Learning objectives
"The policy of the Designer is to offer dedication, innovation and value in perception.¿
Course unit content
Design has always been seen as a strategic marketing and management tool (even if this is often neglected according to Kotler, 1984) to enhance the commercial success of a company. Strategic design is a planning activity that involves the integrated whole of products, services and communication (product system) with which the company presents itself in the market, is seen within society and is used to create its corporate strategy. Strategic design was born with the product paradigm crisis and further developed with the emergence of the interaction paradigm and for whose development it was one of the most effective elements (the product system becoming a complex, flexible and interactive artifice which is the interface between company, customer and society). Strategic design is a planning activity which involves that company-customer-society interface and whose goal is the convergence of the points-of-view of the company, customers and other stakeholders in a unified process of value co-production. This is accomplished through innovation of the product system that involves a reconfiguration of the interface between company, market and society. Within an increasingly competitive context, in order to develop, companies must be able to change continuously, interpreting change as a critical factor of success. The designer must be able to manage change, conceive of, but also and above all, concretely realize the transformation of a company in order to guarantee it maximum return on its investment. The mission of the designer is to ¿Help the markets/society to change to obtain greater success¿. Successfully transforming a company and rendering its strategic vision concrete means working contemporaneously on four basic levels, thanks to our exclusive approach that integrates corporate strategies, the development of new products/services, and the communication and development of human resources as a central factor in maintaining a constant level of efficiency over time. The designer plays a strategic role because he/she contributes to building the platform of values on which the interaction between the actors in the system takes place, contributes to selecting the information within the circuits and, on the basis of this selection, contributes to building (reinventing) the supply system. In strategic design, each of these elements has a specific goal (what), operational mode (how), role and precise description (with whom, where, etc.). The designer contributes to developing awareness of innovative design-communication processes and their management. The continuous development of new products represents a basic strategic option for creating and supporting the competitive edge within these contexts. In the designer we can identify three core skills for the continuous development of new products, relating to the ability to: systematically create new scientific knowledge, stimulate creativity at all organizational levels, integrate and recombine the various forms of specialized knowledge. For companies, products/services must be recognisable and distinctive. They must be accompanied by a good communication system in order to be heard and acknowledged and not run the risk of passing unobserved. As is generally known, buying habits and selection criteria and product selection are no longer tied exclusively to use value, but are also tied to and influenced by image. The ¿pure¿, ¿autonomous¿ object no longer exists. The primary attributes recognised in a product are tied to the communication process which assures contact between merchandise and customer and company and market: what is bought today is no longer just the product, but also its image. The symbolic communicational aspect is that which acts as a means for acceptance and identity with the outside world. Today¿s consumer, raised within this image context, is someone who has been trained to move within the world of products and services offered by companies. Today, image is not created only by those communicating it, by those transmitting the message, but also by those who receive it. New symbols and new ¿experience frameworks¿ must be created that are wider-reaching and longer-lasting to establish a connection with the user of the service, based on involvement and sharing of a common history that becomes the terrain of collective memory on which to build the future. The goal is to shape or reshape the identity itself of the company.
Bibliography
Will be given at the beginning of the course
Teaching methods
The contents of the course are acquired through teaching coordinated with industrial design workshops. assessment of the design drawings
