Strategy and Tactics in Design

So, there are two kinds of competences that make up what design is: the theoretical and the practical. And we can use this as a mental model for how we think and talk about design – as a kind of philosophy for what design is, what it means to be a designer and to do design.

"Design" means one thing to a graphic designer, another thing to an engineer, and something else to a business consultant. Even within the design discipline, a Silicon Valley manager and a Danish joiner are unlikely to be imagining the same thing as they both talk about design.

Tactics, on the other hand, are easy to see – this the work we do with our hands. This is the craftsmanship that goes into the visible aspects of a product. This is your typefaces, illustrations, colors, whitespace, and rounded corners.

I like the concepts “strategy” and “tactics” to capture what these two sides of design are about. As far as I can tell this appears to be the choice of words that professional designers and design leaders use.

The challenge is to connect strategy and tactics.

And though it's useful to be able to tell them apart, design is about strategic and tactical work happening together. At the heart of many stubborn design projects and unimpressive outcomes are people coming in with an incompatible mental models; overplaying strategy or tactics, and neglecting the other.

Strategy is brain-work – more often than not it’s abstract and invisible, and challenging to articulate. This is the research, analysis, and debate that goes into making decisions, and the data that comes from observations, interviews, user studies, post-its, brainstorms, and mind maps.