Handbook

As a design leader, are you looking to increase the power of design in your organization? This handbook explains how to apply IAC, the in-house method of Design Impulse to strengthen the capabilities of your design team. We regularly update the content to ensure IAC’s usability.

E-mail us if you have any questions, remarks, or suggestions regarding our handbook.

Describe

Describe the current situation of your area of attention in your organization:

1. Identify your area of attention.
   • Process activity
   • Business activity
   • Organizational activity
2. Describe the environmental factors of your area of attention.
   • Macro-environmental factors (according to a PESTEL analysis; see, for instance, OnStrategy for an explanation with examples)
     • Political factors
     • Economic factors
     • Social factors
     • Technological factors
     • Environmental factors
     • Legal factors
   • Meso-environmental factors (according to a five-forces analysis; see, for instance, B2U for an explanation with examples)
     • Threat of new entrants
     • Threat of substitutes
     • Bargaining power of customers
     • Bargaining power of suppliers
     • Competitive rivalry
   • Micro-environmental factors (according to a SWOT analysis; see, for instance, IMD for an explanation with examples)
     • Strengths (i.e., characteristics that entail an advantage)
     • Weaknesses (i.e., characteristics that entail a disadvantage)
     • Opportunities (i.e., elements in the environment that could entail an advantage)
     • Threats (i.e., elements in the environment that could entail a disadvantage)
3. Describe challenges for your area of attention that you want to tackle.
   • Gaps (i.e., things your area of attention should start doing)
   • Defects (i.e., things your area of attention should do better)
   • Levers (i.e., things your area of attention should do more)

Formulate

State your ambition to increase the power of design:

1. Specify what power of design you want to increase to tackle the described challenges.
   • Change
     • Creation
     • Improvement
     • Variation
   • Creativity
     • Innovation
     • Adaptation
     • Transformation
   • Return
     • Impact
       • Leads
       • Orders
       • Follow-ups
     • Value
       • Social value
       • Environmental value
       • Economic value
     • Performance
       • Scope
       • Quality
       • Benefit
       • Time efficiency
       • Cost efficiency
       • Risk management
2. Define indicators that measure the fulfilment of your ambition. For example:
   • Number of new product categories in the assortment.
   • Costs of developing products, in an absolute sense or as a percentage of total project costs.
   • Revenue from the sales of products, in an absolute sense or as a percentage of total revenue.
3. Determine a target value range and the current value for each indicator.
   • Minimum
   • Optimum
   • Maximum

Estimate

Estimate whether your ambition can be fulfilled:

1. Assess any earlier initiatives.
2. Check the availability of required resources for the new initiative.
   • Personnel
   • Documentation
   • Data points
3. Analyze whether fulfilling your ambition is worthwhile.
   • Desirable
   • Feasible
   • Viable

Inventory

Inventory capabilities for your area of attention that your design team deploys, taking into account different participants (such as the commissioner, designers, customers, users, subject matter experts, contractors, and managers) and using study models as a point of reference.

• Act purposefully (according to a study model of purposeful action developed by Norman (2002)):
  • Perceive a situation
    • Sense (e.g., see, hear, touch, smell, and taste)
    • Interpret (i.e., understand)
    • Evaluate (i.e., compare with a goal)
  • Determine a goal
    • Suggest
    • Weigh (against other goals)
    • Choose
  • Undertake an action
    • Determine
    • Specify (i.e., visualize and prescribe)
    • Effectuate

• Share content
  • Communicate
    • Send
    • Receive
  • Exchange
    • Inform
    • React
  • Agree on (based on the DEMO methodology, see figure below)
    • Demand
      • Request
      • Promise
    • Supply
      • Declare
      • Accept

• Provide a service (based on the service quality gap model)
  • Develop
    • Create
    • Analyze
    • Release
  • Promote (loosely based on the AIDA model for marketing)
    • Announce
    • Explain
    • Recommend
  • Deliver
    • Prepare
    • Execute*
    • Conclude
• Administer an activity
  • Direct
    • Designate
    • Frame
    • Allocate
  • Manage
    • Plan
    • Monitor
    • Evaluate
  • Control
    • Steer
    • Measure
    • Adjust

*) Produce a design (consisting of a design brief, a design strategy, a design frame, a design problem, a design concept, and a design solution)

Discover

Discover valuable capabilities for your area of attention that your design team does not deploy. To this end, you research the design market.

