Design management is a field of inquiry that uses design, strategy, project management and supply chain techniques to control a creative process, support a culture of creativity, and build a structure and organization for design. The objective of design management is to develop and maintain an efficient business environment in which an organization can achieve its strategic and mission goals through design. Design management is a comprehensive activity at all levels of business (operational to strategic), from the discovery phase to the execution phase. "Simply put, design management is the business side of design. Design management encompasses the ongoing processes, business decisions, and strategies that enable innovation and create effectively-designed products, services, communications, environments, and brands that enhance our quality of life and provide organizational success." The discipline of design management overlaps with marketing management, operations management, and strategic management.
Traditionally, design management was seen as limited to the management of design projects, but over time, it evolved to include other aspects of an organization at the functional and strategic level. A more recent debate concerns the integration of design thinking into strategic management as a cross-disciplinary and human-centered approach to management. This paradigm also focuses on a collaborative and iterative style of work and an abductive mode of inference, compared to practices associated with the more traditional management paradigm.
Design is a strategic asset in brand equity, differentiation, and product quality for many companies. Organizations apply design management to improve design-relevant activities and to better connect design with corporate strategy.
Extended definition
The multifaceted nature of design management leads to varied opinion, making it difficult to give an overall definition; furthermore, design managers have a broad range of roles and responsibilities. These factors, combined with a multitude of other influences such as the industry involved, company size, the market situation, and the importance of design within the organization's activities. As a result, design management is not restricted to a single design discipline and usually depends on the context of its application within an individual organization.
On an abstract level, design management plays three key roles at the interface of design, organization, and the market. These three key roles are to:
Align design strategy with corporate or brand strategy, or both Manage quality and consistency of design outcomes across and within different design disciplines (design classes) Enhance new methods of user experience, create new solutions for user needs and differentiation from competitor's designs
Additional definitions
Definition of related terms
Design
Unlike unique sciences such as mathematics, the perspective, activity, or discipline of design is not brought to a generally accepted common denominator. The historical beginnings of design are complex and the nature of design is still the subject of ongoing discussion.Ralph, P., and Wand, Y. A Proposal for a Formal Definition of the Design Concept. In, Lyytinen, K., Loucopoulos, P., Mylopoulos, J., and Robinson, W., (eds.), Design Requirements Engineering: A Ten-Year Perspective: Springer-Verlag, 2009, pp. 103-136. In design, there are strong differentiations between theory and practice. The fluid nature of the theory allows the designer to operate without being constrained by a rigid structure. In practice, decisions are often referred to as intuition. In his Classification of Design (1976), Gorb divided design into three different classes. Design management operates in and across all three classes: product (e.g. industrial design, packaging design, service design), information (e.g. graphic design, branding, media design, web design), and environment (e.g. retail design, exhibition design, interior design).
Management
Management in all business and organizational activities is the act of getting people together to accomplish desired goals and objectives efficiently and effectively. Management comprises planning, organizing, staffing, leading or directing, and controlling an organization (a group of one or more people or entities), or effort for the purpose of accomplishing a goal. Resourcing encompasses the deployment and manipulation of human resources, financial resources, technological resources, and natural resources. Towards the end of the 20th century, business management came to consist of six separate branches, namely human resource management, operations management (or production management), strategic management, marketing management, financial management, and information technology management, which was responsible for management information systems. Although it is difficult to subdivide management into functional categories in this way, it helps in navigating the discipline of management. Design management overlaps mainly with the branches marketing management, operations management, and strategic management.
Design leadership Design managers often operate in the area of design leadership; however, design management and design leadership are interdependent rather than interchangeable. Like management and leadership, they differ in their objectives, achievements of objectives, accomplishments, and outcomes. Design leadership leads from creation of a vision to changes, innovations, and implementation of creative solutions. It stimulates communication and collaboration through motivation, sets ambitions, and points out future directions to achieve long-term objectives. In contrast, design management could be regarded as reactive and responds to a given business situation by using specific skills, tools, methods, and techniques. However, design management can also be viewed from proactive and creative perspectives as found in research (see e.g. the research anthology «Management of Design alliances», eds Bruce & Jevnaker). Design management requires design leadership to know where to go and design leadership requires design management to know how to get there.
