Handbook

This handbook for design leaders contains instructions to apply IAC, the in-house method of Design Impulse to develop robust capabilities that enable a design organization to strengthen its position. We regularly update our handbook to ensure IAC’s usability. Email us if you have any questions, remarks, or suggestions regarding our handbook.

Describe

Describe the current situation of your design organization.

1. Describe your design organization’s context.
   • Macro-environmental factors
     • Political factors
     • Economic factors
     • Social factors
     • Technological factors
     • Environmental factors
     • Legal factors
   • Meso-environmental factors
     • Threat of new entrants
     • Threat of substitutes
     • Bargaining power of customers
     • Bargaining power of suppliers
     • Competitive rivalry
   • Micro-environmental factors
     • 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)
2. Describe your design organization’s current way of working.
   • Frameworks
   • Processes
   • Behaviours
3. Describe your design organization’s current outcomes.
   • Influence [on] decision-making
     • Alignment [with]
     • Involvement [in]
     • Participation [in]
   • Impact
     • Value for customers
     • Value for business
     • Value for operations
   • Performance
     • Profitability
     • Effectiveness
     • Efficiency

Formulate

Formulate your ambition to turn design into a consistent driver of value.

1. Describe your design organization’s challenges.
   • Gaps
     (i.e., things that your design organization should start doing)
   • Defects
     (i.e., things that your design organization should do better)
   • Levers
     (i.e., things that your design organization should do more)
2. Specify which of your design organization’s outcomes you want to strengthen, given its challenges.
   • Influence [on] decision-making
     • Alignment [with]
     • Involvement [in]
     • Participation [in]
   • Impact
     • Value for customers
     • Value for business
     • Value for operations
   • Performance
     • Profitability
     • Effectiveness
     • Efficiency
3. Define indicators that measure the fulfilment of your ambition, with for each indicator a target value range and its current value. For example:
   • Number of new product categories in an 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.

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
     • Employees from involved organizational units
     • Employees from involved organizational levels
     • Experts in relevant fields
   • Documentation
     • Organizational models
     • Business models
     • Standard operating procedures
   • Data points
     • Value data points
     • Impact data points
     • Performance data points
3. Analyze whether fulfilling your ambition is worthwhile.
   • Desirable
   • Feasible
   • Viable

Inventory

Inventory valuable capabilities that your design organization deploys in working with different actors (such as commissioners, customers, users, designers, subject matter experts, contractors, and managers). To this end, analyse end-to-end processes within your design organization’s application domains, using functional study models as a point of reference.

• Perform an act
  • Perceive a situation
    • Sense (e.g., see, hear, touch, smell, or taste)
    • Interpret (i.e., understand)
    • Evaluate (i.e., compare with a goal)
  • Set a goal
    • Formulate
    • Consider (i.e., weigh pros and cons of)
    • Accept
  • Undertake an action
    • Define
    • Specify (i.e., visualize and detail)
    • Effectuate

• Share content
  • Communicate content
    • Send
    • Receive
  • Exchange content
    • Inform [of]
    • Reply [with]
  • Agree on content (in a transaction; see figure below)
    • Demand
      • Request
      • Accept
    • Supply
      • Promise
      • Declare

• Provide a service
  • Develop a service
    • Conceive
    • Elaborate
    • Implement
  • Promote a service
    • Propose
    • Position
    • Offer
  • Deliver a service
    • Prepare
    • Execute*
    • Conclude
• Administer an activity
  • Direct an activity
    • Designate
    • Frame
    • Allocate
  • Manage an activity
    • Plan
    • Realize
    • Evaluate
  • Control an activity
    • Steer
    • Measure
    • Adjust

*) Draft (i.e., create, review, and validate) a design (see figure below)

Find

Find valuable capabilities in your design market that would contribute to fulfilling your ambition but that your design organization does not have.

• Gain influence
  • Develop vision
  • Promote vision
  • Realize vision
• Increase impact
  • Plan value
  • Measure value
  • Demonstrate value
• Perform better
  • Improve way of working
  • Share way of working
  • Evaluate way of working

Map

Determine the influence of valuable capabilities on your ambition fulfilment indicators as:

• Positive
• (Net) zero
• Negative

Characterize

Classify each valuable capability according to its kind as:

• Strategy
• Structure
• System
• Specialism
• Skill
• Shared value

Classify each valuable capability according to the nature of its content as:

• Knowledge
  (if explicit, that is, if it can be documented as a theory)
• Experience
  (if implicit, that is, if it can be documented as a case, not as a theory)
• Intuition
  (if tacit, that is, if it can be documented as a behavior, not as a theory or a case)
  • Culture (if it is learned)
  • Instinct (if it is innate)

For each valuable capability, determine its current position (i.e., the competitive advantage it gives to your design organization) as:

Compare

Rank valuable capabilities on their contributions to different aspects of your design organization.

Prioritize

For each valuable capability, prioritize its construction in your design organization as:

Acquire

Acquire the content of valuable capabilities that your design organization currently does not have.

Refine

Specialize the content of valuable capabilities that currently only give an equal advantage so that new theories (knowledge), cases (experience), or behaviors (culture) can emerge.

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

Merge valuable capabilities that currently only give a temporary advantage so that new theories (knowledge), cases (experience), or behaviors (culture) can emerge.

• Join
• Unite
• Integrate

Anchor

Capture and share the content of valuable capabilities that currently only give an unused advantage.

• Document, teach, and study theories
  (in case of knowledge)
• Document, present, and study cases
  (in case of experience)
• Document, show, and study behaviors
  (in case of culture)

Gather

Gather 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 causes that explain the outcomes of fulfilling your ambition as follows:

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

Decide

Decide on the next move to fulfil your ambition:

• Renew
  (if your ambition has been fulfilled)
• Repeat
  (if your ambition has not been fulfilled and still can be fulfilled)
• Reformulate
  (if your ambition cannot be fulfilled and needs to be adjusted)

Development

Strategy. Combine scale with agility. — David Butler & Linda Tischler

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

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

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

System. Set goals, determine ground rules, and provide facilities to acquire, create, and shareknowledge. — UNStudio

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

Promotion

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

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

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

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

Delivery

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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