#03 - Understanding strategic design
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Hello and welcome to the Future of UX podcast. I'm Patricia Reiners, UX/UI designer and creative resident at Adobe. In this episode, I spoke with Martina Gobek. She is a strategic design manager at Vertical in Copenhagen. We talked about her journey from visual design to experience design to ending up being a design manager.

Martina shared her learnings on this journey and how to think more strategically within the design process. She shared her vision about the role of design in the future. We talked about the importance of ethics and sustainability in our future design process. So thanks for listening and enjoy this episode with Martina.

Martina, thank you so much for taking the time today to talk about all your experiences. I really appreciate it. Let's start with some shorter questions maybe so we could get to know you a little bit better. And after that, we can start with the main topic. So the question number one would be, what do you do for a living? Wow, what do I do for a living? I'm a designer. I'm a design manager, a leader, mentor, coach.

Coach, yeah, I do many things, but it's all sort of related to design. Yeah, if you want, you can talk a little bit about what you're doing at Vertical. Yeah, so Vertical is a really interesting place. We are an end-to-end innovation agency. Basically, we help corporates infuse startup mindset and ways of working. We go across strategy, design, and tech, and we're

And we go, we basically deliver end-to-end solutions. So we can help with innovation strategy. We can help clients discover new business opportunities. We can test solutions.

the business, tech and design side of different concepts and ideas. So we take those opportunities, we articulate them into something tangible, we test that across the three different lenses, and then we deliver the first version of the product as an MVP kind of thing. At the same time, we use that product or that service development as a tangible artifact to help these clients transform their

own organization and bring in new ways of working. And we use the products as a vehicle for that to change, to see the evidence and then, you know, bring people on board and build from there. Okay. So what is your background? How did you get into design?

I've always been creative since I was very little and I've been sort of like into theater and a little bit of music and been drawing a lot and sculpture and all different kinds of things. And I started studying basically visual communications design. So it was a lot of graphic design, identity, illustrations and art.

photography as well. So like all the different design mediums, typography. And then we also had like classical academy stuff because we were a part of the Academy of Arts. So we had like painting and sculpture and video art. And then when I was in third grade,

there was a professor of mine who was making this exhibition and me and a student, co-student of mine, we helped him with this exhibition. And it was basically, it was like a robot where you could scan a barcode of an artwork and it would tell you information about the artwork. So technology entered the picture then and I got really excited by that. So I went into interaction design afterwards and

I went for an exchange at design school in Kolding in Denmark, where I started interaction design. I was supposed to stay for four months and then it became three years and did my master's in interaction design. And then I kind of slowly got more and more into user experience. After I was finished at the school,

My first job was at Sony, Sony Design Center in London. And it was exactly this combination of visual design and interaction design that got me the job because they were looking for a human interface designer. And it kind of had both the job sort of the role I had needed to have like both components. And then slowly from there, I kind of went more into the

user experience as a whole and designing digital products, designing digital services. And then after Sony, I spent seven years in ContraPoint here in Copenhagen. It's a strategic brand and design agency where also I was like the first interaction designer that got hired. And people were a little bit like, what's information architecture? What are wireframes? And sort of, yeah, just took

I was quite a turn and a journey, I guess, for the whole company, including myself, to kind of get us to a place where we kind of had a better understanding of the digital and what we could do with that. And then for five years after that, I was at Oztu.

the digital product studio, basically one year as a design strategist and then a year in, I got hired into the design director role. So I basically took over my team and became a manager. So I kind of were a little bit hands off. And then since April, I've been working at Vertical Strategy as a strategic design manager. So I still have a design cohort. So responsibility for design is an area.

But I'm a lot closer to the clients now and the projects. And yeah, so it's all been quite a journey from design, hands-on design into strategic design and design management and people management and leadership and all that.

I think it's really interesting understanding your background and all the different steps you took throughout your career already. So you switched to strategic design now. Could you explain a little bit what strategic design means? So what do you do like in your day-to-day task as a strategic designer at Vertical? Like strategic design, I think Helsinki Design Lab has a really good definition that strategic design is not just about shaping the solution. It's about framing the problem.

