The Strategic Designer

Brenda Laurel

Only when audiences become active participants in the design process do companies gain true insight.

How do we ensure our design solutions are meaningful? The short answer: By providing a solution that embraces both the business needs of the client and the needs of the audience.

collaboration is one advantage designers have when working with clients.

By providing a framework for working together, designers elevate themselves in the hierarchy of teams and organizations, and become valued strategic partners.

“Designers are a combination of craft maker, cultural intermediary, and opportunistic entrepreneur. And of course they are other things as well. They are skilled researchers, lifelong learners, who understand that design—as a very process of change itself—must be informed by knowledge.”

Designers need the tools and skills to conceptualize people’s lives, to visualize and understand the circulation of capital, people and culture at a global scale, and to intelligently envision the future.”

conceptual economy.

The ability to collaborate, manage the increasing complexity of design problems, to design “in context” to their target audiences, and to be accountable for design decisions through measurement transforms designers from “makers of things” to “design strategists.”