Having started out in webdesign myself I was delighted to read this post about design thinking and strategic design at Ideacodes. Seeing this it made me wonder how other design-orientated businesses are feeling about this new wave of design, leadership and innovation?
I must admit I have done nothing in research, but I would assume some businesses are serious about this? If so, who? Please help me out here.
3 comments so far
RE>strategic web design is about user research, market analysis, click patterns, visitor experience…
I don’t mean to sound negative, but isn’t this just “good” or “thoughtful” web design? Strategy, as applied to web design, I think is a bet the company direction, like Amazon selling books online without a warehouse, or Skype democratizing telecommunications.
I point this out not to be argumentative, but because designers will get more respect from business people when using the vocabulary well.
Porter is helpful here:
http://www.fastcompany.com/online/44/porter.html
RE> Strategy, as applied to web design, I think is a bet the company direction, like Amazon selling books online without a warehouse, or Skype democratizing telecommunications…
These are good examples of business strategy, which is only one part of a holistic strategy. As both a designer and a business person, my point in the original post was about the importance of integrating strategic design thinking into your core process.
See Tim Brown, CEO and president of Ideo’s perspective:
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/95/design-strategy.html
(Jacob and group - great site by the way.)
Emily, I too really liked Tim Brown’s article, particularly this quote, “…Organizations need to take design thinking seriously. We need to spend more time making people conscious of design thinking — not because design is wondrous or magical, but simply because by focusing on it, we’ll make it better.”
In response to Jakob’s initial question about how design-orientated businesses are feeling about this new wave of design, leadership and innovation…
…I think that there is increasing evidence that design thinking is being assimilated into the way organizations are operating. My observation is that awareness of the value of design orientated “strategic conversation” is increasing and this is evidenced by the level of discussion and comment available in venues such as CPH, Fast Company and the plethora of other blogs and websites devoted to the topic.
That this is the case is sometimes surprising…despite my own gripes about the dearth of innovation in beauracracy [made here and elsewhere], I have even recently seen movement in this direction first hand in a usually intractable and rigid, policy bound public enterprise. I think this points to realisations having been made that it may be, as has been stated clearly elsewhere, a case of “innovate or die”…