So strategic design is basically, it's a discipline, it's a mindset and it's an approach.

to defining the problem and understanding the whole of it, understanding if it's a service or if it's an ecosystem or something that is much bigger and more complex, and then breaking that down into smaller chunks and solving it, and then all the way through delivering.

a final solution, I would say. So it's all about asking the right kinds of questions and then finding the answer to them. So I think in strategic design, we here at Vertical, and I guess most strategic designers out there would agree with that, is that it's not just about the customer anymore. It's not just about the people who are using the product. It's much bigger than that.

It's a lot about the business. It's a lot about the ecosystem. It's a lot about the market and like, yeah, just understanding the holistic view of where this product or service is placed in the world and the context that it sort of is a part of.

and placing it there successfully. So in terms of the skills, I guess most strategic designers will need some sort of systems thinking, the ability to understand a bigger picture and how smaller bits and pieces and components connect into this bigger picture. Being able to zoom between the macro and the micro level is a really great ability to have.

I think strategic design is still a lot about visual thinking and having entered vertical strategy, which has a strong sort of like business strategy component because that's the legacy that we're coming from. We're currently integrating design strategy and tech into sort of a one coherent whole. And

Design has a fantastic ability to think visually, whether it's, you know, flow charts or whether it's a final pixel perfect design. It doesn't much matter because it provides a different...

way of talking about things when you have a tangible artifact and it's not just words and really abstract, it becomes concrete. And that's fantastic. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. So you just talked about those tangible visual things and could you like what what kind of tangible like visual things would it be? You already talked about flow charts, for example, but

What are some kind of outcomes when you design something strategically?

I mean, designing the right thing is the first part of the double diamond, right? Let's take that as an example. It's the double diamond is sort of a framework that got developed in the 60s and then got, I guess, institutionalized by IDEO, right? It's the whole process of discovering, defining, developing, and delivering. And it's like the divergent and convergent sort of process. Yeah.

where you open up, you discover a lot of opportunities, you then define and sort them, you synthesize the insights that you may have from the market research strategy, customer research, all the different sort of components. And then based on that, you have a clear maybe problem statement, and then you can ideate and conceptualize around it, and then you still need to deliver. So

you know, strategic design makes sure that we, that we are designing the right thing. And then, um, more classical, maybe product designs, uh, is more about designing it right. Um,

But it's not either one or the other. They need to go together. And some designers are stronger in the first part, and some designers go really well across those two. And some are really sort of craftsmen and really, really passionate about creating the tangible experience. And that could be a UI of an application, or it could be a voice.

a voice interaction or, yeah, it can sort of take many different shapes and forms. But it's the process of going from an open-ended question maybe to a final solution is making it happen. That's where design is strongest. Okay. So strategic design is more or less like seeing the whole process and developing like all the different areas together with these like specific disciplines, for example, right? Yeah.

Yeah, I would say that. And I mean, even, you know, like at ContraPoint, we worked a lot with brand identity and we shaped, you know, the details of a visual identity, the logo, the business cards, the website, the app buttons, like all of those small details in every touch point, in every expression of the brand.

I would say that visual design can be just as strategic. It's called branding. It's basically having a really clear rationale for every design decision that you make while still keeping your creativity intact because design is as much emotional as it is analytical in a way and finding a balance between the two is important.

Yeah, absolutely. And I would like to go one step back and hear from your perspective, what do you think how the industry at the moment looks for us UX product or strategic designers? Since you started studying, going from branding to strategic design, I can imagine that the industry changed a lot during that time.

during that time. So it would be interesting to hear from your point of view. How do you think, how are you experiencing the industry at the moment for us? I think it's a really exciting point for design and what's been going on is I think that the business side has discovered the power of design and the value of design.

There are a lot more design-led startups and designers for the first time in many, many years are on boards of directors and there's venture capital companies that have designers in their circles. And in the industry, we're talking about it as the seat at the table, right? Use the first generation of the customer experience officers or...

