Talk:Design strategy

Origins
Design strategy as a discipline has been in place much longer, and has been pioneered by many more verifiable sources, than this article leads one to believe.

For example, it can be convincingly argued that Peter Behrens (German: 1868-1940) was one of the first to understand, and successfully convice, industry that design was strategically important to business 100 years ago. His work for the AEG (Allgemeine Elektricitats Gesellschaft) electric company in Germany (1908-1914) was all-inclusive and included not only the design of products, but architecture (factories and worker housing), graphics, showrooms and all key elements of the company's physical manifestation. This effort was more than executing a massive corporate identity project. For example, to achieve cost effective mass production, Behrens created a strategy for innovative, interchangeable parts based on modular component housings. He is credited as pioneering the agenda for application of design as a strategic corporate business asset. His AEG design strategy work became the archetype for all contemporary corporate design programs that followed.

Eliot Noyes (American: 1910-1977) is another architect and designer credited with pioneering strategic design-thinking as a core discipline at companies such as IBM, Westinghouse, Cummins Engine and Mobil Oil, beginning in the 1950s. Early in his career, Noyes was the first design curator at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. In that position he influenced manufacturers to develop completely new processes required of fresh, innovative concepts being developed by designers. His effort jump-started innovation into reality.

In academia, The Hochschule fur Gestaltung Ulm (The Ulm School of Design: 1953-1968) taught product designers to think systematically and strategically as part of an interdisciplinary business team while emphasizing the importance of being socially and environmentally responsible. This thinking led to defining "what" to design and "why", not only "how" to design. Tomas Maldonado (Argentinian: 1921- ) was the leading proponent of integrating this approach into the "Ulm Model" originated by co-founder Max Bill. Likewise, was the pragmatic, systems design-thinking contribution of Jay Doblin (American: 1920-1989) at IIT.

Individuals and institutions who have contributed significantly, and over time, to developing the discipline of "design strategy" as recognized leaders over the last 100 years need to be included in this article with verifiable third party sources and in-line citations. Assertions that are not verifiable according to Wikipedia guidelines should be removed. Discussion initiated by: Wordsrus (talk) 04:41, 31 August 2008 (UTC)


 * There is not much here. The existing material is vague and brief. I suggest that someone knowledgeable on the subject present some of the most significant strategies or sets of strategies as examples and explain and compare them. The information about firms might be useful, but it does not address the central subject directly. With regard to history, it would seem that the concept of design and design strategies, in the plain English common interpretation of those terms, would be far older than the 1800s. Without doubt it extends to prehistory. For example, to build a mud hut you go through a design process. If you teach others how to build mud huts, then no doubt you will explain to them the factors they should consider in their own designs - hence a design strategy (in the plain English notion suggested by the term).Blcklbl (talk) 22:07, 20 January 2012 (UTC)


 * I have read that Benjamin Franklin used design thinking methods, in order to approach the light bulb invention with a larger design strategy, basically creating a culture of users. I definitely would like to have more added to the origins of design strategy here in this article. As well as general clean up, I will try to work on it later. Jooojay (talk) 20:22, 24 August 2018 (UTC)

Relationship to design thinking
I think we need to add something (with sources) to this article about the relationship of design strategy to design thinking. There is a lot more that can be developed to improve this article. Jooojay (talk) 20:19, 24 August 2018 (UTC)


 * This article is weird. The 'educational programs' section is highly selective and the 'practitioners' list could be endless. It overlaps specifically with Strategic design and it might be better to merge the two into one - preferably into Strategic design, which has less ambiguity as a term than 'Design strategy'.  Designergene (talk) 11:35, 26 August 2018 (UTC)


 * I agree this is a weird article and that educational programs section & 'practitioners' list needs to go! I would support a possible merge in to Strategic design and/or Design thinking. Design strategy is a term often used in textbooks/academia, but as far as I can see it is the same application as Strategic design? Does anyone else know more about this and want to share feedback? Jooojay (talk) 23:27, 28 August 2018 (UTC)


 * The definition in this article for Design Strategy is:
 * "Design strategy is a discipline which helps firms determine what to make and do, why do it and how to innovate contextually, both immediately and over the long-term. This process involves strategic design, the interplay between design and business strategy."
 * which seems to suggest that it is really about strategic design - definition of which is:
 * "Strategic design is the application of future-oriented design principles in order to increase an organization’s innovative and competitive qualities."
 * which seems to be what this 'Design Strategy' article is about.
 * The primary content of this article is the list of Applications, which could be merged as examples in the 'Application' section of Strategic Design. So I suggest that it should be merged into Strategic design in that way. Designergene (talk) 13:13, 11 September 2018 (UTC)

Merge into Strategic design
I have tagged with proposed merge into Strategic design. See Talk under Relationship with design thinking. This article seems to have been created with the mistaken title of 'Design strategy'. The only useful content to merge into Strategic design is the Applications examples.Designergene (talk) 13:34, 25 September 2018 (UTC)