Design Strategy for your Life
This is an excerpt from my Medium article, Applying Design Strategy to your Life.
I have spent the bulk of my career as a Design Strategist — helping businesses better understand their customers’ needs, in order to design products and services to address those needs in novel and profitable ways. I recently pivoted to helping people navigate transformation and uncertainty in their personal and professional lives as a Coach. It was a jarring shift at first — businesses and individuals are two very different types of “clients” to serve. However, it quickly became clear how there are some important themes between how Design Strategists help businesses create powerful solutions for their customers, and how Coaches help their clients design fulfilling and rich lives. I began to cross-pollinate the two disciplines in my coaching — namely, by helping people approach transformation in their life as an iterative design process.
These 3 concentric circles represent a foundational framework that designers of all types use to guide the strategic design process. The titles of the circles change when you apply them to life, but their respective meaning is the same.
Blending Design Strategy Into My Coaching Process
I’ve woven a Design Strategy perspective into every aspect of my coaching practice. This perspective creates space for people to be innovative about the possibilities they see for their lives, and intentional about the steps they take to transform themselves and their circumstances. There are three tangible ways that I am blending these disciplines to bring more clarity and value for my clients:
Frame insights in an accessible way | I translate my notes from each session into a slide deck that traces the journey of our conversation in a clear and visual way. Clients use this content as a resource to keep them focused and inspired between coaching sessions. Design Strategy has the same virtue — frame insights from customer research in a way that allows different stakeholders to understand and engage with them constructively. See this example below:
We identified the client’s different ‘parts’ (aka perspectives) that are activated when she thinks about taking the leap to start her business and potentially leave her full-time job.
Treat values as anchors around which to design your life | I often challenge people to use their values as a rubric when evaluating opportunities and navigating uncertainty. Customers’ needs and pain points are used in the design process in a similar way. Values form the healthy constraints within which we can make choices and design our lives to align with what’s most important to us.
Surface testable assumptions about our lives and circumstances| Designers test their assumptions about desirability (eg. People will want this), feasibility (eg. We can deliver this) and viability (eg. This will be profitable) in the process of creating a new product or service. In life, we operate on many untested assumptions about ourselves, our circumstances, and our possibilities. By identifying and evaluating these limiting or empowering assumptions, we can bring curiosity to them and actually create a plan to test them through our lived experience.
As a Coach, I provide the space and structure for people looking to transform their lives to become more fulfilling, sustainable, and growth-oriented. The process opens up new possibilities that didn’t seem possible or feasible, just like Design Strategy does for businesses.
