DARN (Part 1): What Is Strategic Design? Social Theory and Intangible Design in Perspective

Abstract

This article presents the first part of a study that proposes an evidence-based research and prototyping method for strategic design. Analyzing the emergence of strategic design, we argue that a historically unprecedented rapprochement between intangible design and social research opens a spectrum of possibility for conducting design and science in a new way. First, we examine the emergence of strategic design and discuss its institutionalization in academic and professional contexts. Second, we summarize the three ways of approaching strategic design: (1) discipline, (2) practice, and (3) attitude. Third, drawing on the social sciences as inspired by Actor-Network Theory (ANT), we define strategic design as an evidence-based creative practice informed by the social sciences. We propose a new way to arrange or remake the interaction between devices (D), actors (A), representations (R), and networks (N) in any given organization or problem universe. Preparing a groundwork to develop a research and prototyping method for strategic design, this article ends with a methodological discussion as a segue to Part 2 (available in this issue of She Ji) that presents DARN as a theoretical toolkit for strategic designers.