Why You Need to Design Strategically - with Jill Lin, Staff Product Designer @Bain & Company

Welcome everyone to another episode of the Product Bakery today with a lovely guest. It's Jill Lynn calling from London. And fun fact, Jill is actually a former colleague of mine. So I had the pleasure to work with her while at Bain & Company. So for everyone who is following this podcast knows a little bit of my past there and my past in consulting. But yeah, obviously without taking a lot away upfront. Christian, how did you like the session? It was a lovely chat with Jill. And what I really liked taking away from this conversation was when you make design decisions, asking yourself for what type of situation you are making a decision. Like focusing on a business problem you want to solve or a customer problem or an organizational one. That's just one of a lot of other wisdoms that she has shared with us. And yeah, that was one biggie from my side. How about you? I think everyone should just listen in to get an overview into strategic and service design. I think Jill managed to actually give a very good kind of explanation also of what the different roles have to look at. And more than that, I think Jill managed to give a good overview of the different roles beyond the job description. Because I think that's something that nowadays with a lot of these different terminologies, people might get stuck on, but it's not only about that. But in order to do that, listen in, but make sure to also check out our different channels on the website where we launch all our episodes with some episode minutes, as well as the possibility to comment and interact with our speakers. And make sure to fill out our speaker survey that you find right here in the podcast description. Let's get started. Hi, Alex. Hi, Jill. Hi, Christian. Hey, guys. Hey, Jill. It's a pleasure having you today. Likewise, it's been such a great honor to be able to join you both. Nice. So as always, I would like to quickly introduce you to our audience. And you have quite an interesting CV because you started your career in 2008 working as a researcher. And from that point on, you moved through different companies in different design positions. For example, you worked as user interface designer, as user experience designer, as lead experience designer, as service design lead, as well as other roles. So as of today, you are working for the company Bain & Company as a staff product designer. And I was just wondering, what is that role about? Great question. I'm currently working for Bain & Company as a staff product designer. And Bain is one of the, I would say, the top three management consultancies in the world. And it is really renowned by its strategic thinking, as well as the business capabilities there, especially when it comes to management consultancy. And a staff product designer's role in the firm specifically is to bring in design leadership as any part of design decision-making process, business decision-making, as well as really helping our clients to make the most informed decisions based on human centricity. So my role is possibly going to be a little bit different from the in-house staff product designer. However, I would say the common theme is to really ensure that we'll be able to utilize design to influence any actions, plans, and being able to help others to envision the futures. Nice. And you also mentioned that it's a strategic role. So I would be curious to talk about that a little bit, because we have had many conversations already about strategy, and I believe it's more relevant than ever. So happy to hear how you see the importance of design for the strategy. Absolutely. Design by nature is strategic, and I'm hoping that... Is it? Great. I'm super happy that we have got your consent here. And just asking stupid questions. No, I think like for me, I really like this quote from the book, Art of Action. Maybe let me just read it out for you. Essentially, what strategy is a deployable decision-making framework, enabling actions to achieve desired outcomes, constrained by current capabilities coherently aligned to the existing context. And this is really beautiful because for me, a strategy is essentially informing us to make the right decision, to make the right choices all the time. Strategic design or design in general is really to use a design toolkit to make the decisions at any given time. Hence intrinsically, I believe that design by nature is strategic. Yeah. At the same time, I also have to say that the more companies I see over time, I also see that design is perceived very differently. And I think we all know it. For some companies, design is seen like more production function that puts on the final paint on something before actually getting it out of the door. So where do you see the current maturity also of design when it comes to this, and also being seen as a strategic role in a lot of companies? I think the maturity is possibly going to be depending on the company's design maturity. And the reason of that is because when you work for a company that is known for the strategy, and then you want to add another edition of the strategic thinking, and that requires convincing, and that requires influencing. And I think that's the beauty and also the challenges working in my current position. When an organization has higher design maturity, when we talked about product-centric companies, such as, I probably wouldn't name them, but we all know. Can I name them? You can name them. It's positive shout outs, right? Yes. So companies like Spotify or the giant tech such as Google intrinsically have got design baiting as part of their operational model, possibly also as part of their culture. And this means that designers' role could be elevated and into a playing field as other departments. Yeah, I can definitely see that. And maybe also in speaking about strategy, or generally also innovation in a company. And I think it's also a lot about collaboration. So how do you see design fitting also an overall organization? And how does design play with other functions in order to bring in this innovation? So one of the key principles from service design, and I will say also strategic design, is the ability to configure and to align. And this is really, really important when it comes to working with multifunctional or multidisciplinary teams. People might not actually use the term strategic design or service design when it comes to collaboration, because I think that essentially we're just like mixing the terminologies here. But collaboration is essentially an incredibly important mindset from a designer. I would say that designers possibly intrinsically would have the personalities or traits to be more open to collaboration. And I do think that creativity is contagious, like Albert Einstein says. So with designers in the team leading collaboration, and then being able