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Live, Actionable & Tangible Teaching design strategy Gill Wildman, Plot London
Live, Actionable & Tangible
Teaching design strategy Gill Wildman, Plot London
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“More could be done to help design graduates to engage with design’s role in business as a strategy for innovation in order to help them develop strategic thinking skills for business.” (Thomson, M., & Koskinen, T., 2012EU EDII 2012)
Increasingly organisations are saying this. We need more designers with strategy as part of their skills.
“No one wants to hire a 22-year-old strategist,” was how a colleague (perhaps indelicately) phrased it.
Dan Saffer 2014
But this is what people in agencies say. !So this is a problem, right? !We need them, but nobody wants them. Funny. In business, companies have no problem sending out 20 year old strategists. !But we do. !
So, in response to this issue, I set out to create a lab space at Carnegie Mellon School of Design where we could explore what it takes to create a literacy in design strategy that over the course of a working life could become clear capabilities of a design strategist. !The case study contains a practical approach to bringing strategic design to nascent designers. !Im going to talk about how three themes, Live, Actionable and tangible.
3 Pilots 45 students 15 weeks undergraduate & postgraduate !
between 19 & 30 years of age !
architects, game designers, social innovators, communication designers & interaction designers
And through the form of a recent case study of StrategyLab.
1. Understand
2. Explore tools
3. Create strategy
4. Pitch
The flow of the lab
A sequential experience building up to the communication of a whole new strategy
And the lab flowed like this 4 stages as a sequential experience, building to the communication of a whole new strategy based on a contemporary company, or social innovation, or a whole new venture
plus guests…And with the support of faculty, and other practitioners and educators we knew who were highly generous in their support of experimentation.
1. Understand
Understand the design strategy space The students were introduced to a new scale of thinking - the strategic perspective in design, and how this connects with business and other organizational strategies. Using analytical activities to show them how strategy connects to products and services. Understanding the value of design in helping businesses and organisations in achieving !We started with understanding the role of design the value of design via work of Design Council
Understand live: "Read the World"
"Read the World" !HOW Pick a strategic context that is currently mutating or that has transformative potential. Set that context as a means to understand what design strategy is, or could be. !WHAT HAPPENED By looking at the dynamics of the sharing economy with respect to the use of cars — Heinz, Zipcar, Enterprise — the Lab was able to understand design strategy as a response to a living context. This context can be probed for meaning, rather than treated as an abstract fact. The Lab could share multiple readings of the situation and interpret it in a variety of ways. !WHAT'S IMPORTANT Interpretation. Labbers are able to connect to the issues involved, and bring their own interpretation — their reading — to a situation, with depth and breadth.
1. Understand actionable: "Perform a sketch"
"Perform a sketch" !HOW Make them perform a sketch. Get them to make a diagram of their reading of the situation and communicate it in a lively way, for example by mapping out existing and potential experience models... !WHAT HAPPENED New experience map !WHAT'S IMPORTANT Sharable understandings. Labbers are able to see the opportunities for different courses of action, and act out their their consequences — the difference between doing this vs. doing that. This develops a literacy in reading (and rehearsing) strategic moves.
1. Understand actionable: "Perform a sketch"
1. Understand: ”A prop for understanding" 1. Understand tangible:
2. "A prop for understanding"
!
"A prop for understanding" !HOW Demonstrate how a physical diagram can work as a prop for understanding. The students researched and created visual design audits to explore and identify the strategy embodied in the artifacts - and then explore latent opportunities: connecting the big picture and the small detail, the intangible and the tangible. !WHAT HAPPENED Analysis of the business in a diagram !WHAT'S IMPORTANT Sense-making. A map or diagram creates an explicit lens on the world that reveals some things and suppresses others. The tangible crafting of the prop directly affects people's ability to see what is at stake, what is important, what is possible etc etc.
2. ExploreAction apply the tools to something and explain how they work and how to act with tools to explore and understand, use as lenses to see the world and create new perceptions Explore and understand the tools used in strategic design Here the students were introduced to a range of tools, given tasks to achieve with them, to give them a chance to become familiar and comfortable with the rich variety of tools from design management and management strategy. tools context
2. Explore live: “Tool-Faire"
“Tool-Faire" !HOW Get the Labbers to explore a selection of business, design, innovation and marketing tools; and their current and potential uses. Then get the students to share these understandings with each other. !WHAT HAPPENED Tool faire - students taught each other specific tools selected from the range given. From Service Blueprints to competitive forces, and SWOT analysis. !WHAT'S IMPORTANT Collective imagination. Exposing the extent and variety of 'strategy tools' available, and their ability to be adapted and creatively reinterpreted generates critical fluidity. Tools can support new ways of seeing, new thinking and storytelling.
2. Explore actionable: "If all you have is a hammer…"
"If all you have is a hammer…" !HOW Get the students to explore and understand a company or organization using a number of tools. Get the Labbers to explain how it is that the tool works; what kinds of distinctions it makes; what kinds of purpose it could be used for; and what it reveals. !WHAT HAPPENED Group exploration of the tools meant that the Students developed a critique of the tools. !WHAT'S IMPORTANT Critical imagination. Every tool contains it's own rhetoric about what is significant and what isn't — and it's own action context and purpose. Developing literacy here is about knowing which tools are appropriate to reveal what insight — and their limitations.
2. Explore tangible: "Personal toolkit"
"Personal toolkit" !HOW Create a personal kit of tools. !WHAT HAPPENED New perceptions and insights !WHAT'S IMPORTANT Fitness for purpose. Matching tool and purpose is an important ability. Extending and adapting tool to fit with needs, client, or situation is an extension.
