Design Strategy: How to Launch Impactful Design Projects
The modern market requires businesses to look for complex, sophisticated solutions that could bring maximum value from the input. A well-planned design strategy is one of these as this tool helps companies combine design aesthetics, user-centric functionality and profitable outcomes in one product. However, designing a solid strategy requires effort and time.
Our new guide can be a starting point on your way to crafting a winning strategy for your design project. Together we’ll explore what stands behind design strategies, what role they play in design projects and overall business growth and how to develop an effective strategy in a few steps.
Keep reading to go beyond the mere design process turning it into a strategic tool for achieving user recognition topped by stable market success.
What is design strategy?
We’ll start with the design strategy definition since this concept is a bridge connecting your business goals, user-centric design thinking and technological tools. The term denotes the nexus between the mentioned components and helps you make sure that your design outcomes meet not only user needs but also your strategic objectives.
Main components of strategic design.
A design strategy is where design and strategy intertwine which allows businesses to implement this concept in various scenarios. From packaging design or UI/UX to product creation and graphic design a well-planned strategy can play a big role in efficient resource distribution.
A good strategy should:
- Align with business objectives. Your KPIs should be considered and smoothly integrated into the design planning.
- Meet user needs. The design you work on has to provide value to your audience by solving their challenges and offering unique value.
- Drive the company’s profitability. By meeting user needs you’ll also get the chance to establish yourself as a reputable business on the market driving demand for your services among the audience.
When working on the creative part of the design scope the focus may shift from the company’s goals to user needs or vice versa. As a result your team may lose important insights from this or the other side leading to missed opportunities or incomplete market understanding.
A well-planned design strategy prevents this from happening by providing stakeholders with a bird’s eye view of the design plans and task making sure that the work they do helps the company move toward their long-term goals.
The difference between design planning and the strategic design process lies in the fact that the former focuses on current tasks and tangible outcomes. The latter views the design process from a long-term perspective facilitated by critical thinking, analytics and a broader market context.
As a result of an effective strategy implementation a company elaborates on the action plan that takes into account technical and market constraints and is fully aligned with their brand identity, desired outcomes and user requirements.
To sum up, a design strategist can help you find the perfect balance between profitable goals and the value you bring to your target audience making sure the context of design creation is always weighted.
Why do you need a strong design strategy?
Now that you know what design strategy is, let us mention the outcomes you can get by putting your effort into this aspect.
Impact on product development and user experience
Designing a strategy inevitably leads to the creation of good designs so typical design planning involves analyzing the target audience and the target market. However this data is not enough for you to formulate a consistent long-term strategy with a clear direction.
Factors that determine a successful design strategy.
An additional factor you should mind is your company’s long-term capabilities with the help of which user needs will be continually satisfied. A strategy encourages investigating both your target audience and your business strengths and weaknesses enabling you to develop a realistic picture of the value that your company can offer to the clients.
As a result your user-centric product design is facilitated by market awareness and a clear understanding of your business opportunities. With a solid design strategy you are ready to give your users what they need when they need it without exhausting your long-term capabilities and resources.
Role in aligning business goals with design efforts
Another aspect where a design strategy process can make a difference is your business focus. A strategy helps you set the right design priorities at the right time considering the available resources, current opportunities and user demands.
Tips on how to align business goals with design efforts.
Obviously, one business cannot fully meet the requirements and needs of their audience at once. However, a business can set the right priorities striking the balance between the potential reward and the effort required.
On top of that your team will always know what steps will be taken next and how these steps will lead your company toward the desired business outcomes. Clarity that comes with a strong strategy facilitates the decision-making process enabling your team to work in synergy for a common purpose.
Contribution to efficiency and collaboration.
As in any other area having an effective strategy in design helps businesses ensure everyone is on the same page. While the day-to-day part of the work can be successfully handled by managers and team leaders, developing a strategy makes it possible for them to maintain consistency in the long run.
The three core benefits of design strategy.
With an effective corporate design strategy all your team members and stakeholders have access to frameworks, tools, plans and processes that help them move toward successful design implementation while simultaneously pushing your business forward.
