Hi everyone, Kevin here.
I recently had a great conversation with Daniele Catalanotto and Géraud de Laval about what is Strategic Design and how it takes form in different organizations.
Our guest, Géraud de Laval is a talented product designer who works are Romande Energie and coaches startups as a freelancer.
This conversation is part of a series of Podcasts for Design & Critical Thinking with Daniele (hold in French). Daniele is a Service Designer in Switzerland and is the founder of the Swiss Innovation Academy and the Service Design Magazine.
For those of you who don't speak French –or just don't want to listen to us thinking out loud– here's the summary of this conversation in English. Also, find below a video version, available on YouTube with automatic-translation subtitles.
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What is strategic design?
Strategic design is basically the art of zooming out and asking where are we going with this? What the change that we want to create and why does that change matter? At that stage of design, you are not interested in details like “how will this button look like”, but you will ask questions like “where do we want to be as a group in 5 years, and what’s holding us back?”.
But how is that different from “strategy”? It can be different because we might use a prototyping mindset –through the use of scenarios– and start with empathizing with the people we want to serve –through interviews to prepare it for example.
The importance of scenarios
There is not just one way to arrive at a given goal. Designers understand that as they love to prototype different solutions. The same goes when designers do strategic design.
The designer doing strategic design will create multiple scenarios. Each scenario will be quickly tested out in order to evaluate what are the positive forces that push us in that direction and what’s holding us back.
Use interviews to prepare it
As most initiatives performed by designers, strategic design also starts by empathizing with the people we aim to serve. This means that preparatory interviews are key if you were for example to prepare a workshop to prepare the next strategy of a company, department, or group.
Explore and be critical
If you are interested in the topic of strategic design, we compiled a list of links and resources that might help you explore this topic by yourself and build your own opinion about it.
Diego Mazo
