Design Career of the Future: Design Strategy vs. Design Production

I recently had a conversation that inspired a tweet thread which is really what this post is.

Basically my hypothesis is that design will branch out further into design strategy and design production because design can be a major lever in informing investment decisions not just on delivering product experiences.

Here goes:

1. There are a lot of great ideas to pursue but technical and business constraints mean that design is limited in what it can explore when the rubber really hits the road (which is almost everyday)
2. But design has value beyond delivering incrementally better experiences
3. Design should be able to envision two futures- a probable one given existing operational realities and a game changing one purely based on customers reality
4. In order for envisioning the probable and the game changing futures simultaneously design will split into design strategy and design production
5. Design production will be focused on crafting and delivering the designed experience- the better and more probable future. This is what design teams are tasked with today.
6. Design strategy will be focused on idea evaluation and idea valuation- the game changing future
7. Idea evaluation will borrow heavily from lean entrepreneurial tactics- things like wizard of oz, concierge testing et al
8. Idea valuation will focus on sizing up an idea’s net worth. Traditionally this is done by business strategists.
9. While business strategy looks at an idea from an industry, competition and cost perspective, design strategy will add the customer segment perspective
10. This will allow businesses to evaluate which bets to make with what type of customer. It will allow rapid evaluation of business models by knowing early who the customer is and what they will pay for (or not).
11. Traditional business strategy is too bound to the excel sheet and industry trend reports.
12. When deciding on where to invest, the leader will see value in how real people are behaving instead of just projections and bottom lines on an excel sheet. We know investors like demo that tell a story, real user feedback will be part of this demo. Ideas will break out of models and presentations and become much more tangible.
13. Design strategists will have to deeply understand the language of business and modeling on top of their UX skills
14. Game changing future will be discovered when there’s no or very little competition; typically- things not previously done, things previously done but now more efficiently,things done completely differently,things done incrementally better, combinations of things not done before.
15. Main innovations has always come in costs, speed (production or delivery) and volume (choice or lack of). Design strategists will focus on which areas of a business those three can be brought from a customers perspective
16. Findings from design strategy will be part of portfolio investment presentation to CEOs and CFOs. They will have another critical variable of user feedback in making their investment decision.
17. Green lighted game changing future ideas will be design and produced in high quality. Marketed right (design will influence this piece too) these will leave businesses with tremendous first mover advantages or unparallelled efficiency gains: 100X -1000X + returns

Can you poke holes in this hypothesis?

Since its difficult to convince or pitch this as a role, I’m testing this hypothesis myself and doing a few career experiments. I hope to share more about my journey and learnings.