Strategic design

User-centred, co-creative, holistic, sequencing, evidencing...

The principles of design have been infiltering lately into every field of worklife, and that is good so.

Design by definition is purpose driven and aims for an effective and attractive result.

If you let those guiding principles lead your thinking while building your business you definitely will end up with a better product. 

It”s not that thinking long term has not been in the toolbox of project founders or that nobody has been planning for the next steps before when starting a business. The thing is that how we do can make the difference.

Maybe it is your first project or your first business you are starting to build, but definitely there have been millions of people on the same path before you and if you can use what they have learned on the way will bring you to a better position even as a fresh starter. 

That is what methodologies are good for.

They offer a framework that you can fill with your own content.  After all, you are the one that knows the most about what you are doing. What strategic design brings in is an approach that shows you the questions you have to answer in order to arrive at a better result than that you would arrive without it.

Design is purpose driven, and you have to define that purpose clearly if you want it to succeed. That is why strategy and design walk hand in hand. Strategy is the starting point of design. And if you apply the principles of design thinking (user-centred, co-creative, sequencing (iterative), evidencing (visual) and holistic) when creating the strategy

you will have all the chance to end up with a product or service that is desirable, viable and feasible.

Innovation always lies at the intersection of this trio.

That is why a strategic design process starts with an analysis that allows us to reframe the challenge based on facts instead of assumptions, which leads to a concept that gets validated by testing. In an ideal project you go through all the stages - discover - define - design - deliver - but the flow is never linear.  As you learn on the way you will return to certain key points until you settle with a solution.

However, there is no ideal project - time, budget, resources always force a trade-off. But balance can be found. 

A project flow as written in the books

Each step has its importance, but the level of elaboration depends on several factors. However, there are topics you cannot skip without risking the project to fall sooner or later.