Strategic design practices

Strategic design in organizations, the design industry, and design education

For the lab members, strategic design is a cluster of current design disciplines such as interaction design, service design, design for behavior change, and systemic design. We are studying a range of aspects that include (a) how strategic design competencies and methods can be intellectual capital for organizations, (b) how service designers could use foresight to develop more sustainable practices, (c) how designers could learn strategic design skills in graduate studios, and more recently (d) how -design- professionals practice strategic design and intentional change.

Methods:

  • Case study research
  • Literature review
  • Podcast analysis
  • Interviews

Outcomes:

  • Mandhre, R., Mejía, G.M., Jung, K., Zheng, W. & Wu, X. (under review). Approaches to intentional change of expert strategic designers.
  • Mejía, G. M., Xie, Y., Simeone, L. & Tomlin, S. (under review) Learning strategic design skills with live projects.
  • Løgager, C., Simeone, L., & Mejía, G. M. (2021). A foresight-oriented service design approach to foster longer-term thinking and sustainable practices. EAD 2021. European Academy of Design Conference EAD 2021.
  • Gallego, C., Mejía, G. M., & Calderon, G. (2020). Strategic design: Origins and contributions to intellectual capital in organizations. Journal of Intellectual Capital, 21(6), 873–891. https://doi.org/10.1108/JIC-10-2019-0234