[Sigia-l] Strategists (What do they do that IA's don't?)

[Damien Newman]

I love this - "It's the T model of skills: very deep in one area but very
wide in all other areas."

But I would disagree with Patrick's summation of suggesting an IA is closer
to the user than a strategist. Personally, I don't know what a strategist
is, I took the title when working at Studio Archetype as someone who doesn't
actually build anything, but talks about it.

Someone also said earlier that Strategists can be found when multiple
projects need to be twinned together - this also was the case at places like
Studio Archetype and frog design.

However, certain environments strategists can be used for other things than
providing financial cases for different feature sets or user scenarios.

The combination of strategist, designer (of any specialty), and technologist
working with a client in a workshop can produce excellent skills when trying
to go through problem definition or different scenarios. I think a lot of
have seen the difficulty in working independently of other skilled
associates and not getting enough information or helping the client to
understand enough. Strategists are also often appreciated in conducting
research programs and helping to analyse and articulate what is relevant and
necessary for the design work.

One of the single greatest problems, which I think was crystallised by a
Fast Company piece on the English Strategy Practice, The Fourth Room, is
often that Strategists or Consultants tell you 'what' the problem is, but
not 'how' to fix it, or what to do with it.