Browsing by Author "Laamanen, Laura"
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- Design management perspectives: Perspectives on design management from Finnish organizations and practitioners
School of Arts, Design and Architecture | Master's thesis(2024) Laamanen, LauraDesign is increasingly recognized as an important asset in organizations but integrating it into structures remains a significant opportunity. Design management plays a crucial role in advancing design within organizations. The challenge lies in defining its meaning, explaining its role and values, communicating these roles internally and externally, and creating space for design. This thesis explores the role of design managers from the perspectives of organizations and practitioners, aiming to understand their functions within the Finnish IT and Software industry, and to gain insights into their role. Additionally, the literature review considers various aspects of design management, including design, management, and leadership. Finally, this study compares the perspectives of organizations and practitioners with themes from the literature. The study employed qualitative data collections methods and analysis techniques, including the examination of job advertisements and semi-structured interviews. The data was analyzed with thematic analysis using both inductive and deductive approaches. This resulted in a coding scheme and emerging themes of design manager objectives, processes and activities, and skills and characteristics. The most referenced objectives from the job advertisements were 1) bringing design into the organization, alongside with 2) creating unified experience, brand and look, 3) creating user value, customer value and growth opportunities, and 4) developing design vision and strategy. The four most referenced processes and activities were 1) individual design activities, 2) leading projects, 3) contributing to strategy and vision, and 4) leading people. The four most referenced skills and characteristics were 1) communication and collaboration skills, 2) design craft skills, 3) leadership skills, and 4) strategy and vision skills. The practitioners emphasized their role as enablers, facilitators, connectors and advocates for the users. This demonstrated that organizations are looking for a combination of individual contributor, manager, and leadership roles, whereas the practitioners highlighted a more nuanced perspective on their own role. This might imply that design is gaining its place in organizations but at a slower pace than reported in the literature. This highlights the importance of a people focused leader with strong interpersonal skills, including the ability to communicate and collaborate cross-functionally and cross-disciplinary as well as skills related to the design craft itself. Finally, the results suggest that design practices and processes are shaping the course of design management introducing more user and human centered approaches into the organizations, potentially changing the way organizations approach managing, organizing and changing.