Holistic Design = Craft + Operations + Strategy
The triangle of a practice’s value of success is Craft, Operations, and Strategy. If one is not present, or equally invested in, you end up with a lopsided design practice that is not nearly as effective or valuable as it otherwise could be. Creating balance through intentional practices is what a growing community of us is calling Holistic Design.
An Amazing Event in an Amazing City & Country.
In just about 2 months hundreds of practitioners who are hungry to bring all their senses to bare to create a more positively impactful design practice will be coming together in Helsinki, Finland at Joint Futures. Helsinki is the perfect place for such an event because Finns are wonderfully intentional about so many aspects of the society they have been building for the last 100 years. Whether it is their amazing education system, or their leadership in Universal Basic Income (UBI), Finns have been at the forefront of bringing design into these wicked problem spaces. At the conference, you’ll even have the opportunity to hear from the Helsinki Municipality’s Chief Experience Officer, Jukka Tuominen.
A Community Built on Stories and other Engagement
As noted, we aren’t creating just an event, but a community. As the event gets closer, we are hoping to engage and expand the community by asking y’all to participate in our Summer of Holistic Design storytelling and experience sharing. We’ll be posing a challenge, question, or request every Monday-Friday in July between 15.00 & 16.00 (Finnish Time; +3 GMT) via Twitter through Joint Future’s handle. Winners will be offered special discounts to the conference.
The story of Holistic Design
But why Holistic Design? What is the reason we need to address this new triumvirate?
The main thesis here is that no single practice of these three is enough to create the positive impact we are all passionate about creating in the world for companies, customers, users, humans.
In my career, I have been engaged in all three pieces, but success has only come when all three practices have worked together. What makes it even more interesting is that they layer between each other. Design craft is used to create operational models, and strategic plans. Operations needs to be strategic, and incorporated into strategy, while amplifying design craft value. Finally strategy guides craft and operations.
The best craft without good direction seldom helps organizations reach goals. Further, roadblocks from even the best directed and best craft, still prevent expected value from design to be achieved. But also well operationalized, design with a solid strategy, done by people who lack the skills to execute, will invariably fail to hit its mark.
Join Us; Here’s Help
We, who are part of the Joint Futures team, really do hope you’ll join us in Helsinki this September. During our Summer Fire Sale, we want readers of this article to get our best discounts yet. If you wanna buy a ticket between now and August 1, you can do so using the promo holistic-july15, to get a 15% discount. If you buy at least 3 tickets at one time, you can use holistic-july25, to get a total of 25% off. There are only 50 tickets available at these discount rates in total.
Besides the 2 days of conference speakers, we also have your choice of 6 workshops. Workshops will probably sell out, so before they do, we hope you’ll sign up soon.
Lastly, tell us an amazing story about how craft, operations, and strategy came together to help your team create a positive impact and if we like it, you’ll get a special 1-time, 1-person code for a 50% discount. Stories should be submitted as responses to this Medium post.
See you in Helsinki.
