Peterme makes some excellent points worth considering about the nature of strategy. Strategy happens over and over again, at multiple points in the work of a comapny. You have a company strategy, a business strategy, a product strategy and a design strategy. As Barbara said "Strategy is the plan for how to compete"; you could even simplify that to "Strategy is the plan for how to" since we have strategies for how to lose weight, for how to get a new job, etc.
A design needs to both understand the strategies created by the business owners as context and create strategies to realize those goals. For an example, a startup might have the goal of creating a sufficiently large data asset to be aquired by google, or monetize directly. Their strategy could be to build a wikipedia-esque community commited to building up this asset. The product strategy might be to create a place that rewards individual efforts (i.e. digg over wikipedia) and the design strategy might be to create rich profiles and a named level reputation system that follows uses around. The first strategy might be created by the senior executives, the second by the executives and the product maanger, and the last by the product manager and the designer... all cocreated as the "how to" gets passed to the next team member. On Mon, Jan 5, 2009 at 8:39 PM, Peter Merholz <[email protected]> wrote: > I will chime in and say that Andrew Otwell's comments are probably the most > appropriate for the 2nd Ed of "D4I", given the primer-like nature of the > book. > > I think it might be harmful to equate "strategy" with "business" as many > are doing here. I think the magic of "D4I" is approaching IxD in an almost > Aristotelian, pure fashion. There are many examples of IxD that aren't > suited to business, but none that aren't suited to strategy. > > When I think of strategy in the context of our design work, I think of > three things: > > - philosophy > - vision > - planning > > Philosophy asks, "What are you about? What do you stand for, what is your > approach?" This is akin to branding, and figuring out your brand > personality, your characteristics. Whatever it is that you will be designing > needs to be informed by some underlying philosophy. > > Vision asks, "Where are you headed? How will you know you're successful?" > This vision is an articulation of the philosophy that motivates action. > Think "Made To Stick". A philosophy is insufficient for driving design, > particularly something as complex as interaction design. Vision provides the > north star that guides your efforts toward a successful outcome. > > Planning asks, "How will you get there?" I find that in most discussions of > strategy, planning is overlooked, with people more interested in talking > about positioning or competition or other big picture items. But when I've > seen products fail, it's often because there was bad planning -- the > go-to-market strategy was flawed, either too ambitious or not ambitious > enough, resulting in the release of products that either aren't yet ready > for prime time or woefully behind the pack. Perhaps the single most useful > technique we teach at Adaptive Path's UX Intensive Design Strategy day is > the Product Evolution Map, which brings rationality and sensibility to the > standard product roadmap. > > --peter > > ________________________________________________________________ > 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
