Strategy

Strategy, at its best, is about deciding what actually matters. That might mean choosing a direction, setting priorities, or stepping back to understand what’s really going on before pushing forward. It’s less about big, abstract plans and more about making better decisions in context. These posts look at that from different angles, how direction is shaped, tested, and sometimes corrected along the way.

Clarity Design Practice

All essays in Strategy

  1. The cost of features 1st of July 2026 It's relatively straightforward to estimate the effort involved in building a feature, whether that's in time, money or complexity. Estimating the value it might create is much harder. But that's the more interesting question. What is a feature actually worth?
  2. The reverse stone soup challenge 22nd of September 2025 There’s a folk tale about Stone Soup. There's a particular design challenge that I think of as its reverse.
  3. Refocusing 4th of February 2025 Fifteen years in, I’m reflecting on the work I do best: untangling complexity, shaping ideas, and helping teams find clearer direction.
  4. Repositioning Bold Wise 23rd of May 2022 My work had shifted from hands-on design toward consultancy, strategy, and shaping bigger, more ambitious projects, so Bold Wise needed to change too.
  5. What is its job? 20th of May 2022 When a project gets stuck at the level of deliverables, asking ‘what is its job?’ shifts the conversation back to value, purpose, and outcomes.
  6. Alphabetising the recycling 17th of May 2022 Alphabetising your recycling is such a perfect way of describing those activities that seem, on the face of them, useful and productive but, as you dig in you realise that they are just busy-work.
  7. Pause, regroup, take stock 7th of August 2020 I've now been self-employed or run my own business for over a decade. That means I've spent longer working for myself than I have in all of my previous in-house roles combined.
  8. Design as goal reaching not problem solving 13th of July 2020 Instead of problem solving, I now view design as an ongoing goal-reaching activity. The difference for me is that the context is bigger, the constraints require more thought, but the results are much greater — and more meaningful — in their impact.
  9. Cost, price, value 14th of April 2020 I find myself scribbling this diagram — Cost | Price | Value — and working through these ideas with people, frequently so I thought I’d write it up and share some brief notes here. I'm writing this as much for myself — to clarify my thoughts and have something to point people to — as to share.
  10. How to think about your next website 5th of April 2016 There are three things that I talk through with any client when I’m talking about websites: goals, launch, and 'the whole'.
  11. The gap between now and next 5th of February 2016 Any project requiring a designer has two states: Where it is now; Where you want it to be. There is a gaping void of uncertainty between the two.

© Alex Magill