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Research Literatures
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Strategic Designer’s Assets
What capabilities should an individual equip to become a strategic designer? There is no definite answer, but educators, design and business leaders have listed some fundamental qualities for this role.
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The Essence of Strategic Design
Here Ruiwen shared about her understanding to Strategic Design in the ongoing research in the Future of Strategic Design Education.
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The Gap between Current and Future Strategic Design Education
Ruiwen’s thinking process of the about Design Vs Business
BACKGROUND
In the self-directed research project, Ruiwen aimed to seek the value of Strategic Design and understand what capabilities an individual should equip to become a design strategist.
She also wondered what should be done in the future formal strategic design education to better prepare the next generation of strategic designers through more purposefully educational experiences.
Ruiwen interviewed 20 leading design practitioners across Australia, America, and the UK with a total of 1,800 mins conversations.
Joined with quantitive desktop research conducted by Dr Leigh-Anne Hepburn, she uncovered the journey of the 1st generation of strategic designers and illustrated how the role is understood in the industry.
Moreover, she addressed a series of issues based on her reflection of the current education, which also indicates the industry's expectation towards the emerging need for strategic design in organisations.
The research shall continue with the proposed next steps to discover more future formal strategic design education potentials.
METHODOLOGY
Collecting qualitative data by conducting interviews was the primary research approach. The researcher used deductive and inductive methods in the interview conversations to converge all data. The secondary research validated the ongoing findings and reflections in the condensed thematic analysis's results. The framework below illustrates the research process.
Demographics of the Interviewees
It was amazing to see how different interviewees had their journey and finally became whom they wanted to be today. Also, they worked in various industries, such as health and finance and showed high flexibility in possible working environments.
Similarly, many design practitioners had chosen their paths to become strategic designers because they wanted to know WHY. They were curious to go deeper and find the root of the problem, solve it more efficiently, or make significant positive impacts with their abilities.
1. Understanding of “Strategic Design“
Strategic Design sits at the intersection of design, business and technology
Business – In this domain commercialise needs to scale up deliverables to influence more individuals, design and technology can be balanced up hence maximising value for an aligned purpose.
Design: A domain incubates creativity and creation to contribute better, more convenient, efficient, productive outcomes. Its inclusivity allows uncountable possibilities to occur and inherits inspiration from various perspectives.
Technology: A domain where enables all the conceptual ideas to land. It breaks down things to the most fundamental particles and assemble necessities together with a coordination of design and business.
FINDINGS
The three interrelated realms set constraints for strategic design in order to produce reasonable, applicable and practical outcomes.
Notably, there is one more perspective considered in the essence of strategic design since the writer synthesized the data. The literature review cited Jeanne Liedtka’s conclusion which emphasized the interrelationship between design and business in this discipline. However, technology came into prominence as it is the key to innovation at present. It is inevitable to integrate the applied sciences to tackle more complex problems while we are approaching to the fourth industrial revolution with strategic design.
Strategic Designer's Personal Development Framework
Ruiwen designed this framework which was inspired by the the T-shaped Skills diagram. It represents how a person develops in the field of strategic design.
Rather than giving the term "Strategic Design" a definition, Ruiwen wanted to draw what elements are inside it.
Establishing a solid foundation of personal values is essential. Or follow the organisation's belief system can also be a meaningful approach.
Strategic Design undertakes a certain amount of risk, stress and responsibility, which can shake one's confidence at any time during the Doing process. Having a substantial belief and knowing the ultimate one can pursue, the practitioner can exert actions with the most significant potential inside.
Strategic Design Thinking is the ability to think for a bigger picture. It determines how far and long the Strategic Design Doing can go and last. A concrete mindset is trustworthy with logic but is grounded with limited flexibility; an abstract mindset allows one to see through complexity and ambiguity creatively. However, it might get too conceptual to execute or express.
Besides, there is no direct path to becoming a strategic designer. Participating in interdisciplinary Strategic Design Doing requires at least one core skill to start with.
In other words, all practitioners start from small but sturdy steps based on their expertise to reach a stage that drives significant changes in the organisation, society or different ecosystems with collaborative team efforts.