At any point of the journey everyone in the team understands where you are moving to and how their daily effort not only affects the tangible design results but also shapes the company’s success.
Apart from this a consistent strategy helps you make sure that you spend your resources, money and time efficiently. With strategy you won’t wake up one day with the thought that you’ve invested a lot of money into designing a product that your users do not need.
As you can see a well-planned strategy helps businesses navigate the competitive landscape confidently giving them a deep understanding of user needs and their business potential. This in turn enables companies to reduce investment risks and effectively distribute their resources in the long run.
How to develop an effective design strategy
Each strategy should involve defining the user challenge, pain or problem to solve presenting the solution and outlining the benefits a company will get all within the business context in which they operate.
Developing a strategy starts with simple questions about the current market situation, user needs and your business objectives. Once you figure out where your company is now you can proceed with step-by-step planning of the strategy and a thorough evaluation of your strategic goals.
Steps to develop an effective design strategy.
Define the problem and your business goals
Unlike short-term design planning that focuses solely on your user needs an effective business design strategy starts by defining the user problem and aligning the potential solution with your business goals.
In this step you can involve your team and stakeholders to get different perspectives on the project and make sure that each side is covered in your plan. For this organize the workshops where the parties will participate and share their expectation for the project.
The technical team will likely focus on the tangible design outcomes while the stakeholder team will prioritize the potential value the project can give to your company. By listening to different opinions and expectations you will get a holistic view of the project and the desired outcomes.
High chances are that the alignment between different opinions will be reached intuitively. As a result of this design strategy step you’ll get a well-defined problem statement that considers both user needs and your company’s expectations for the project.
Study the market and the audience’s needs
Step 2 will help you study your audience better to ensure that your solution is effective and gives you a competitive edge.
At this stage of designing a strategy you should cover the following aspects:
- Who your target audience is
- What pains their experience and how you can solve them
- Whether the suggested solution gives you a competitive edge
- What market tactics are effective and which ones you preferably avoid
- Whether the suggested solution reflects your brand identity and how
To avoid biases when answering these questions engage in user and market studies. The insights gained during the research should always be put into your company’s context. To do this, share the research results with your sales, product, marketing and customer service teams.
Collectively you will make sure that the project you are working on is not only beneficial to your audience but also matches your business capabilities and strengths.
Validate the insights with stakeholders
It’s important to validate your project insights with stakeholders, investors as well as decision-makers especially because companies shouldn’t skip this step because of two important reasons.
First, by presenting your stakeholders with research results you will increase their trust in your decisions and strengthen your positioning with data. When it comes to investment of time and resources it’s always more secure to rely on proofs and figures instead of focusing on gut feelings only.
Second, you’ll get the chance to adjust the project to the stakeholder’s expectations and as a rule of thumb stakeholders have rich market experience and years of expertise in the business field. When they are actively involved in developing a strategy they are more likely to support the project and be more confident of the results you strive to achieve.
The shared project ownership, joint responsibility and a 360-degree market understanding can enhance your project vision and set the right direction for design planning.
Create a project brief
The next step involves moving from the theoretical discussions to planning and implementation of the strategy and design. While in steps 1-3 you try to figure out why and what you are designing the next three steps help you answer the question of when and how you are doing it.
At this phase of developing a strategy your task is to create a project brief where the project scope is broken down into clear, measurable tasks assigned to specific roles.
A typical project brief consists of several components such as project scope (including the budget, resources and work volume outlined), assignees, deliverables, deadlines and work roadmap. Besides the project brief should be consistent with the profile of your target audience that is engaged with design.
All in all step 4 helps you turn your expectations and goals into achievable tasks and potential tangible outcomes. A project brief is a document that anyone including project executors, stakeholders and project owners can refer to in order to make sure that the project pace sticks with what was planned initially.
Launch goal-driven design work
Once the plan and long-term vision are all set up you can move to the practical part of design work. The previous steps were needed to help you align your design project with your overall strategy while the next steps are focused on bringing your plans to life.
At this phase of design strategies a lot depends on the quality of design work. To ensure that your plans are executed as expected, find a trusted design company with years of experience and the ability to treat design projects within business contexts.
