Strategic Design vs. Tactical Design

With today’s focus on efficient process driven execution one major thing is sometimes missed. A Strategic Design approach.

Strategic Design is the application of future-oriented design principles in order to increase an organization’s innovative and competitive qualities.“Traditional definitions of design often focus on creating discrete solutions — be it a product, a building, or a service. Strategic design is about applying some of the principles of traditional design to “big picture” systemic challenges. It redefines how problems are approached, identifies opportunities for action, and helps deliver more complete and resilient solutions.”

Its foundations lie in the analysis of external and internal trends and data, which enables design decisions to be made on the basis of facts rather than aesthetics or intuition. As such it is regarded as an effective way to bridge innovation, research, management and design.

Things that are focused on when taking a Strategic Design Approach

• Full Product experiences
• More than just an app or site
• Service Design
• Marketing strategies
• Social interactions
• Supporting Employee Experiences
• Physical experiences
• Sound/ Touch /Visual
• Create a vision based on informed research
• Create what people want
• Stakeholder’s may not know what they should do

So with that definition let’s focus on the how things are traditionally driven in a product process. Usually when a product moves to a stage of maturity it moves into what’s called a Tactical Design approach. It boils down to something like this.

Tactical Design identifies and investigates with known and ambiguous aspects of the current situation to discover hidden parameters and open alternative paths that may lead to the goal. Because Tactical Design is iterative, intermediate “solutions” are also potential starting points of alternative paths, including redefining of the initial problem.

Things that are focused on when taking a Tactical Design Approach

• Focus on an app/site
• The refinement of a process to execute an app/feature or site
• UX/UI of the app or site
• Navigation/Heuristics
• Visual Design
• Create decisions based on user feedback and stakeholder input
• Create what people need
• Stakeholder’s already have a vision — just need someone to create it

“It’s not the customer’s job to know what they want“ — Steve Jobs

A holistic product experience. The thing to remember is both are needed, and important. Effectively integrating them into a seamless process is the big challenge and if done correctly the outcome is very effective.