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... > > > > > ________________________________________________________________ > Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! > To post to this list ....... [email protected] > Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe > List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines > List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help > ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [email protected] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
