Design Strategy

Design Strategy

Strategy is the bridge between understanding and making. It takes what you learned in discovery and research and turns it into a clear direction that every design decision can be measured against.

Welcome Gate

BEFORE running strategy, check whether the Designpowers welcome sequence has been shown this session. If the user has not yet seen the welcome (the bird, the greeting, and the walkthrough offer), you MUST invoke the using-designpowers skill FIRST and complete the welcome sequence before returning here. The bird must appear before any work begins. No exceptions.

When to Use

• After discovery and/or research, before detailed design work
• When stakeholders disagree about direction
• When the team needs shared design principles
• When positioning against competitors
• When defining what makes this experience distinctive

Process

Step 1: Synthesise Inputs

Gather everything from previous phases:

• Design brief (from design-discovery)
• Research findings (if research-planning was used)
• Personas (from inclusive-personas)
• Existing design system or brand guidelines
• Business objectives and constraints

Step 2: Competitive Landscape

If relevant, map the competitive landscape:

## Competitive Analysis

| Competitor | Strengths | Weaknesses | Accessibility | Differentiation Opportunity |
|-----------|-----------|------------|---------------|---------------------------|
| [Name] | [What works] | [What fails] | [WCAG compliance, inclusive design quality] | [Where we can do better] |

Pay specific attention to where competitors fail on accessibility — this is often the largest opportunity for differentiation.

Step 3: Define Design Principles

Write 3-5 design principles that will guide every decision. Good principles are:

• Opinionated — they take a position, not state the obvious
• Actionable — a designer can use them to make a decision
• Testable — you can evaluate a design against them
• Inclusive — at least one principle explicitly addresses accessibility

Example format:

### [Principle Name]
**The principle:** [One sentence]
**What this means in practice:** [How this guides decisions]
**What this means we will NOT do:** [What this rules out]

Step 4: Experience Map

Map the end-to-end experience:

1. Entry points — how do people arrive? (Search, link, referral, notification)
2. First impression — what do they see, feel, understand in the first 5 seconds?
3. Core journey — what steps do they take to accomplish their goal?
4. Moments of friction — where might they struggle, hesitate, or leave?
5. Exit points — how do they finish? What happens next?

For each moment, note the emotional state and the inclusive design considerations.

Step 5: Define Success Metrics

How will we know the design is working?

Include at least one accessibility metric (e.g., task completion rate with assistive technology, WCAG compliance level, cognitive load score).

Step 6: Write the Strategy Document

# Design Strategy: [Project Name]

## Design Principles
[3-5 principles]

## Competitive Position
[Where we differentiate]

## Experience Map
[End-to-end journey with emotional states]

## Success Metrics
[How we measure impact]

## Constraints and Trade-offs
[What we are choosing NOT to optimise for, and why]

Save to: docs/designpowers/strategy/YYYY-MM-DD-<project>-strategy.md

Step 7: Stakeholder Alignment

Present the strategy section by section. Confirm alignment before proceeding to design plans.

Integration

• Called by: design-discovery
• Calls: writing-design-plans
• Informs: All design skills — principles and strategy should be referenced in every design decision

Red Flags