History Difficulties arise in tracing the history of design management. Even though design management as an expression is first mentioned in literature in 1964, earlier contributions created the context in which the expression could arise. Throughout its history, design management was influenced by a number of different disciplines: architecture, industrial design, management, software development, engineering; and movements such as system theory, design methodologies. It cannot be attributed directly to either design or to management.
Business
Managing product aesthetics and corporate design (early contributions)
Early contributions to design management show how different design disciplines were coordinated to achieve business objectives at a corporate level, and demonstrate the early understanding of design as a competitive force. In that context, design was merely understood as an aesthetic function, and the management of design was at the level of project planning.
The practice of managing design to achieve a business objective was first documented in 1907. The Deutscher Werkbund (German Work Federation) was established in Munich by twelve architects and twelve business firms as a state-sponsored effort to better compete with Great Britain and the United States by integrating traditional craft and industrial mass-production techniques. A German designer and architect, Peter Behrens, created the entire corporate identity (logotype, product design, marketing communications, company building architecture, etc.) of Allgemeine Elektrizitäts Gesellschaft (AEG), and is regarded as the first corporate design management leader in history. His work for AEG was the first large-scale demonstration of the viability and vitality of the Werkbund's initiatives and objectives and can be considered as first contribution to design management.
In the following years, companies applied the principles of corporate identity and corporate design to increase awareness and recognition by consumers and differentiation from competitors. Olivetti became famous for its attention to design through their corporate design activities. In 1936 Olivetti hired Giovanni Pintori in their publicity department and promoted Marcello Nizzoli from the product design department to develop design in a comprehensive corporate philosophy. In 1956, inspired by the compelling brand character of Olivetti, Thomas Watson, Jr., CEO of IBM, retained American architect and industrial designer Eliot Noyes to develop a corporate-wide IBM Design Program consisting of coherent brand-design strategy together with a design management system to guide and oversee the comprehensive brand identity elements of: products, graphics, exhibits, architecture, interiors and fine art. This seminal effort by Noyes, with his inclusion of Paul Rand and Charles Eames as consultants, is considered to be the first comprehensive corporate design program in America.Bruce, G., (2006) Eliot Noyes, London: Phaidon Press Limited. Up to and during the 1960s, debates in the design community were focused on ergonomics, functionalism, and corporate design, while debates in management addressed Just in time, Total quality management, and product specification. The main proponents of design management at that time were AEG, Bauhaus, HfG Ulm, the British Design Council, Deutscher Werkbund, Olivetti, IBM, Peter Behrens, and Walter Paepcke.
Managing design systematically (1960s–1970s) The work of designers in the 1960s was influenced by industry, as the debate on design evolved from an aesthetic function into active cooperation with industry. Designers had to work in a team with engineers and marketers, and design was perceived as one part of the product development process. In the early years, design management was strongly influenced by system science and the emergence of a design science (e.g. the "blooming period of design methodologies" in Germany, the US, and Great Britain), as its main contributors had backgrounds in architecture. Early discussions on design management were strongly influenced by Anglo-Saxon literature (e.g. Farr and Horst Rittel), methodological studies in Design Research (e.g. HfG Ulm and Christopher Alexander), and theories in business studies. Design management dealt with two main issues: how to develop corporate systems of planning aims how to solve problems of methodological information processing
Instruments and checklists were developed to structure the processes and decisions of companies for successful corporate development. In this period the main contributors to design management were Michael Farr, Horst Rittel, HfG Ulm, Christopher Alexander, James Pilditch, the London Business School, Peter Gorb, the Design Management Institute, and the Royal Society of Arts. Debates in design disciplines were focusing on design science, design methodology, wicked problems, Ulm methodology, the relationship of design and business, new German design, and semiotic and scenario technique.
Managing design as a strategic asset (1980s–1990s) In the 1980s several managers realized the economic effect of design, which increased the demand for design management. As companies were unsure how to manage design, there was a market for consultancy; focusing on helping organizations manage the product development process, including market research, product concepts, projects, communications, and market launch phases—as well as the positioning of products and companies.