A series of soft skills coordinate with cores to support and navigate the Strategic Design Doing.
Unlike consultancy, design strategists care more about the long-term benefits and the whole life cycle. More importantly, the quality of being a designer equips one's ability to learn from the outside world continually. Hence, receiving feedback and iteration can maintain the growth rate.
The deeper insights…
I have broken the framework down to 7 parts with detailed explanation, and continued evolving.
2. Understanding of the “Strategic Designer“
Unlike system and service design, Strategic Design Doing is associated with a high-level power and a far- reaching vision for long-term values in a complex system (or complex systems). These indicators addressed by Ruiwen based on the research data. The vision was an addressed capability of a strategic designer. Additionally, power, as another core asset, allows one to have the right to speak out on the roundtable with enough attention. It means that the practitioner owns the authority to persuade, challenge, monitor and correct the execution of a proposed outcome. Therefore, it is essential to understand the power hierarchy in an organisation and ensure effective conversations with the right decision-makers at the right level of abstraction.
Building Alignment: Strategic design sometimes is the key to bridging a gap across disciplines. It requires the practitioner to craft the language, reaching the same level of abstraction with the stakeholders in a conversation. It can also be understood as "Connecting the dots", as an essential capability to gain the "Aha moment" with the target audience when the language is translated, and messages are successfully delivered.
Obtaining Discernment: Extracting intelligence from multiple portfolios at various levels can be a bonus. Finding the right people, filling the team's blank spots, and building coherency.
Creating personal/organisational methodology or framework : 7 interviewees have created their own methodology or framework for he/ his work with years of accumulation of knowledge and practices based on personal value propositions. Some other practitioners also develop the ability to mush up methods to utilise them in different challenges and approaches. Also, big firms like Deloitte and BCG, or some design consultancy companies, usually train the staff with exclusive programs and frameworks to remain competitive.
Lack of backing: Being different and trying new things are part of strategic design. However, one needs support to encouragement to gain courage and confidence. Even if there is only one person's recognition or appreciation, it could be game-changing for design practitioners breaking the mould.
Building Alignment: This can be either a unique qualification or a dreadful challenge for an individual. It is rare to see people are born with excellent communication skills and easily shifted mindsets, hence could take years to practice achieving the same level of understanding to identify the need fully and articulate the intent while explaining. In most cases, different stakeholders need to share the vocabulary across disciplines or cultural backgrounds.
Vacuum of Strategy: Often practitioners develop excellent strategies which could truly achieve success for companies. Unfortunately, given the companies' dated practices or legacy tools, these strategies only sometimes meet fruition. Thus, leading to a creation of a vacuum of strategy. Unable to execute strategies means the plans can often lead to incomplete or even unsuccessful results, which can often mean a waste of resources or an incomplete development that can create hurdles instead of creating value.
Lack of Funding: One of the primary challenges to the success of strategies lies in the funding available to execute them successfully. Lack of funding means a lack of resources which can create several bottlenecks in the overall processes. Bottlenecks in any process directly account for the overuse of human resources, demotivation and often an eventual failure of said strategy. Often lack of funding can also mean incomplete strategy execution, creating several gaps that could cause the onset of minor problems, which can quickly escalate or leave scope for failure in the long run.
Personas
The researcher illustrated two personas which illustrate two design strategists that represent the research findings.
3. Coming back to the Strategic Design Education
Primary issue 1.1 : Graduates Lack fundamental skills
Category 1: Formal Education
2.1 Learning loop of formal education unable to keep pace with rapid change in industry recommended practices.
2.2 Numerous bias in terms of assessing student skills and potential.
2.3 Lack of multidisciplinary training and collaboration
2.4 Formal education creates more language barriers.
Category 2: Graduates
2.5 Lack of value proposition leads to an ambiguous understanding of future roles
2.6 Lack of Practical experience
Category 3: The Industry
2.7 Results in Low efficiency in collaboration with industry partners.
ADDRESSED ISSUES
The research is ongoing, please contact Ruiwen for further updates.