Event: IA Summit 2010

by March 27, 2010

On Thursday, April 8th I’ll be teaching a half-day workshop on Influencing Strategy by Design at the IA Summit in Phoenix, AZ. The workshop is intended for for mid to senior level designers that want to influence and improve strategic decision-making within their department or company. In particular I'll outline how organizational dynamics, metrics, design skills, and executive presentations can open up unique opportunities for designers and get them a "seat at the table".

IA Summit 2010

Registration is open now so get in soon if you’re interested.

Topics Covered

  • Key Take Aways: At a high-level we advocate these for any designer or design team interested in expanding their strategic involvement or influence.
  • Organizational Dynamics: Lack of organizational influence is frequently blamed on either reporting structure, or a lack of organizational understanding about the role of design. While both of these factors may be in play, focusing only on them to increase influence is unlikely to yield results.
  • Metrics: Taking the initiative to measure and track explicit customer experience metrics provides designers with a significant amount of leverage during strategic planning and product design.
  • Design Skills: We’ve distilled four attributes central to design that provide unique value to strategic decision-making.
  • Executive Presentations: When working on strategic initiatives that impact business direction, more likely than not, designers will need input and buy-in from key stakeholders.

The Official Description

This course will teach designers how to contribute to the direction of their company by synthesising and articulating clear, actionable business and product strategies. Often, growth opportunities for designers are artificially limited by org charts that fail to fully capitalise on the galvanising role that design can have beyond product or marketing. This course empowers designers by giving them tools to impact strategy by illuminating important decision-drivers like market or user research, web analytics, financials, and product reports.

This hands-on course is created for experienced designers, enabling them to influence and improve strategic decision-making within their department or company. They will learn principles for communicating and influencing strategy, along with practising skills and techniques through group activities, and working directly with Luke. This course will maximise a designer’s ability to help their organisation make better decision

Hope to see some of you there!