“Designers spend much of their time thinking through problems from the ‘outside in.’ Contrasted with the ‘inside out’ approaches that typify corporate business agendas, this methodology focuses on the perspective of customers and end users when analyzing and crafting solutions. Applying this perspective to strategic work creates more genuine relevance.” – Luke Wroblewski
This quote is from Luke’s article “Influencing Strategy by Design: Design Skills” which discusses his thoughts on the attributes central to design that provide unique value to strategic decision-making.
“Savvy design strategists, design researchers, and designers not only seek to deeply understand the client’s business and the end user’s needs of the product, but they also try to deeply understand the connected (and not so connected) interrelationships that factor into the success or failure of the potential offering.” – Tom Dair
Read more about how a hollistic view of design can help solve problems through Tom’s excellent story about designing a toaster in his article “A Design Parable: The Toaster and the Toast.”
“Design thinkers look past a project to the next project, to the next step in the strategy. They look sideways to the tangents that are affected by the result, and longer term to the investment required as a result of solving the problem currently in front of the team. No problem is solved in isolation—either from the past, or from the future.” – Mark Dziersk
Mark’s quote is from the Fast Company article “Ten Things to Demand from Design Thinkers.”
“Design strategy is about serving people… The real challenge is in trying to solve the human problem. It’s about understanding their needs, their aspirations, and then meeting them in some way. So we are serving them. But sometimes their needs are to be surprised and delighted, and they can’t tell us how to surprise and delight them. That has to come from us as creative people in our profession.” – Chris Hosmer
This quote is from the Design Strategy Group Continuum‘s excellent video on design strategy.
Thanks to a tweet from @tyeshasnow for sharing this video.
“Successful businesspeople in all fields endeavor to understand that they are in the business of designing a total customer experience. We call this the customer experience supply chain. The physical product or service is a central part—but, alone, not a sufficient part—of the equation for lasting success. Design is everyone’s job. Doing good design takes more than good designers. It takes a commitment from everybody in the company—soup to nuts, end to end.” – Do you matter? How great design will make people love your company by Robert Brunner and Stewart Emery
Purchase the great book Do you matter? How great design will make people love your company for more thoughts on the idea of a “customer experience supply chain.”
“You don’t sacrifice the experience for growth; you drive growth from the quality of the experience.” – Do you matter? How great design will make people love your company by Robert Brunner and Stewart Emery
I highly recommend Robert and Stewart’s book Do you matter? How great design will make people love your company. In this book, they explain how great design is about creating a deep relationship with your customers by creating a complete “customer experience supply chain.”
Catriona Cornett