• Market characteristics
  • Customers
  • Competitors
  • Marketplaces
• Environmental factors
  • Macro-environmental factors
  • Meso-environmental factors
  • Micro-environmental factors
• Challenges
  • Gaps
  • Defects
  • Levers

Map

Determine the influence of identified capabilities for your area of attention on ambition fulfilment indicators.

• Positive influence
• (Net) zero influence
• Negative influence

Classify

Classify the nature of an identified capability as:

Compare

Rank an identified capability on the contribution to different organizational aspects of your area of attention.

Assess

Determine the competitive advantage that an identified capability gives to your area of attention (on the basis of a VRIO analysis).

Acquire

Acquire discovered capabilities.

Renew

Renew identified capabilities that are not valuable, rare, or inimitable (using SCAMPER).

• Substitute
• Combine
• Adjust
• Modify
• Put to another use
• Eliminate
• Reverse

Anchor

Anchor identified capabilities that are valuable but not organized in your design team according to its organization design (in line with the McKinsey 7S framework).

• Strategy
• Structure
• System
• Specialisms
• Skills
• Shared values

Consult Shadbolt & Smart (2015) for methods, techniques, and tools to capture a capability (in the form of, for instance, inference rules, case parameters, and event reports).

Inventory

Inventory the outcomes of fulfilling your ambition.

• Successes (i.e., objectives achieved exactly to the extent intended)
• Windfalls (i.e., objectives achieved to a larger extent than intended)
• Setbacks (i.e., objectives not achieved to the extent intended)

Diagnose

Determine the causes that explain the outcomes of fulfilling your ambition.

1. Determine hypotheses
2. Test hypotheses
3. Confirm hypotheses

Propose

Propose the next move to fulfil your ambition.

• Renew if your ambition has been achieved
• Repeat if your ambition has not been achieved but still can be achieved
• Reformulate if your ambition cannot be achieved and needs to be adjusted

Delivery

Let people explore the future, get familiar with it, and work together to address the resistant factors. — Livework

Cultivate trust, give your people consistent support, and change up common routines every so often to create positive surprises. — User Experience

Delivery

Bring ideas to fruition through a build-measure-learn feedback loop (Lean Startup). — Eric Ries

Empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test. — Stanford d.school

To produce an innovative outcome for a complex challenge, iteratively explore, define, develop, and deliver. — Design Council

R&D

Define quantified metrics, build a holistic metrics system, and define supporting operational metrics. — McKinsey Design

Turbocharge processes, speed up internal feedback loops, and improve handoffs. — Invision Inside Design

Set goals, determine ground rules, and provide facilities to acquire, create, and share knowledge. — UNStudio

Promotion

Represent design at the top level of the organization, improve employee experience with design, and spread design practices. — McKinsey Design

Build up your reputation, spot talent through your network, and establish a flexible talent pipeline. — Workable

Describe design work in terms of business goals, collect evidence of design results, and communicate the business value of design. — BoagWorld

Delivery

Form a cross-disciplinary team, further knowledge integration, and implement decision-making through consensus. — Purdue University

Demonstrate desired behaviours, provide motivators, and recognize and acknowledge displayed behaviours. — PositivePsychology

Combine scale with agility. — David Butler & Linda Tischler

Translate the corporate vision into tangible goals, center the customer, foster collaboration, and uphold operational excellence—all while expanding creative limits. — Aquent

Define a portfolio strategy, identify gaps and unmet or latent needs, and define segments for customers and users. — McKinsey Design

Explore user experiences, discover user motives, and define user requirements. — Interaction Design Foundation

Recognize and remove overly complex content, organize knowledge, and filter content. — UX Collective