Yeah, so design is kind of being established on equal terms. And if you look at a lot of the business consultancies and bigger IT companies that are sort of have an enormous appetite for design companies, a lot are being bought. There's a lot of sort of

movements on that market. So I don't think that it's, I mean, it's undisputable that design has become more strategic and has proven its value. And, you know, McKinsey, the value of design report is one of those pieces that has really sort of helped accelerate this, this trend. Um, and it basically means that there is, that there is a lot of opportunity, uh,

uh for designers um i mean there's a lot of uh recruitment going on especially in user experience uh strategic designers uh sometimes also like the emerging sort of area of business design um what does that mean i think it's still being shaped so um

But user experience design and digital product design, and especially a trend that I've seen a lot at us too, is that we've been hiring for the past many years hybrid designers. So designers who both have UX and UI.

So user interface, visual side of things, but also the user experience and understanding the customer and product side of things. So I think that those are the future profiles as designers who are able to do both. Sometimes it's also tricky and can be quite straining in a project to be able to wear both two hats.

But I mean, we've had... I know quite a few people who have done that quite successfully. And I think the new generation is sort of emerging into that. And then the whole...

Now with augmented reality, we're going to see a lot more in mixed reality, virtual reality, we will see a lot more designers developing the 3D skill sets and understanding and being able to design for these immersive experiences, which are a whole different level of complexity and a paradigm shift to think spatially and time component at the same time. And then the voice, the gestures,

That's also the design that is becoming invisible in a way, but it's still very much a part of the experience. So how do we design for these experiences that are not really visual anymore? It's going to be interesting to see where it goes. Do you think that the future is going to, like for us as designers, is going to change that a lot of designers are not going to focus on their specific area, but have to

or try different things, have different experiences in different areas, combine different skill sets from different areas, not only doing like one specific task, but specialize in different directions and being able to like work in different areas, right? Yeah, I do believe that we're getting more and more sort of generalist in a way. I'm not saying that there's not room for specialists anymore, but

Of course there is, because if you have someone who is like super expert at, you know, motion, motion design, then, you know, you can always have that as well, but we need more bridge builders because we're designing, um, in this more complex and interconnected environments nowadays. So it does require a different skillset and then just.

looking at where the technology has gone you know in the last 20 years I mean what do you think how the industry for like design user experience design product design will look like in 20 years from now wow that's a wow that's a that's a great question I have no clue I I hope

I hope in 20 years, if I may be a little bit bold and dreaming a little bit, I hope we have a Minister of Design on a state level. I think in the next 20 years, I believe the design will get political.

Because it will be much more about designing the systems, the ecosystems, the products, the services, the society as a whole. And yeah, I think that design, if we have this resilience, if we have this empathy, if we have the ability to hold several perspectives true at any one time,

time, then, you know, and we have this visual thinking and I would like to see a minister for design. That would be awesome. So design that gets political. And the second thing, the second thing that I hope for is that we finally get to this inflection point where technology is actually serving the humans.

and not distracting and frustrating us in so many different ways. I truly hope that even if singularity becomes a thing and the AI outpaces us in terms of intelligence and the robots can design themselves type of thing,

I hope we are clever enough to feed the artificial intelligence with whatever we've got in order for it to serve us and not become a hindrance and, yeah, enable a better society, I guess. Yeah. Yeah.

Absolutely. I think especially if we're thinking about emerging technologies, AR or even voice control, there's so many interesting toppings popping up where like sustainability and ethics is going to be really important, I think. So do you think...

Especially the terms of sustainability is something you cover with strategic design or do you think this is something also like UI or especially like UI designer or motion designers can integrate in their workflow or design process at some point?

sustainability in the whole sort of, especially in strategic design, because we are a part of designing businesses now, right? So if you look at the different business models and if you look at the different companies that use resources or the products that

you know, use less energy or what, whatever it may be is, uh, it's someone needs to take that into consideration. And that is the design or, you know, the, the team that is building the thing that needs to think about it. Um, and there's a lot of frameworks out there at the moment for like, uh, circular design. Lila Akaroglu does a lot of both lecturing and also has a framework for that. Um,

Some of my colleagues, former colleagues from us too, had developed this sort of sustainable design that is basically built into the Double Diamond framework. It's called Stop Designing for Yesterday. We're having a sustainability initiative here at Vertical and our sister company, Quads, where we're talking about how do we sort of push for things.

to consider more of the impact that we're making on the world. So I think, yeah, just go out, find the frameworks and, you know, even small steps are important at this point. Generally, earlier you said for us as designers, it's going to be important to stay hungry and stay curious. What would you recommend them if they're like designers, whatever, from whatever area and they want to get into strategic design, what should they focus on?

