Product Design 8 - Design Strategies

In this course, selected topics in business management will be discussed, which are relevant for strategic design and design innovation. Although the course is conducted in collaboration with companies, its nature is partly theoretical. The focus of this course is to apply models and theories of 5 business management topics to evaluate the current situation of a company. Based on this evaluation a future design strategy will be proposed for the company. This design strategy will be followed up with a product, service, interface or packageing design, which embodies the design strategy.

Knowledge: The candidate has acquired business conncepts, models and theories for developing design strategies. This includes identity-building, branding, network development, New Product Management, Open Innovation, technology adaptation.

Skills: The candidate has through this project developed skills in discussing business concepts and theories with their collaborating companies.

General qualifications: The candidate has gained insight into business management concepts and theories and models. He or she has also developed skills and knowledge to translate these insights into applicable future design strategies, which drives the development of new products services and interfaces.

An introductory lecture on strategising, complemented with lectures on each of the business topics.
Students will be working in pairs or groups or 3 dependent on the availability of compnies and number of students to work on the project.
The project commences with an analysis of strength and weaknesses of the company. The inventarisation of the strength and weaknesses will form the basis for analysing the current and future design strategy based on the 5 business management topics. Each business topic will be discussed through lectures and student presentations. Correlations, conclusions and speculations across the 5 topics will be made to finally propose an overall design strategy. Finally, this overall design strategy will be embodied by a design concept.