3. Create new strategy
Create a new strategy for a real or new company, or not for profit. As a group they were required to identify a company or organisation to work with; understanding their goals, exploring possible futures; deciding upon a strategic intent (Hamel and Prahalad, 1994), and developing a design strategy in response. Visualising that strategy and creating a tangible example of that strategy in the form of an artefact, indeed, creating the brief (Humantific, 2011) !Live action Select a company that exists already or create a new one - social or commercial businesses, keeps it in contemporary live status - some connected with actual companies, such as Vice, or !allows them to be connected and care they picked somewhere where they could see an effect possible !Driven by impact Started with a set of impacts they wanted to see, in the form of an unpacked vision.
3. Create new strategy live: ”Opportunity"
"Opportunity" !HOW Select a company that exists already or create a new one !WHAT HAPPENED They picked somewhere where they could see an effect possible - some connected with actual companies, such as Vice, Codeacademy, Pebble, Sugru, or Microsoft. They could also select where their values chimed with the organization. !WHAT'S IMPORTANT Connection to purpose. The personal selection of a meaningful social or commercial business context for action keeps it contemporary and live and relevant to the Lab teams. It allows the student to feel connected and to care for the opportunity.
3. Create new strategy actionable: "Challenge & Response"
"Challenge and Response" !HOW Collaboratively develop a new strategy for this company !WHAT HAPPENED Working at the scale os the wall, arguments, dynamically working it out together !WHAT'S IMPORTANT Collaborative making. Moving from understanding to doing.
3. Create new strategy tangible: "Visible Strategy"
"Visible Strategy" !HOW Large scale diagrammed visualisations of the strategy and Small detail artefacts produced to tell the story of the strategy !WHAT HAPPENED Big picture making and small detail crafting !WHAT'S IMPORTANT Embodiment. Tangible artefacts that represent the strategy in action in a way that ensures people can see that the two connect
Tangible evidence: New Pandora app
Tangible evidence: New Farmers Market strategy
point of sale materials
Tangible evidence: Codeacademy physical computing demo for young people coding strategy
Amtrak New Rust belt line strategy report from the future
Tangible: New Community noticeboard featuring
new initiatives
4. Pitch it
Finally Pitching these strategies to possible ‘investors’. We recruited faculty and visitors to act as investors for the purposes of the events They gave feedback to the teams in the form of investment cash and a verbal critique.
4. Pitch it live: ”Pitch to Sharks"
"Pitch to Sharks" !HOW Asked the students to re-tell their strategy to engage others as if they were pitching it to someone for investment. !WHAT HAPPENED Live Pitching to their peers and a group of 'investors' willing to give them (fictional) cash on the strength of how convincing and persuasive their performance of the strategic plans !WHAT'S IMPORTANT The difference between doing the work and performing the work to engage other. Communication as performance.
4. Pitch it actionable: "Strategy as Story"
"Strategy as Story" !HOW Using the NABC structure for the story to make the case. !WHAT HAPPENED Familiar Sharks Tent event format as a model for crit !WHAT'S IMPORTANT Storytelling. Exposing a potential strategy as a story. Making it cohesive. Coherence and fidelity. Compressing their ideas for engagement
4. Pitch it tangible: "Tangible Evidence"
"Tangible Evidence" !HOW In the final pitch, bringing the artifacts into the storytelling to make the strategy seem real !WHAT HAPPENED The performance and the artefacts as props in the telling Here: Lululemon service evidence of new community strategy !WHAT'S IMPORTANT Tangible evidence. Persuasive artefacts act as illustrative examples and aide-memoire for the issues involved, engaging the audience.
“I can backwards think a design intent and strategy. Now (I am) able to understand larger parts and necessary implementation details. I can backwards think a design intent and strategy. Now able to understand larger parts and necessary implementation
details.” Resp 59
One of our participants said this when asked about what they can do now For others, they have had a passion for design strategy successfully ignited: Once these capabilities have been initiated, they grow with experience over the course of a career.
“I can't think in any other way without comparing it to my notions of the larger goal.
Whenever I hear designers say they like making cool shit, it
bothers me a bit. I don't have a good handle over my definition of strategy yet, but I know it's more
than just making cool shit, a lot more.”
Resp 85
or they say things like this unstructured, unclear, but on the way to becoming so. !
1. Not a science, but an art 2. Build on their innate skills 3. Generate an immersive space 4. Validate their experience 5. Confidence building is key 6. Building in space for getting
better at group work 7. Encouraging entrepreneurial
thinking
1. The challenge with teaching strategy is that it is an art, not a science 2. We need to get designers to be using their innate skills earlier, so they develop them as competencies during their working lives. 3. Generating the immersive space, creating the rich context that enables a subjective response. We can amplify these skills given the right space for exploration 4. We can validate their experience, and stretch them in new ways - exploration, understanding, imagination, extension, projection and amplification. 5. Give them enough confidence to try it out 6. Strategy making is a social process, requiring multiple perspectives in order to be sufficiently comprehensive. However, for some, group dynamics can be a blockage to working well together. The pilot reinforced just how vital successful team and group work education is for designers. 7. In each of the 3 pilots some students went beyond possible companies and developed their own commercial and social business ideas. They used the methods to develop their emergent business ideas. They were often working alone, which put a huge pressure on them. The methods helped them work out an initial user-centred proposition that they could pitch to the ‘investors’. They re-concieved themselves as designers or creators of new vehicles for their own actions, as well as designers of things. This entrepreneurial possibility rippled through each of the pilots. !
Final point Undoubtedly there is a need to produce more strategic designers who can work at multiple levels of thinking, whether they be in commercial or not for profit settings. This approach produces strategic designers who can see the bigger picture as well as the small details, and grow their competencies throughout their careers. !The whole develops their ability to see, think and one day act like design strategists which the right balance of humility and enthusiastic competence.