to emphasize with different types of point of views, and then create a common language across different departments and different functions, that's where actually almost like the key step to arrive at a more strategic outcome. Yeah. I'm just wondering, because there were days where I was working for a B2B company, an enterprise company, and there was a design team and we were struggling with the decision of either having that team like decentralized, working in different cross-functional teams, or combining the design team as like an in-house function. And actually two strategy questions that I have with that. First of all, what's the strategic best choice for me as a company in either going with an embedded design team or an in-house design team versus moving on and be focused around design as a function that makes sure to deliver the services that are relevant to maintain the rest of the company? Maturity is one of them. Company culture is one of them. I'm just thinking about all of the different variables or parameters that actually influence the choices and influence such a decision. You could have a design as a separate function, almost like an outsourced model, but there are pros and cons for it. You could actually have design as an embedded function. And again, that model to embed designers in the organization would be different depending on whether it's a product company, or whether it's a service company, or whether it's something else. So different types of business should really consider a few questions. You might say, what would you like to achieve with design? It's a critical question to think about. And some might say that I actually don't know, then that's absolutely fine. Hire a design leader, a designer to help you figure that out. Because I do think that the best leaders really will surround herself with wonderful and talented people, of course, including designers. Absolutely. That's very well said. And I think design can play also a very big role in actually answering the initial question of what do we need to do? And so I think maybe just before we go deeper into strategic and service design itself, maybe it makes sense to spend a couple of minutes on the two roles specifically without trying to show the difference or to really say, what is strategic design? What is service design? But more giving a little bit an overview of what the two roles would mean to you, what is service design and what is strategic design? Yeah, absolutely. So I would say that when it comes to strategic design, and especially there are so many different types of terminologies floating around in the industry, the key differentiators between strategic design and business strategy will be where it starts. So I would say that strategic design starts with human values and business strategy starts with business values. But the major difference is that strategic design uses design toolkits to set the directions and make a plan to get there, as if it was what strategy does, making the right decision. And I think one thing that is really important to consider is that what is the power of design? I do think that designers or design has the power to help people to envision what's not yet tangible. So in terms of the outcome that strategic design fill, a strategic designer will bring to the table would be to make the tangible products or solutions or services and then help people to be able to feel it and being able to actually have the buy-in to that, whether it's not too distant futures or longer term futures. So I think that's where I see the strategic design. And when it comes to service design, it's very much about not only envisioning what the futures are, but also looking into how do we connect the front stage actors and backstage actors, these interconnections between what's visible and what's invisible, and how do you actually operationalize the services? So for me, service design could sometimes be seen as almost like renovation rather than a hundred percent of innovation. And I think that's actually because as a service design practitioner or someone who believes in service design, it's also very important to make the ideas come true. Did I answer your question? Absolutely. I love the picture of renovating and innovating or like building the house new. And actually, because at the end, that's also where service design often starts by looking at, okay, what are the current journeys? What are the different players? How can we improve this? I really like this picture. Now I lost my friend, which is awesome. But I have one. Okay. Then I'll let you jump in. I got the strategic part, but I'm also wondering these days, many people or many companies who are focused very much on their products are always trying to, in quote, force to be innovative and make sure that you move on with your development and always stay on top of things. So I was just wondering how design also can contribute to that innovative processes and helping the organization to grow with new ideas. Absolutely. And I actually think that is the core of design. That is where the spirit of design come in. For me, service design is there to create impactful change for good, if possible. And strategic design is there to inform and ensure that we are making the right decisions along the way. And when it comes to innovation or continuously bringing in new ideas to the table, that is also part of what, like a core part of design. So when we are debating about, okay, how strategic designers should be, we should not actually be, we should not forget. Yes. Like we're bringing new ideas to the table and I'm a firm believer of insight driven innovation. So ideas should not be coming from finger in the air, something that you just think. I wish that our audience could see your finger in the air. It's just, I think it's really important that we fundamentally, we understand the problem space. We understand where the root causes of the symptoms that these products aim to sort of resolve. And so that we'll actually be able to create a product, a service or a solution that has longevity. So everything should really coming back to the fundamental core human needs. How would you approach that from your experience? If you, let's say, want to start working with your design team on insights and trying to derive better solutions? Yes, absolutely. I think as part of the initial scoping or planning phase, I would always want to ensure that we're debating a period of time for primary research. And especially from the qualitative side, because I do think that by doing a primary research, you'll be able to actually look deeper into what's beneath the surface. And I think that's really important because you don't want your product or your services just solve the symptoms of a root cause. Absolutely. Symptoms might change however the fundamental raw needs or the fundamental human needs necessarily fluctuate