Forget all the jargon, in the following article we’ll give you a basic guide to what strategic design is, how important it is, and how we use it.
The easiest way of thinking about strategic design is to think about what you do when you wake up – most of us have a plan. Get out of bed, shower, breakfast, brush teeth, go to work, come home, eat, and back to bed. It’s a plan of attack for the day, or, in other words, a strategy. In dictionary terms, it is “A plan of action or policy designed to achieve a major or overall aim.”
It’s exactly the same when it comes to design. Whether it is brand and communication, colour material finish design, digital design, product design, instructional design (breathe) service design, visual design, interaction design, design research, motion graphics, or design strategy – there’s always a strategy, and the strategy always has a goal; creating business value for you.
Of course, the strategy is different for each of these services. Each of our teams work in different ways, i.e., product design strategy research is different from motion graphics’, but the basic essence remains the same; to have a good end result, you need a good why.
We make sure our clients have a firm understanding of why they want what they want, or what their customers want, before we embark on any project. We are firm believers and practitioners of user-driven innovation, and collective creativity. Your end users are key to your strategy, and they (and you) are key to the overall project. We only ever work with, and not for.
Knowing what you want isn’t much without having a why or a how. In order to create value the final product or service must have a reason for being, and that reason must have been carefully thought out. The simplest guide is to ask questions. Why do you want to do, what you want to do? Remember that your might not be able to answer all your questions right now, and that your answers will likely change over the course of your research, but; they will help create a hypothesis which can focus and guide your process and choice of methodology.
Some of our clients call us the junction of business and design; some say we deliver user-driven business value; others like us because we’re good at figuring out what new experiences users dream of in the digital age and, how that dream should look, be it a product, a service, an experience, or even a mix of all of them. In other words – meaningfully bridging the gap design thinking and design doing.
It’s not rocket science; it’s just good thinking.
If you want to know more, get in touch. We’re more than happy to just talk.