Feb 15
Welcome to Pebble Design
Allow us to introduce ourselves
2022 is already into its second month, the silly season is over, and the year is [almost] back at full speed. As we plan for and think about the year ahead, it suddenly occurred to us — we never properly introduced ourselves,
how very rude.
And so — let’s correct this little oversight.
We are Pebble Design,
a Strategic Design & Product studio.
We focus on helping teams explore and test new products, services and ventures, as well as work on improving and innovating upon existing ones.
A child of the Strategic Design age
Strategic Design as a field has been on the rise for the past few years.
For those less familiar with the term — Strategic Design — is a design-led approach that focuses on the early phases of product design.
Before there is a product manager (the one who captains the ship),
a Ux designer (the one who figures out how everything fits and flows together within a product) a Ui designer (the one who makes everything beautiful and engaging) or any Devs (the ones who make it all actually work and function)…
there is a Strategic Designer —
the one figuring out what the product could & should actually be.
Strategic designers are the ‘product managers’ of the early phases of a product/service/venture.
You can think of them as managing ‘ghost-products’ — products that don’t yet exist or are in the process of becoming.
They focus on working out: who the user is, what her needs are, what the value proposition should be, what form the product could take, what features and components should be included and how it may all come together to form a tangible, unified product.
They lead early user testing and discovery, guide early prototyping and experiments, design and test early business models and help think through the possible futures ahead. Together with Ux & Ui, they explore unchartered territories in search of exciting opportunities.
Pebble in a nutshell
Pebble Design was set up to do work across a product’s entire life span.
If you are working on something new, we could help you flesh it out, prototype and test it and think about the possible road ahead.
If you are working on an existing product, we would help you think through ways to improve, simplify and innovate upon it.
Why we are here
A few key reasons that led us to join the space.
First —a passion for the space.
Having worked in and around Product and Strategic Design for quite a while, we fell in love with the space and its potential. Pebble was thus set up as a way for us to take an active part in the space’s development. From frameworks and methods to tools and tricks of the trade, we set up Pebble hoping to explore and experiment with exciting new ways to approach the emerging fields of strategic design and design-led innovation.
Second —a passion for impact
At the core of Pebble are a few simple premises.
- We believe that the products and services we use every day, impact and shape the world around us.
- We believe that if you design these [products & services] in the right way, they could be a great power for good.
- We think that helping teams create great products, could be a great way for us to make an impact.
We set up Pebble as a tool for us to take an active part in designing a better world.
Finally- a gap in the market
Last but not least, we thought we identified a gap in the way things are currently done. We believe that Strategic Design has an immense potential to cause ripples in the modern world. Yet, wherever we look, we see it falling short of that promise.
First — Strategic Design is mainly led by large consultancies and as a result, the approach isn’t led in the nimble and exciting way it holds promise for. The approach is sold as nimble, agile, innovative and exciting — and compared to the traditional management consulting model — it is.
Yet, its potential to make an impact is halted by the nature of large organisations — slow and risk-averse. Moreover, due to the need to cover their large running costs, large consultancies have a bit of bias towards selling you a large project rather than truly keeping things, small, quick and nimble.
Second — most people in the space are still just working out what strategic design really means and how it works and ticks.
From people getting the title of strategic designer without a real understanding of the space, to whole teams selling themselves as leaders in the space, while still working it out for themselves behind closed doors.
We are not saying that we have it all figured out — hell no.
We too are working it out as we go.
But we do think we have already worked out quite a bit, and we are well set up to do so much more.
Pebble Design — the company
Pebble Design has been set up with three overlapping areas.
The Studio — where we support teams who want to build, test and explore new things or innovate upon existing ones.
The Incubator — where we experiment with building our own products — putting our own approach to a test.
The River — where we develop and publish frameworks and methodologies on the topic of design-led innovation.
Who we work with
We work with teams that make things.
You might be a product team working on an existing product, trying to push its boundaries.
You might be an innovation team, tasked with exploring new opportunities and identifying unaddressed user needs.
Whether you are a corporate, a tech company, a scale-up, a startup, even other agencies — if you trying to build design-led products, services or ventures — we are here to help.
Wrapping up
And so, we have come to the end, and thus a recap —
we are Pebble Design,
a Strategic Design & Product studio
intended on helping teams explore new concepts, and innovate upon existing ones.
It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance.
