> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.notation.design/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Planning design backwards - URL: https://www.notation.design/archive/planning-design-backwards/ - Published: 2026-10-11T06:50:54.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-11T07:44:06.000Z - Description: I rarely start a design project by asking how many weeks of design we need. I start by asking what we are trying to change, then work backwards from outcomes to results, activities and resources. - Author: Iwan Hänggi - Tags: Thinking, Design Management, #service-design-management ![](https://www.notation.design/content/images/2026/10/Drawing-26-1.png) Design activities always happen in a larger context. They are part of an R&D program, an innovation initiative, a marketing project, or something else. Many different people and roles are involved, resources are limited, and design is only one part of what is happening. So how do you plan the design work? How do you integrate it into the larger initiative? And how do you justify the resources it requires? This has been one of my recurring tasks over the past 15 years, first as a design manager, later as a business owner responsible for a team of more than 25 people, and now as a solo consultant. My basic philosophy hasn't changed much during that time, but I've collected a few frameworks and tools that help me structure my thinking and communicate a design initiative quickly. ### The design process as a black box The first thing I do is take a bird's-eye view. I imagine the entire design process as a black box. Input goes in, work happens inside, and something comes out. It's over-simplified, but I find it useful because it separates the **how** from the **why and what**. (How do we work in this? Why do we even do it? What is the result of it?) For planning what's inside that box, I use a simplified version of the **Kellogg Logic Model**. I came across it a few years ago. What interested me about the framework was where it came from. It was developed to help plan and evaluate non-profit organisations where the impact couldn't simply be expressed as financial ROI. The question was essentially: *How do you justify spending resources when you can't directly connect them to a financial return?* I think this is very relevant to the craft of design. Not because design is comparable to an NGO program, but because design is normally one activity within a much larger system or project. In my experience, it is very difficult to isolate the ROI of industrial design from everything else that influences whether a product succeeds So instead, I think about the connection between **resources, activities, results, outcomes and impact**: **Resources → Activities → Results → Outcomes → Impact** You use resources to perform activities. Those activities create results. Those results change something in a larger context. That's the outcome. And eventually those changes can contribute to an economic impact. ### I start with the outcome The difficult parts, in my opinion, are outcome and impact because they are more abstract. I usually don't spend any time at all trying to calculate the final economic impact. The people responsible for the larger initiative normally have much more context for that than I do, and they usually intuitively do it themselves in their head, once I provided the rest of the framework. That's why I focus on the **outcome**. What should actually be different after we've done the work? The question I ask myself is: > What changes do I want the results of my work to create in the larger context? And I ask the people I work with questions like: - What are your challenges? - Where are you not satisfied with the status quo? Depending on who I'm talking to, I steer the questions differently. ### Looking two years ahead One question I particularly like comes from Dan Sullivan's *R-Question*. I came across it through coaching some years ago. It goes roughly like this: > Imagine we meet again two years from now. We worked together successfully. We sit down, have a glass of wine and look back at the past two years. What needs to have happened for you to be happy with the progress you've made? Then I follow up: > What currently stands in the way of that? > What are the challenges, obstacles or fears? I've noticed an interesting side effect of this question. It can help me understand whether I'm actually talking to the person who has enough agency to brief the design work. A few times I've asked this question and the person couldn't really answer it, or the answer stayed very generic: more sales, more profit, more growth. I don't judge that. Often someone has simply been given the task of briefing me. But then it becomes my job to find the person who *can* answer the question. And if I can't talk to that person, I have to consider whether I should work on the project at all. Without understanding the desired outcome, it becomes very difficult to plan the rest. ### The magic genie There's another question I sometimes use. I call it the **magic genie question**. I use this when someone has a strong vision, but we haven't yet translated it into something observable I ask the person to imagine that they find an old golden oil lamp on the street. They take it home, rub it, and a very powerful genie appears. The genie grants them one wish about their project. Anything they want. They make their wish, but they don't tell me what it is. Then they go to sleep. During the night, the genie makes the wish come true. The next morning they wake up and go about their normal day. Then I follow up: > What do you observe that is different from the day before? I find the answer surprisingly useful. Instead of asking someone to describe an aspiration, it asks them to describe **observable change**. People are quite good at dreaming about where they want to go. Connecting that dream back to what would actually be different tomorrow is harder. Questions like this help bring the conversation back to something I can work with. ### Then I plan backwards Once I have some clarity about the desired outcome, I work backwards. **Outcome → Results → Activities → Resources** This should be relatively easy for everyone with a bit of experience in their field. I ask myself this first: **What results or artifacts are necessary to create this change?** In my work, these might be concepts, visualizations, prototypes, solutions, CAD models, decisions or simply the right conversations. Then: **What activities are necessary to create those results?** And only after that: **What resources are necessary to perform those activities?** Resources might be my time, tools, input from other people, external specialists, prototypes, travel or budget. Sometimes there is one obvious route. Sometimes I end up with several possible plans. But the important part for me is that I don't start with:*How many weeks of design do we need?* I start with: *What are we trying to change?* And work backwards from there. ### I don't make a detailed plan yet Once I've done this thinking, I share it. Usually very quickly. Rather than spending a lot of time making a beautiful pitch deck which then also takes quite a lot of cognitive effort for someone else to read, digest and understand, I try to do the planning within a day or two and then I let it linger for about a week so I can let the plan "ferment" a bit to do final edits and changes. Then I send an email or a whatsapp. It might look roughly like this: > Hey … > > Thanks for the conversation about initiative X. > > As I understand it, the outcome you're trying to achieve is: > > **\[Desired outcome\]** > > To create this change, I think we need the following results: > > **\[Results\]** > > To create those results, I suggest these activities: > > **\[Activities\]** > > These activities would require approximately: > > **\[Resources\]** > > Are you comfortable moving forward with investing these resources? > > If yes, I'm happy to turn this into a more formal project proposal. > > And please let me know if I've misunderstood anything. That's basically it. The point is to let the other person validate my thinking **before either of us invests too much into it**. Maybe I misunderstood something. Maybe I haven't spoken to all the relevant people yet. Maybe the budget isn't available yet. Or maybe the initiative itself changes while we're discussing it. This is R&D and innovation. Things are fluid.