The Strategic Designer

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.”

conceptual economy.

collaboration is one advantage designers have when working with clients.

“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.”

We do much, in fact, to order, organize, reinterpret, shape and communicate ideas, information and space.

Process is a concept—a way of doing design, a way of doing business—that neither professionals nor students can afford to ignore. Process is the language of business. Process is the language of design.

Brenda Laurel

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