The Three Pillars of Strategic Design

When thinking of “Strategic Design,” the first thing that comes to mind is creating solutions that solve real problems for real users—an exciting mission that often drives people to start ventures and become entrepreneurs.

However, while this is essential, it’s not enough: to be successful, a solution must also create sustainable value for the company and be implementable within a set timeframe with manageable risk.

Designing the right solution is an act of balancing seemingly conflicting interests. The Strategic Design process helps create awareness and maximize three factors relative to one another:

Desirability – Viability – Feasibility

• Desirability: Do users actually want this? 

  This is the most intuitive to assess, since it relies on user testing, interviews, and observational insights.

• Feasibility: Can we build this product within the desired timeframe? 

  Feasibility evaluates whether the product can realistically be developed with the company’s existing competencies, technology, and timeline. A compelling idea that cannot be delivered within the time-to-market window is a non-starter—and in some cases, delays can even compromise the company’s existence, as funding evaporates.

• Viability: Does this product make financial and strategic sense? 

  This is often where companies stumble. Teams may focus heavily on optimising the user experience while losing sight of rising product costs. A product without a healthy margin restricts the ability to use a broad range of commercial channels. If distributors are involved, their margins must be accounted for early—ignoring them weakens the business case from the start.

  
  

Strategic design succeeds when all three pillars—desirability, viability, and feasibility—align. It is like the "glue" that holds these three together, ensuring the solution is sustainable, usable, and profitable.

The Development Phase: Selecting the Winning Concept

A critical stage in user-centric design thinking is the translation of ideas into real, testable product concepts (the development phase).

In this phase, several concurrent concepts should be generated, each interpreting the high-level specifications of the initial idea in different ways. High-resolution prototypes are created and tested with users before any final decision is made on which concept to move forward.

At this stage, it is imperative that viability and feasibility are also factored into the final decision. A draft Go-To-Market strategy—focusing on channels—and a business case based on reasonable price sensitivity calculations should be developed. Engineering should lead the feasibility assessment, and if parts of the solution require external partners, they should be involved as well.

Companies that understand this process and execute accordingly are the ones that create sustainable, defensible innovation.

Force	Focus	The Risk of Ignoring It
Desirability	Human/User	You build something that works, but nobody wants it.
Viability	Business	You build something people love, but it bankrupts the company.
Feasibility	Technology	You dream up a solution that is impossible or too expensive to build.