The following categories describe the strategic design spectrum and the key design pathways in which I intervene. This is a collection of the most common types of requests I’ve been entrusted with since the inception of the consultancy.

I founded Whispers and Giants on the idea that these challenges require a strategic design approach. To help innovators move forward with clear orientation towards ideation and implementation, my interventions are focused on exploring, making sense and understanding problems ahead.

Reinvention

You need to start thinking about what reinvention means for you, and produce tracks to imagine new future realities.

Anticipation

You need to anticipate major societal trends in the next 5 to 10 years or more to map out risks and opportunities.

Innovation

You need help to create and manage an innovation or research process to deliver inspiring results.

Social innovation

You need guidance to better understand the complex problems affecting specific user groups or beneficiaries in order to co-create solutions with them.

Ethnographic insights

You need to understand the problems affecting a specific user group and need help to understand how to create products and services for them.

Creative Direction

You need help to lead a creative process that combines curiosity, imagination and creativity from defining briefs to production.

Visioning and narrative

You need to collaboratively craft a meaningful vision and mission to drive change and alignment.

Conferences, panels, moderation, facilitation

You need someone to lead your event, retreat or workshop and inspire your audience with storytelling, insights and orientation towards the future.

Strategic Design Coaching

You need guidance to level up your practice of strategic design and to approach more complex problems.

How to start

As a strategic designer, I often work with clients who are struggling with challenges that seem strange and insurmountable.

However, in almost every case, these challenges start with a fuzzy situation that needs to be de-fuzzed or a symptomatic issue that requires further examination.

So don’t worry if your challenge seems weird, unclear or ambiguous – you’re probably on the right track. In this very upstream phase of the challenge framing process, your intuitions are key.

“If I had an hour to solve a problem I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.”
— Albert Einstein