Strategic Design

Design Researchers Create ­Development Platform for Company

Access to space. Through a strategic design process, the company Dolle went from focusing on attic ladders and loft hatches to provide 'access to space.' It opened new customer and product opportunities and established an improved competitive position.
Illustration: Pernille Brun Andersen

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Danish design researchers have helped the manufacturing company Dolle go from manufacturing attic ladders to providing access to rooms. That has secured the company a broader base and a more sustainable competitive position. The project is a textbook example of strategic design, says Associate Professor Jørgen Rassmussen, Aarhus School of Architecture, who was in charge of the project.

By Irene Houstrup

Dolle is a small company in the Danish town of Frøstrup with a product line that includes loft ladders and trapdoors. The company’s products are low-tech, but production and operation are streamlined and flexible, which is how the company has managed to keep development and production in Denmark, although some components are made in China.
”Dolle’s management knew that their low-tech and, some would say, low-status products and the threat from low-cost parts of Eastern Europe would require them to develop new products, perhaps even new business areas, within the next five years, but they didn’t know how to address this challenge,” says Associate Professor Jørgen Rasmussen, Aarhus School of Architecture, and is in charge of the company’s strategy project.

An Altered Value Proposition

Based on the strategic design process and the strategy seminar the company changed its value proposition from manufacturing loft ladders to providing Access to rooms, and that enabled the company to develop entirely new business areas that cannot easily be copied in Eastern Europe.

Thus, the process has made it possible to develop solutions that offer the customer a different way of accessing their loft space, for example with bookcases that can be pulled down from the loft when the user needs to gain access to the stored material.
”With relatively simple, classic strategic design tools – user involvement, visualisation, analysis, communication, idea generation – and, not least, an understanding of strategy, marketing and organisation the design researchers together with the company created a platform for development, not only of the company’s products but of the company as a whole. That’s a good example of the use of strategic design as an innovation driver,” says Jørgen Rasmussen.

Associate Professor Jørgen Rasmussen of the Aarhus School of Architecture, Dolle’s managing director Francois Grimal and Dolle’s head of development Thorkil Baattrup-Andersen debating one of the points in the strategic design grid. Photo: External Associate Professor Gunnar Kramp, Aarhus School of Architecture

User-Driven Strategy Process

Together with design researchers from the Aarhus School of Architecture Dolle initiated a user-driven strategy process. In cooperation with the company, the design researchers met and spoke with distributors, retailers, users etc. Everything was recorded on video and analysed, and the design researchers identified a number of problems and development potentials.

Next, the design researchers and Dolle’s development department organised a workshop with all the company’s customers to generate additional input for the process.
The design researchers acted as facilitators on the workshop, where the debate turned first to problems and development potentials and then to specific possibilities for product development. After the workshop the design researchers and the company condensed input and suggestions and then organised an internal workshop for the company’s management. As a tool for the workshop the design researchers had developed a matrix; the strategic design grid, which made it possible to discuss ideas across boundaries and to examine consequences of changes throughout the organisation and the value chain.

The strategic design grid was completely filled out with ideas and input by the end of the day. Photo: External Associate Professor Gunnar Kramp, Aarhus School of Architecture

Visually Based Strategy Discussion

Based on the strategic design grid the design researchers and all the members of the top tier of management held a two-day strategy seminar. Here, the matrix served as the platform for testing ideas that, according to Jørgen Rasmussen, cannot normally be tested in strategy seminars, because they are too complex. “For example, ’What happens if the end-users (and not the distributor) become our primary customers,’ and ‘What if our value proposition, that is, the actual product we offer, were to become a service rather than a physical product?’”
”The strategic design grid in an A0 format made it possible to manage a very complex discussion, where everyone took part, and to discuss the effect of individual ideas on the specific elements of the organisation, the value chain and the strategy. Thus, with the matrix as the visual content platform the design researchers provided a visual framework for the strategy discussion that facilitated the involvement of all groups of staff. That made it possible to navigate among the elements of the matrix and to respond immediately to suggestions and ideas, because people could respond here and now instead of having to wait until the consequences could be determined,” says Jørgen Rasmussen.

The discussion was facilitated by the shared understanding that the matrix provided for the representatives in the management team. By referring to one of the fields in the matrix, participants could quickly refer to previous conclusions in the talks without the need for lengthy verbal explanations. That led to a more fluid process and reduced repetition and misunderstandings.