DESIGN LADDER
Using design in powerful new ways
There has been a shift in the understanding of design, away from ‘designing things’ to ‘design thinking’. We see this as an evolution from viewing design as the creation of artefacts, to design as a problem-solving activity, to design as making sense of things, to design as a key input to strategy.
Companies’ use of design may take on a variety of forms. The Design Ladder is a tool by the Danish Design Centre for illustrating and rating a company’s use of design. The Design Ladder is based on the hypothesis that there is a positive link between higher earnings, placing a greater emphasis on design methods in the early stages of development and giving design a more strategic position in the company’s overall business strategy.
Non-Design
STEP 01
Design is an invisible part of, e.g., product development and the task is not handled by trained designers. The solution is driven by the involved participants’ ideas about good function and aesthetic. The users’ perspective plays little or no role in the process.
Non-Design
STEP 01
Design is an invisible part of, e.g., product development and the task is not handled by trained designers. The solution is driven by the involved participants’ ideas about good function and aesthetic. The users’ perspective plays little or no role in the process.
Design as form-giving
STEP 02
Design is viewed exclusively as the final form-giving stage, whether in relation to product development or graphic design. Many designers use the term ‘styling’ about this process. The task may be carried out by professional designers but is typically handled by people with other professional backgrounds.
Design as process
STEP 03
Design is not a result but an approach that is integrated at an early stage in the development process. The solution is driven by the problem and the users and requires the involvement of a wide variety of skills and capacities, for example, process technicians, materials technicians, marketing experts and administrative staff.
Design as process
STEP 03
Design is not a result but an approach that is integrated at an early stage in the development process. The solution is driven by the problem and the users and requires the involvement of a wide variety of skills and capacities, for example, process technicians, materials technicians, marketing experts and administrative staff.
Design as strategy
STEP 04
The designer works with the company’s owners/management to rethink the business concept completely or in part. Here, the key focus is on the design process in relation to the company’s business visions and its desired business areas and future role in the value chain.
Strategic Designer
ROUGH OUTLINE
Traditional definitions of design often focus on creating discrete solutions—be it a product, a building, or a service. Strategic design applies some of the principles of traditional design to “big picture” systemic challenges like health care, education, and climate change. It redefines how problems are approached, identifies opportunities for action, and helps deliver more complete and resilient solutions. Strategic design is about crafting decision-making.
This works best when design is integrated into the DNA of organisations, creating new opportunities for designers with a strategic aptitude to migrate from studios and ateliers to integrated positions, embedded within organisations and governments.
We seek to expand the practice of design beyond of the realm of cultural affairs. Although many of us have backgrounds in architecture or other fields of traditional design, our work is focused on honing the skill set and mindset of the designer to help solve the challenges faced by the interdependent world.
We believe the strategic designer to have three core competencies:
Integration
Because key decision makers sometimes only see the parts rather than the whole of a problem, they may be blind sided by the unintended consequences of their choices. The naturally integrative approach of design helps illuminate the complex web of relationships— between people, organisations, and things—to provide a holistic point of view.
By working across different areas of expertise, strategic design outlines the “architecture of the problem”, highlighting key opportunities for improvement in all aspects and outcomes of a problem.
Visualisation
The switch from Roman to Arabic numerals allowed the West to handle numerical complexity in an unprecedented manner, causing a profound transformation of civilisation.
Today, the challenges we face have reached a new level of complexity and uncertainty, for which spreadsheets and other familiar analytical tools are insufficient.
Fluent in visual representation, the strategic designer uses this skill as an important and iterative means of communicating complex, even contradictory, relationships—which would be difficult or impossible to explain in text and numbers alone.
Stewardship
Good ideas are easy to come by: implementing the right ones is not. In recent years, the emphasis on “design thinking” has powerfully demonstrated the value of applying creativity in a business context.
But successful design is not only about creative thinking. It also involves implementation and ensuring that key ideas maintain their integrity during that process. Designers must be involved over the duration of change processes, providing constant expertise and feedback to identify, test, and deliver durable solutions.
H E Y ! B R A N D
Deutsch
by Ronald Bartikowski
Forsteck 5, 22589 Hamburg
+49 157 3132 9432
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