September 3rd, 2010 | 
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Design management is concerned with the integration of design into management and vice versa. It is an approach whereby organisations make design-relevant decisions in a market and customer-oriented way as well as optimising design-relevant (corporate-) processes. It is a comprehensive activity on all levels of business performance that effect design, from the fuzzy front-end to the execution of design. Design management acts as an the interface of management and design and functions as link between the platforms of technology, design, design thinking, corporate management, brand management and marketing management at internal and external interfaces of the enterprise.
Design management is not limited on a single design discipline. In his ‘Classification of Design‘ (1976), Gorb’s divided design into three different classes; design management operates in and across all three categories:
* Product (e.g. industrial design, packaging design, service design)
* Information (e.g. graphic design, branding, media design, web design)
* Environment (e.g. retail design, exhibition design, interior design)
Design management is not independent from the organizational and product situational context, and plays three integrative key roles in the interface of design, organisation and market:
1. align design strategy with corporate and/or brand strategy
2. manage quality and consistency of design outcomes across and within different design disciplines (design classes)
3. enhance new ways of user experience and differentiation from competitors
Supportive activities are used in design management to manage design more efficient (‘doing the things right’) and effectively (‘doing the right things’). Depending on a multitude of factors (such as industry, company size, design focus, market situation and the position / role of design within the company), design managers have a broad range of job profiles, with very different roles, activities and responsibilities.
The term ‘design management’ includes a semantic contradiction and can be interpreted in two different ways:
(1) managing design and
(2) designing management.This distinction refers to the traditional understanding of design management on an operational level as well as to a relative new approach of integrating design thinking as a mental concept in different business functions (e.g. using design thinking on board level or within the context of innovation management).
Posted in Management