With more than 5 years of experience, Limeup can help you navigate the design project phases from start to finish. We specialize in designing user-centric solutions that bring value both to customers and companies.
Our strategic thinking is combined with deep market expertise and user research skills, enabling you to create solutions that are goal-driven and relevant. Reach out to us for a free consultation on your design project and the ways to maximize its value for your business.
Monitor work and track the progress
It often happens that your project work deviates from the initial plan because of unexpected factors you cannot forecast may influence the course of work and this is a reason why it’s important to monitor your work and track progress.
Project twists and unexpected changes should not be the reason to move away from the plan. Instead try to regularly update your plan and work scope according to the situation. Practical project implementation gives you valuable knowledge and hands-on experience which is unavailable at the initial stages.
The design strategy examples you see on the Internet may showcase that some tasks require a particular volume of time and resources. In practice, however, things may go differently and your team will spend more or less effort on doing the same tasks. In such cases you should keep your plan up-to-date by regularly returning to it, collecting feedback and incorporating insights into the next iterations.
Altogether these six steps can serve as starting guidelines for you when developing a consistent strategy for a design project.
How to implement your design strategies correctly
Apart from the essential steps to include in your strategy there are additional golden tips that will help you make it even more effective. To follow these tips will enable you to base your decisions on proof, feedback and data instead of relying on your gut.
Tips how to implement the design strategies correctly.
Here is what you should remember:
— Set metrics for measuring results. Metrics and KPIs will be aiding you in evaluating how effectively you implement your strategy and whether you are moving toward your goals. Your high-level metrics for the strategy should focus on both your business and your audience.
The right KPIs and metrics are important because they help teams keep their focus on the right things. Besides they help reduce the guesstimate, rely on data, make informed decisions and adjust the strategy in case the goals are not met.
When setting goals keep them achievable and realistic. Of course complete project success is the most desired scenario for businesses launching new solutions.
However, being realistic can potentially save you from resource waste, financial risks and reputational losses. Apart from this setting realistic goals will help you manage risks actively before you face them and even prevent them from damaging your projects.
Thus when setting goals, KPIs, and metrics for your design strategies consider the realistic context your business operates in including the economic, social and political situation in your target area. Remember the foundation of your strategy should be built on the realities of today’s highly competitive and challenging market.
— Leverage prototyping and feedback. Design prototypes are early models or samples of your software that give you the chance to test and improve your idea before moving to full-scale development. Leveraging prototypes in your strategy will help you add essential enhancements to your solution and make sure that it appeals to your audience.
When working on your strategy and prototypes in particular incorporate user feedback to grasp how your audience responds to your design ideas. The insights gained during the prototyping phase can help you improve your strategy to serve not only your business objectives but also the latest trends and your audience’s needs.
Apart from user feedback pay particular attention to stakeholder feedback. Stakeholders usually possess a broader view of projects and objectives. Their feedback will make it easier for you to find the balance between user requirements and market demands helping you put protection on your investment and prevent wasting of resources.
— Involve people in the process. Strategy by design should be flexible since you will receive iterative feedback on the strategy implementation and test the approaches or techniques as the time goes by. This can let you to modify your strategy by incorporating insights and feedback into the process.
Here is why it is important to regularly involve people in strategy and implementation because if not being actively involved people will lose track of the original goals and processes over time. In contrast by actively involving people in the creation process and implementing their ideas you will keep them engaged and interested in pursuing your business goals.
Conclusion
In this article we discussed what a design strategy is and outlined every step of its creation process. Our paper explains how a solid strategy helps you get a 360-degree vision of your design project and align your goals with user needs.
While design planning can be a one-time effort aimed at distributing resources and tasks effectively strategy is a continuous iterative work and involves the alignment of your stakeholders, designers, and potential users.
Experienced design agencies always apply a strategic approach to design projects. Apart from the current design goals and tasks expert design teams evaluate the context in which the project exists and the desired business outcomes.
Limeup is also among the companies cultivating the strategic approach to design, making sure your projects are not only visually appealing but also serve the needs of your business and your audience.
Contact us to discuss how we can bring your design idea to life, fully aligning with your business approach and customer needs.