that much when the time, but the context of use changes. The interactions, the modes of interactions might change. And so I think that it's always beneficial to start a project, product development by bringing in research activities. Hearing all this, I have the feeling that a strategic designer could be an awesome CEO also in terms of finding the right problem that a company should solve. Often, you're already entering when there is already an idea, when there is already a problem that you're supposedly solving, but I think oftentimes there is also never really this initial research phase of understanding it enough. So I'm curious also to hear a little bit from your experience where you've seen the biggest challenges for companies or what companies struggle the most with when it comes to strategic design in the first place. I think first it is possibly about positioning. So where do you position design and what kind of levels that you like designers to be putting and what kind of involvement that you like design that you like design functions to be brought in or actually as the driver of some of those design decision-making processes. So these are all again like questions or I would say choices that a company will need to make when it comes to positioning design. And a designer may well find out that okay this is not something that I expect. However, I do think that a designer has the ability to create the conditions for change and then to really being able to align, orchestrate, and also envision, innovate, renovate, and then bring in all of these improvements into the existing infrastructure, build credibility, and then assert credibility through applying design toolkits that we're trying to solve. So me as a designer, if I'm currently facing the challenge that I feel like I cannot really influence or I cannot bring design into a strategic position or influence the strategy also of the company by bringing in the right tools and insights, what would be a good first step that I could take to get me there or get closer to that position? I think the first step is to empathize. So the reason why I'm saying that is so empathy is one of the, I would say, best tools from designer. By understanding where the other part, the other parties, or the other end of the conversation coming from, you'll be able to flex your communication style or speak the type of language that you can create common understanding. And it's well easy for me to say, but this is actually something that's incredibly difficult. And the reason why it's difficult is because maybe we are very proud of what we're doing. Maybe we don't really want to change what we're doing. Maybe we don't want to flex. However, on the other side of the table, perhaps they're also thinking about the same. Why does this designer so far not giving me what I want, or I just don't get what this person is talking about, what he or she's trying to achieve. So I think the first step from a designer's perspective is emphasize with your audience, design for your end users, design your approach by actually understanding where their concerns, challenges, and problems coming from, so that you'll be able to actually tailor your approaches or your methodologies based on the challenges or the problems that they are currently facing. And then I think the second step, what I would do is to bring in the systematic thinking. So I think it's incredibly, again, another good skill from both service designers or strategic designers is the ability to identify patterns and then create rules and exceptions from what you're seeing, what you're observing. And I think by doing so, you'll be able to actually map out what are the systematic constraints that possibly will take too long for you to solve, and what are the less systematic constraints, the elements that you could immediately solve and possibly will arrive at a good degree of outcome based on the time that you want to spend. Yeah, it's a bit like eating your own dog food. Yes, I do think that the definition of design is very broad to me because I do think that as a designer, you really can design beyond its traditional definition and then think and create what you believe to be true and the ethical values that you want to bring to the world. And just to name a few examples in the design fields that interaction design as a foundation of product design that can go beyond screens and then that can really connect people, space, and technology. And then we also talked about experience design or communication design. These two are not the same. However, part of the design, why design is there is to create emotional connections and then create products and services that could create long-lasting memories. And then just thinking about service design again, it brings out incremental and revolutionary changes that fundamentally impact the way people live and work. I'm just wondering regarding your examples also to trying to hit that target of making sure that the ethical aspect is, for example, hit in our design or other things. How do all those, yeah, ideas and principles also tie up and end up in a product strategy? Because we now looked at the design part, but I would also be curious at the end of the day, there's always this overarching product and let's say company strategy. So how do you tie that in from the design angle? Yes, sure. And I think, again, there are different types of strategies. You have product strategy, design strategy, experience strategy, but I think really just like, or some people even advocate for digital strategy. So I think when it comes to product strategy, it is really the blueprint of how a product should be actualized, how we should be able to arrive at a desirable outcome in a viable and feasible way with longevity. And again, there are so many strategic decisions that a product strategy will be able to inform, document, and project. I would avoid redundancy in lexicon. So if there's already a product strategy as a goal that you would like to achieve, then I will possibly be looking at, okay, so how might myself, how my team bringing the strategic design thinking to that product strategy? I see. Rather than imposing, okay, actually we should be doing design strategy here, or actually we should be doing strategic design for this product strategy. But what you're saying is also like this consulting effect, right? On bringing your best experience and your best knowledge to the whole topic of strategy and trying to make it become as true and as good as possible. Yeah. And the formation of that piece of strategy, say at a product level, should consist of multiple different point of views. There should be business, there should be users, there should be, I will say, what's empowering and then what should be investable in terms of the technology. But I think at the end, it actually comes down to also the collaboration. And I think, Christian, looking