Rosenverse

Log in or create a free Rosenverse account to watch this video.

Log in Create free account

100s of community videos are available to free members. Conference talks are generally available to Gold members.

Design as an Antidote to VUCA

Thursday, May 9, 2019 • Enterprise Community
Share the love for this talk
Design as an Antidote to VUCA
Speakers: Jorge Arango
Link:

Summary

In the early 1990s, the U.S. Army War College created an acronym to describe the geopolitical situation after the Cold War: VUCA. It stands for volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity, four characteristics they saw as defining the multilateral post-Cold War world. The rise of information technologies — and the internet in particular — has radically transformed our political, economic, and social reality. We are all now living in a generalized state of VUCA. We see signs of it everywhere — including the enterprise. Learn from Two Waves author Jorge Arango about how design can help organizations thrive by reducing volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity.

Key Insights

  • VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity) is a useful framework to understand modern organizational challenges.

  • Many institutions are still structured for the Industrial Age and are ill-equipped to handle the rapid changes and unpredictability of the network age.

  • Design is not just about making usable or pretty things but is a third way of knowing that uses abductive reasoning and solution-focused strategies.

  • Designers add greatest value when involved in foundational organizational layers such as purpose, strategy, and governance, not only at the surface UI level.

  • Co-creation involving diverse stakeholders can break down silos and improve organizational responsiveness.

  • Design artifacts can act as MacGuffins—catalysts that drive collaboration and change, even if the artifact itself is not the primary value.

  • Language design is a powerful tool to reshape organizational thinking by clarifying or redefining terms across different groups.

  • Design governance should be integrated into overall organizational governance rather than treated as a separate design team activity.

  • The prevalent perception of design as primarily a craft or decorative discipline limits its strategic potential in organizations.

  • An effective design practice in large enterprises acts as a sensing and responding organ, helping institutions test assumptions and adapt quickly.

Notable Quotes

"Our appliances are attacking us somehow and bringing down major parts of our infrastructure."

"VUCA stands for volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity."

"Designers set out to resolve ill-defined problems using abductive thinking — making things that we know are kind of wrong to test solutions."

"Design is a third way of knowing, different from science and humanities, involving making and artifice."

"The challenge for us is how might we act more skillfully under conditions of VUCA."

"Co-creation brings other stakeholders into the design process, not just for requirements but to actually do the design work."

"MacGuffins are design artifacts that catalyze collaboration and new ways of working rather than being valuable in themselves."

"Language itself can be a powerful design object, shaping social roles and organizational interactions."

"Design governance needs to be part of the governance of the entire organization, not segregated to design teams."

"Design thinking has helped raise awareness but often lacks the depth of design practice which requires dedicated craft."

Ask the Rosenbot
Kelly Dern
AI as a Design Partner: How to Get the Most Out of AI Tools to Scale Your Process
2023 • DesignOps Summit 2023
Gold
Carla Casariego
DesignOps in Wonderland
2019 • DesignOps Summit 2019
Gold
Dave Hora
Advice for Establishing Research
2022 • Advancing Research Community
Satyam Kantamneni
Do You Have an Experience Vision?
2023 • Enterprise Community
Louis Rosenfeld
Welcome / Housekeeping
2023 • Enterprise UX 2023
Gold
Dan Willis
Theme 3: Intro
2024 • Enterprise Experience 2020
Gold
Sarah Barrett
AI in Real Life: Using LLMs to Turbocharge Microsoft Learn
2025 • Rosenfeld Community
Marjorie Stainback
Transforming Strategic Research Capacity through Democratization
2019 • DesignOps Summit 2019
Gold
Roy Opata Olende
How Zapier Uses ‘All Hands Research’ to Increase Exposure to Users
2020 • Advancing Research Community
Gonzalo Goyanes
Design ROI: Cover a Little, Get a Lot
2022 • DesignOps Summit 2022
Gold
Rachael Dietkus, LCSW
Everything You Need to Know about the Civic Design 2022 Call for Presentations
2022 • Civic Design Community
James Wieselman Schulman
Research is a team sport: advancing the work when everyone does the research
2026 • Advancing Research 2026
Gold
Dr. Jamika D. Burge
The Future of Research: Bridging the Gaps
2021 • Advancing Research Community
Jen Cardello
Learning Velocity—The Insights Speedometer
2021 • Advancing Research Community
George Abraham
Design Systems To-Go: Indigo.Design Overview and Exploring the Developer Workflow (Part 3)
2021 • DesignOps Summit 2021
Gold
Changying (Z) Zheng
Navigating Innovation with Integrity
2024 • DesignOps Summit 2024
Gold

More Videos

Kate Towsey

"Building ecosystems of interconnected tools that work seamlessly is crucial for modern, fast-moving organizations."

Kate Towsey Basel Fakhoury Oren Friedman Graham Gardner

Participant Recruitment and Management Tools

March 12, 2026

Jennifer Kong

"The unpredictable black box nature of LLMs means we had to zoom in on small problems first before seeing the bigger picture."

Jennifer Kong

Journeying toward AI-assisted documentation in healthcare

June 5, 2024

Kevin M. Hoffman

"When product leaders ask for research just to validate ideas, the best response is to say, ‘fuck this group,’ then do real user interviews."

Kevin M. Hoffman

Theme 2: Enterprise Team Journey

June 3, 2019

Amy Marquez

"We use Alexa’s personification for good, fun, and delight, but we don’t advertise, especially because there may be kids listening."

Amy Marquez

INVEST: Discussion

June 15, 2018

Gretchen Anderson

"I see designers fall back on being the defender of the user like a union boss, but that’s not your only responsibility."

Gretchen Anderson

Scaling the Human Center

June 8, 2017

April Reagan

"Design ops professionals are already futurists in disguise because they constantly manage risks and plan capacity."

April Reagan

Look, Think, Act: The Futures-Smart Design Organization

October 1, 2021

Dante Guintu

"Employees with exceptional onboarding are 2.6 times more likely to be extremely satisfied with their workplace."

Dante Guintu

How to Crush the Talent Crunch

September 8, 2022

Jaime Creixems

"Try to make your component hierarchy as flat as possible because tall, nested structures become hard to navigate."

Jaime Creixems

Best Practices when Creating and Maintaining a Design System

June 7, 2023

Billy Carlson

"Wireframes don’t add value to the product, customers don’t buy and install wireframes. The true value is the wireframing process."

Billy Carlson

Principles of Team Wireframing

October 2, 2023