but I believe this actually saves a lot of time in the long run. We are living in a complex world and solutions may not be immediately visible, while looking through the existing lense. Sometimes you need to slow down in order to speed up.
There is nothing worse than investing a lot of resources (time, money, effort and morale) into solutions that ended up being the wrong ones because this step was missed.
Many people and businesses believe that strategy work should be done by “business people”. I don’t disagree with this entirely, but I do believe that strategy has plenty of room for creativity. If you want to take your business to the next level, be competitive or become innovative, a different perspective, combined with a structured approach to putting the customer at the centre of your thinking can chart a more efficient path to impact.
For the best outcomes, strategies should be created alongside strategic designers. This way, they can understand why strategic goals exist and close the chasm between strategy and solutions to create the best outcomes and experience for customers. Because at the end of the day, that’s what strategy should be about!
Photo by Jukan Tateisi on Unsplash