Christina, great point on tactics.
I recently gave a presentation for an organization with a colleague
and we split the talk up into two sections strategy and tactics. It
was a natural approach. More and more in my work I am making the
distinction. Let's talk about strategic direction and define that
first before getting down to the tactics or the detailed design. And
knowing that Dan's book is also about methods I start to think about
the role of concept models (ala Dan Brown) in strategic definition.
Even though a concept model might be a tactical implementation at a
high level, it really can spur strategic conversations.
Maybe another question is, who defines strategy? In my role as a
consultant I typically have a greater say in this, but I'm sure this
isn't the case for everyone.
Kevin
On Jan 5, 2009, at 8:06 AM, Christina Wodtke wrote:
I have a section in my 2nd edition on what you need to know about
business
needs and your business model, and how that affects your choices. I
agree
that it is increasingly important (especially in our current economic
climate) for designers to understand their role in the business.
the long and short of my thinking is, if you know what behaviors you
need
your uses to accomplish to meet business goals, you can model
environments
that promote those behaviors. That sounds simple, but really it means
taking apart the business model so you under stand the value of each
accomplishment-- registration, check out, saving, preferences,
sharing -- in
terms of core business goals -- retention, revenue, activity. Then
you map
that on to where and how you spend your precious design time, and
onto the
actual interface. This is the single most important thing an IxD can
contribute to the process.
This is actually more tactics to get to strategy-- strategy is set
at the
highest levels, hopefully. However, tactics is where strategy is
realized or
fails-- don't elittle it!
That said, if an IxD both understands the major business goals by
looking at
the company and at companies in the sector and can speak
insightfully to the
challenges faced by the business, s/he may well find herself shaping
the
strategy as well as the tactics.
I'll be giving a workshop on just this topic at nform's web strategy
conference. if you can't make it, I bet they'll let me post slides....
On Sun, Jan 4, 2009 at 10:43 AM, Dan Saffer <[email protected]> wrote:
I'm starting a revision of my book Designing for Interaction.
<http://www.designingforinteraction.com>
In the second edition, I'd like to include a chapter on Strategy,
that is:
how to decide WHAT should be designed and WHY.
So when I ask, what should interaction designers know about
strategy? You
respond...
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