Blueprint for Design Strategy

With a landscape architect mother and machinist father, I have grown up around blueprints. Their innate ability to breakdown complex forms into their discrete pieces, in order to communicate how a product/building/idea is constructed, strikes a beautiful balance between aesthetics and process. When considering how I would visualize design strategy, my mind quickly settled on this traditional, information driven, model.

Throughout my studies I have seen many visualizations of the methods and tools employed to create a compelling strategy. They concisely articulate an aspect of the process, however they are often isolated, removed from their greater contexts. I see design strategy, and the design thinking process, as a combination of interconnected frameworks, more three dimensional than the solo-visualizations let on.

The “Process” section of the blueprint illustrates the side, top, and cross-sectional views of design thinking — mixing tools for exploring the problem and solution spaces, developing context and form, and the innovation Venn diagram. The “Components” section compiles key frameworks that support the process, providing internal and external lenses through which to view an organization’s strategic context. Used in conjunction, these tools provide a holistic view of the methods for developing defensible, sustainable, and innovative strategies.