at you specifically now, when we started this podcast, we were talking about product, talking about strategy, design, talking about strategy, and so on and so forth. I don't think those are things that should ever live in isolation. I think it's like the different roles that bring also then the different skill sets to the table. And at the end, you need to combine it because you're all working towards the same goal. And if design can contribute also to this or bring in especially the more human-centric view and actually also bring in the human aspect to the more business aspect, as you told us, Jill, then that kind of feels like a good combination. I think while speaking about this, though, one thing specifically around more roles, also service design, because in a lot of episodes, we talked about cross-functional teams, which are super relevant when speaking about product development and speaking about agile methodologies and so on and so forth. So thinking also about roles like service designers, strategic designers that usually look at a solution or at a product more holistically. So it goes beyond the cross-functional teams that might be looking only at a very specific feature set or at a very specific feature. So how can I solve this or how can I contribute to this much more holistically if I am in a setup where we think in more isolated features? So I think the tactical approach would be to consider your realms of responsibility as a mini-universe and then think about how would you actually amplify your impact. No matter how you want to call yourself, really, to apply your systematic thinking to really think about how you're identifying the patterns within that universe, I would say, or within that, even though I think at first you might actually think that this world is really limited. I have specific features, functionalities I'm working towards. However, consider the type of impact that your features or functionalities or your immediate team will be able to create. And I do think that it's never enough to feed the appetite of an ambitious designer, especially when it comes to have the visibility of what we want to achieve. So I think as a design leader, I will always encourage design leaders to give the visibility of vision, of the outcome, and then invite contributions there. Otherwise, your designers are not going to be satisfied because they will be wondering, okay, how is my work connected to other people's work? And how is my work going to influence or change or impact how other people's work and also the overall product roadmap or the product strategy? So I do think that it's important to help people to envision the overall goal, as well as help them to understand they are playing a critical part in that overall goal. So what you're saying is that it does start a little bit like also with design leadership itself and how they approach it and how they empower or the transparency also that they give the team itself. Yes, absolutely. Because my past experiences as a design leader, a design manager, as well as now as an individual contributor, I think it's very important that as a seasoned designers throughout your career, you respect and ensure that yourself and your design teams will be able to be empowered of doing what they love to do and then always have the honesty from you and then the transparency from you and then the autonomy that you give them in order for them to do the best work possible. Cool. And in terms of tying together then the broader vision also, or like also all the inputs from the different individual teams, is that then also the leader itself who should do this? Or could I structure it around a function specifically like service or strategic design that I put in a more holistic or higher kind of level in my organization? So I would say elevate the strengths from different types of designers or different types of capabilities. Strategic designers or service designers are intrinsically or tend to enjoy the holistic view and also have the capabilities to actually bring that holistic view to life. So I would say definitely as a design leader, you should have that awareness. As a non-design leader, be open to different ways of thinking, please. And also bring in the capabilities that maybe you're not familiar with and create the condition for them to thrive. And then naturally you'll be able to actually see the power of strategic thinking through design tools and then through being very close to your end users and being able to actually connect the emotional response and the physical response, whatever problems that you also want to solve through your products or services. So looking back also at your career and all the different steps that you made, what are like three things that you learned that you would want to give designers as tips on how to get into design strategy or even how to transition a team to become more strategic overall? So I would say firstly is be curious in what you're seeing, what you're observing and I do think that a good observer makes a good designer. And this actually really requires a lot of distillation and reflections around observation and being able to actually provide and think about the improvement that you want to bring to the world. And then because you are curious, you are more likely to actually expand to different types of topics and then think about how you will be able to connect different topics or scenes or areas of interest because I do think that having a broad and an open mindset allows you to gather input when you are making strategic decisions. So that will be the second one. And then I think the third one for a designer who would like to move into strategic design or think more strategically is to think about different levels of problems that you're solving and the associated impact. So you could be thinking about perhaps the problems that you're solving is for the immediate end users or the problems that you're solving is actually for a system or the problems that you're solving is for an organization, a society, a country or a multinational interruption in any type of setting. So just think about different levels of problems and then different levels of impacts that you would like to create and that ultimately will be able to help you to elevate your thinking as the first few. So these are the first few steps transitioning into designers with strategic thinking capabilities. Nice. And I love really the last part on zooming out and really asking yourself, what problem are you trying to solve? I think that's a, for me personally, a really good one. But overall, I think that was a great closing sharing your wisdom one more time at the end, Jill. And yeah, it was a pleasure talking to you. And thanks for being with us today. And we wish you a great day. Okay. Thank you so much for having me. Thanks a lot, Jill. Enjoy the evening. Bye-bye. Bye. Bye.