Number one, business is not a dirty word. I've seen a lot of designers, you know, where when you're coming from user experience, you are usually, well, maybe I'm generalizing a little bit, but you're usually an advocate for humans.

And you have been trained to use empathy as a tool to put yourselves into your customers or, you know, the people you're designing for their shoes and really understand their pain points and their motivations and all of that. So that is the exact same tool that you can apply when it comes to the business that you're exploring. It could be, you know, internal stakeholders, understanding the organization, understanding the different departments, right?

And applying that same empathy tool to take in all these different perspectives and hold them true at the same time and find a solution within the frame that you're working in. I think it quickly comes...

as a, you know, money and all that. Design has a little bit of reluctance towards that. But I mean, we do live in a world where, you know, that is the paradigm that we're a part of. So of course you need to make money. And of course, if you want to grow, it means, you know,

You need to find ways of spreading your message or gaining an audience. And I mean, just taking Greta Thunberg as an example. I mean, she was, you know, a person of one and she stood in front of the parliament every Friday and protested. And suddenly there's millions of people across the world. It's the same principle. We're all selling something. We are all, you know, coming with a story and we want to build a following in the tribe. And, yeah.

and want to sell our product or even if the product is a thought. So I think selling and hustling, it's a part of humanity. It's a part of us and we should really embrace it and then find a way to do it in a responsible way. Yeah, so that would be my first advice is about mindset. Like how are you going into this? And then the second thing is

The things that I'm currently learning is really understanding strategy, understanding people who come from a business background. Like, what are they about? What drives them? What kind of tools do they have? How do they use them? And, you know, for me, it's not I'm not going to be good at crunching numbers ever. Like, I don't want to be good at that part.

because my strength is somewhere else. But I do want a fundamental understanding of what is it that they do and how can I apply that when I'm problem solving in my own project. So just getting familiar with the different business tools and I would say exposure to people who come from another background. If you're going into strategic design, then expose yourself to more people who do

who come from strategy or who come from product management or finance or marketing. And there's also this sort of aversion from design or like, I guess, more like product service design communities like, oh, marketing, that's not, you know, marketing is as much as part of the product as the product itself. It's a whole thing. And exposure that the person, the user, customer has,

with the product, be it a commercial or a banner on a website or the product itself is all the same experience. So kind of gaining an understanding of what that spectrum of touchpoints actually looks like from the customer perspective is super important. And then obviously, I mean, empathy and user research is the first component of any sort of strategic design.

Martina, do you have any resources you would like to share with the community? Any links, articles or books or people who inspired you throughout your career?

Okay, yeah, so there's quite a lot on different levels. I'm not super much into the detail UX work anymore, since I'm not executing on the craft that much anymore. So it's mostly sort of leadership, but these are good places to go to sort of understand where the industry is at the moment and the people that have sort of shaped my thinking and helped me define

how I view design. So I think one of the places that I've always been following since I heard about them is obviously IDEO. And the person who's had sort of the biggest impact on what I do and that I've learned sort of the most from is actually Jane Fulton Surrey, who's their sort of head of, or was their head of insights and human-centered sort of research part. And she established a research practice at IDEO. And

I've been following her work and really sort of understanding, digging into the human psyche and the behaviors and random acts that people sort of do. So really her view on user research has really defined the way that I view user research and understanding people. And IDEO has a lot of really great resources and they do courses.

And yeah, it's still after all these years, they're still the go to place for me, which is interesting. I also follow John Maeda.

that is, uh, one of the people that has been at the MIT media lab. And he publishes this, um, uh, this design and tech, uh, report every year where he gathers the intelligence from the community. So it's like an open source thing. And then he publishes the report in different formats. So it's like online. And then there's like an interactive version. And, um, it's basically, uh,

a state of the art debrief on where the industry is and where it's heading. And I'm always really enjoying that to see how things are changing within the industry. And he's kind of at the moment talking about the era of computational design because we went from design craftsmanship

doing products, going into design thinking, and now we're kind of like shifting the design paradigm into computational design where designer become, you know, becomes a curator of maybe artificial intelligence or a script that you run to crunch out your variations of design or whatever it is. So it's like a new era of, of design that is emerging. So he's definitely been a person that I've been following for, for many years.

