| This research delineates a new theory and methodology for design as a key resource to the realization of strategic issues in today's multifaceted business environment. The complexity of current organizational problems requires the establishment of appropriate business plans and tactics, allied to integrated design strategies, which promote continuous innovation through the understanding of users. This implies new complex design decisions that require not only the understanding of traditional technological and material information (objective, quantitative), but also phenomenological and cultural (subjective, qualitative) information. The concept of an effective user-centered innovative design process (EUCID), a meta-planning approach for dealing with complexity in design as it relates to business strategy realization is introduced. With origins in Innovation, Business Strategy and Design Theories, the EUCID approach is extremely flexible and allows for objectively linking business problems to design solutions. The application of EUCID as a means to develop a context-based user-centered environmental design methodology, named Community-based Planning (CbP), is reported. An account of CbP development demonstrating how EUCID supported the development of frameworks to facilitate the synthesis of objective and subjective information in the space planning design process, and the use of Social Network Analysis as a means for measuring the effect of context-based spatial design solutions in key business dynamics is presented, while an the application of the CbP method to several test cases is given. |
