Design Strategy and Its Interface with Manufacturing and Marketing: A Conceptual Framework

Critical Analysis

In this text, the authors narrowly scope their view of design and strategy: “when we talk about design we mean product design, and when we refer to design strategy we mean product design strategy. By product design we mean the entire process and combined effort of engineering, industrial, and human factor design specialists that finally result in the creation of a product, often in prototype form” (401). The result of this leads to a similarly narrow and specific definition of design strategy itself: “Design strategy is a plan of action to gain competitive advantage through product design. That can occur either through the design of new products that create new markets or through supporting existing market needs better than the design function of the competitors” (401).

The framing of design strategy as a plan dedicated to business competitiveness is in clear juxtaposition to a perspective of design strategy as a vision of how people will engage with products in the future. The first treats design as a tool of the business, one that can be wielded in pursuit of competitiveness if competitiveness is the business goal. Even while the authors work to establish design, marketing and manufacturing as a triad, they explicitly describe “a design strategy” as a part of “a business strategy”—"Although a business strategy is not complete without a design strategy to develop the product in the first place, the concept of design as a strategic weapon has been almost nonexistent” (399). Design is offered as a very specific tool for a very specific moment.

The second view of design strategy as a visioning process offers design as a unique quality of the business that operates in a parallel fashion to all of the other qualities of a business; design is not something that is “used” only when viewed as necessary, but instead, it is a fundamental and inextricable part of seeing and describing what comes next. What comes next can be driven by a pursuit of competitiveness, but it can also be driven selectively by other designerly goals, such as usability, delight, consistency, efficiencies of internal processes, equity, social-mindedness, and so-on. Design strategy is not implicitly tied to competitiveness, innovation, or to any other pursued business strategy. It only becomes connected to those qualities by decision. It is not a tool, either. It is an ongoing process informed by a plan that is constantly in revision.

If this second perspective is embraced, design strategists are able to make decisions that are informed by, but not tied to, dependent on, or dictated by, decisions made by other functions of an organization. This forces friction of disagreement towards consensus, or upwards, where decisions are made in service of larger goals. In an organization that embraces design strategists and views their role as parallel to the role of financial or marketing or resourcing strategists, design strategy contributions become potentially more comprehensive and value-oriented: the unique nature of planning what comes next can lean heavily on disciplinary expertise of the one doing the planning.

All of this is contingent on how design strategy is considered by a specific organization. If it is generally synonymous with product strategy, design focuses on what comes next. If it is generally synonymous with experience strategy, design focuses on how what comes next is experienced.

The authors have argued one narrow view of the relationship between design and product (that the two are the same, and their focus is only on competitiveness). Scholarly work is generally thin in offering alternative views, where a meaningful question remains: what is the value a design strategist provides? The answer is informed by what that strategist makes and how they make it.