Strategic Design is about doing more

Design as a practice has very humble roots. For most of our history, designers swooped in at the end of the process to add artistic decoration. With no creative control over the product being created, the application of aesthetics at the end was akin to adding lipstick to a pig.

“Strategic design goes far beyond the aesthetics end of the value chain and into the contextual systems involved.”

By moving from the solution space into the problem space, strategic designers can understand the entire ecosystem of a problem. Strategic designers move into the problem space to consider the whole pig. A real strategic designer would even consider the farm, the market, and the policy that’s involved in raising pigs.

Strategic designers like to work on the front lines of problem definition in innovative fields. Their tasks might include aligning the company’s vision with product ecosystems, co-creating with high-level stakeholders, or launching new ventures. They strive to be the drivers of decisions, practices, and behaviors within organizations. They’re often found working at innovation hubs, startup incubators, design consultancies, or anywhere the problem space is still being defined.

Insights from a Strategic Designer

Last week, Adam Zeiner gave a talk for our Guild meetup, and he shared some insights from his working practice in strategic design. This slide was one of my favorites. I love a good framework...

Do UX/UI, product, and service designers have an opportunity to move into strategic design? I think so.

The topic of Adam's talk was speculative design. Still, it was really interesting to see how he tied his vocational work in strategic design to his avocational pursuits in design futures.

You can watch the talk by clicking the thumbnail below:

Adam was kind enough to share his slides in Figma (please use responsibly).

Adam is a great example of a designer that lives in big problem spaces, and his talk got me thinking about the "wicked problems" in this world.

I walked away from Adam's talk with one big question:

How can we use our design practice to make a dent in this messy world?

Until next week, keep exploring the problem space.

-Jeff Humble

Co-Founder of the Fountain Institute

P.S. If you want to learn more about Strategic Design, check out this article called "What is Strategic Design?"​