Benedict Evans, who's one of the Andreas and Horowitz venture capital partners, he publishes a newsletter called Ben's Newsletter. And it's a view of, it's kind of like a Silicon Valley focused business.

newsletter about what's going on in the tech world. So he basically picks up on the biggest trends in startups and, you know, emerging technologies. So that's super interesting. And then I follow Jessica Walsh, who recently spun out her own agency, Walsh & Co. She was a part of the Zagmeister-Walsh duo. And I'm really enjoying her work

her visual explorations in how to talk about mental health and I think she does it with a you know in a way that is really entertaining and it's a little bit cynical and it's kind of embracing herself and her way of seeing things unapologetically and that's really she's really inspiring and then it's beautiful design very well crafted and it's fantastic.

And then there's John Kolko that has always been sort of writing a lot about design, writing books and articles and teaching. And he runs a studio called Modernist and I think in Austin, in Texas, an extremely well articulated speaker as well. And I've really enjoyed

both reading his, uh, articles and books, but also seeing his presentation. So he's definitely been on my list. And then there's a younger company called Noble, um,

It's a collective that is focusing on organizational design that I find quite fascinating. How do you design an organization? And what I really like about Noble is that they put all their thought pieces and all their methods and tools, everything is open source. So they're basically crowdsourcing from the community and giving back their own thinking. But Cadell, who's the CEO...

or a founder, he's a really good thinker and I really like all the thought pieces that they produce. And then it's obviously the sort of like some different conferences and the different design studios in the world that are interesting that I follow. I find a lot of stuff on Medium as well.

And I really actually get inspired by the people around me. So, you know, the design team here, the design team from us two and the teachers that I've had over the years or my peers in the different agencies, my old classmate, like, I mean, there's a lot of people that are kind of not celebrities in that respect, but that I sort of

find really inspiring and I basically call them my everyday superheroes because that's kind of like they're making an impact where they are and I get inspired by the people around me and I always sort of look for what can I learn from this person that I'm meeting. So yeah, I guess we can compile a little bit of a list in the show notes and we can share some of the resources.

Yeah, absolutely. I'm going to link everything in the show notes so people can check it out. Yeah. And get inspired by those persons as well, hopefully.

If people have questions about what you said or just want to reach out to you, how can they find you online? Are you on any social networks? Yes, I am on social networks. I am. I mean, I'm obviously on LinkedIn. I'm on Facebook. I'm on Instagram. I have a Medium account where I'm writing things. I'm currently brewing on a...

on a blog post on advice for young designers going into maybe their first job or starting out as designers. Yeah, I'm somewhere on Twitter as well, but I don't use it that much, to be honest.

But I mean, if anyone wants to connect like professionally, LinkedIn, I guess, is the best way or follow me on Medium or Instagram. Great. So I'm going to link everything in the show notes. So if people want to reach out to you or just follow your work or read your articles on Medium, they can do that.

Yeah, generally, thanks, Martina. It was so great to talk to you. Thanks for sharing all those information with us. I think it was really valuable for many listeners, many designers who are thinking about the future and thinking about how they want to evolve during the next years. So thank you so much for being a part of this podcast.

Thank you, Patricia, for the invitation. I'm really looking forward to the responses. So if people have feedback, you know, I have my own learning curve ahead of me. So I'm always interested in different perspectives or, you know, maybe a provocation or, yeah, just, yeah, feedback in general would be super valuable.

Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. If you have feedback, just like write us a message and let us know. We are always super happy about feedback or recommendations even. So thanks again. I hope you enjoyed this episode with Martina. Let me know if you have any feedback or recommendations. And if you like this episode, please rate us on iTunes. I would really appreciate it. So thanks for listening and hear you in the future.

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