A talk with Andreas Kissling, a design strategist from Germany.

Welcome to the [Design Strategy Talks] series. Here, you’ll find different perspectives and insights from my colleagues around the world. The goal? To learn and improve your design process!

Let’s jump right into it with our guest this time, Andreas Kissling.

Who is Andreas Kissling?

Ever since he was a little boy, Andreas wanted to become an inventor. His grandpa had a small workshop in the basement and it was there that he first started to create things. Later, he designed and built his own furniture for his room. In fact, his bedside table served as a showpiece in his admission interview at HfG Schwäbisch Gmünd, where he studied design.

Andreas took great pleasure in designing feasible products, with a goal of solving specific problems. However, it soon became clear that he wanted to tackle design problems even earlier in the value creation process, and not only through design work.

His focus has gradually shifted from design to science and business. Andreas likes the tension between these three areas and he sees great potential for designers who are developing their skills beyond classic design. That’s how he ended up being a promising young design strategist. You can check out his projects here.

How to reach your goal with design strategy

For Andreas, design strategy essentially describes a strategy that is primarily developed through a design approach.

The definition of strategy is “a plan of action designed to achieve a long-term or overall aim”.

In his eyes, the general long-term and overall aim of a design strategy is to reach the sweet spot between business challenges, technology and the creation of value for the customer.

So for Andreas, design strategy is all about:

• identifying customer needs,
• defining a suitable product offering,
• designing a business model.

But in order for the strategy to work, it should always be aligned with business strategy, emphasizes Andreas.

How to maximize your strategy’s chances of success

Unfortunately, the success of a strategy is only made clear at the end of a project. With that said, you can maximize your chances by obtaining feedback during the process and checking to see whether you are on the right track or not.

In order to measure KPIs, you need to test your ideas. Frequent testing might seem like a time-consuming detour, but the insights you gain are incredibly valuable and can verify or falsify your own assumptions.

Once you have a solid design strategy with KPIs in place, the benefits start to emerge. You can expect:

• better alignment with all stakeholders,
• a more systemic approach,
• a coherent design language and customer experience,
• fewer meetings and faster decisions.

Connecting business and design

Andreas has noticed that design thinking has become increasingly important in traditional management consultancies and many corporations. More and more design agencies have been acquired by leading consultancies in recent years as they begin to build strategic design departments.

“If you get the seat at the leadership table as a designer, you need to speak the language of the other C-suite members,” says Andreas.

He doesn’t think that it’s convincing if you make assumptions based purely on personal experience or design education.

That’s why Andreas recommends acquiring the necessary scientific knowledge and learning the appropriate business language.

Implementing design methods to gain competitive advantage

Design can have a hugely positive impact on business.

In October 2018, McKinsey published a study with the title The business value of design. The study outlines how “Companies with top-quartile McKinsey Design Index scores outperformed industry-benchmark growth by as much as two to one.” The study also notes that design can provide a competitive advantage when organizations apply it on all levels.

Andreas recommends taking a look at the danish design ladder:

• on the first level, there is no design at all,
• on the second level, design is only used for aesthetic purposes – it‘s called design doing,
• on the third level, design is already used as a process – like design thinking,
• on the fourth and final level, design is applied as a strategy.

The fourth level represents the holistic implementation of design across all areas of a company.

“When your company is design driven and achieves the fourth level, the competitive advantage is even higher,” says Andreas.

He follows it up with an example:

A design-driven company always focuses on the user. In 1999, Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon, was interviewed by CNBC and he said that his company places a strong focus on “great customer service”. This example shows that even 21 years ago, Bezos understood that it’s crucial to put the customer at the center of a company’s activities. And that’s exactly what design strategy does.

Design strategy also offers a competitive edge because it fosters useful innovation.

As a designer or design strategist, you become accustomed to very divergent thinking and can generate many ideas. The ability to make ideas tangible through rapid prototyping and the application of the build-measure-learn principle is an important skill – one that will add value to your work and business.

“With this Lean Innovation approach, organizations are able to innovate faster with less risk,” Andreas concludes.

What skills do design strategists need?

Dealing with new topics, technologies and megatrends all year round is what makes being a design strategist so exciting.

A design strategist should be able to combine creative and analytical skills – this will make discovering the most impactful aspects and solving various creative challenges a lot easier. You also need to know how to communicate your ideas, so a design strategist requires excellent presentation and storytelling capabilities.

Andreas has also noticed some good habits of top design strategists:

Andreas also offered a great piece of advice for new design strategists:

Diverse teams lead to successful projects

An excellent medium to connect designers and non-designers is a design thinking workshop. This established methodology allows diverse teams to work together on a solution, and everybody can bring their individual expertise to the table.

A design thinking workshop can also result in a brilliant ad-hoc project team.

Andreas describes his perfect design team as being as heterogeneous as possible, including people from different cultures, different ages, and different T-shaped specializations.

When working on a project, Andreas thinks that it’s very important for everyone on a team to have a clear role. This helps to avoid competitiveness between people with the same professional background. It goes without saying that you should also establish good communication and feedback culture.

Andreas’ recommendations

Tools that Andreas uses

When it comes to tools, Andreas likes to go old-school: pen and paper, plenty of free wall space, sticky notes and a marker.

When he shifts to the ‘digital phase’ of work, he emphasizes the importance of an ergonomic workspace, a big screen, appropriate lighting conditions and a fast computer.

His digital toolbox includes:

Miro.com for remote collaboration

Notion for remote collaboration (+ notes)

Google Forms and Google Sheets or Excel for questionnaires and data evaluation

Adobe CC – but since he is a design strategist, he only uses this occasionally – like when he needs to create a quick prototype to test his ideas.

Podcasts, books and media that Andreas recommends

Andreas is a big advocate for Linkedin Learning, where you’ll find a tremendous number of online courses to choose from so that you can educate yourself further.

He also recommends Medium.com, the Inside Design Blog by Invision, and the Beyond Users Podcast.

For more studious types, he suggests ourworldindata.org and the reports and studies conducted by McKinsey, Accenture, and the Boston Consulting Group.

Andreas is an avid reader, but if you’re not, then he recommends getting an Audible or Spotify account. This makes it easy to listen to thousands of fantastic books and podcasts.

Here’s a list of strategic design and other helpful books that he thinks will be of value to you:

• Business Model Generation, Value Proposition Design and Testing Business Ideas by Alex Osterwalder, Yves Pigneur and David J. Bland
• Running Lean by Ash Maurya
• Lean Innovation Guide by David Griesbach
• The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick
• The Business Model Navigator: 55 Models That Will Revolutionise Your Business by Oliver Gassmann, Karolin Frankenberger and Michaela Csik
• Leading Design by Jan-Erik Baars
• Factfulness by Hans Rosling, Ola Rosling and Anna Rosling Rönnlund
• The Art of Thinking Clearly: Better Thinking, Better Decisions by Rolf Dobelli

The 3-bullet recap

Andreas, thank you so much for taking the time to share your views on various design strategy topics with us! Great stuff from a great young mind! 🙂

I hope that you’ve learned something new from this interview. As always, we’ll finish with a 3-bullet recap to remind you of the most important points.

1. Merge company interests and user needs, then transform them into new products and services that are practical and useful for both sides.
2. Having a strategy doesn’t necessarily result in more creative solutions, but it will produce ones that are more innovative.
3. Don’t have a concrete solution in mind when starting a project. Instead, have a clear vision and you’ll find the best solution during your design process.

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