Decide where to concentrate effort.

What gets left out weighs the same, and it takes enough evidence to defend that in front of the business.

Much of my design work has also been product work: what gets built, how it sustains itself, and what gets postponed. That is why, for me, strategy is the decisions that lay the foundations and sustain the design.

I work on four fronts: the bet, the scope, the influence, and the product I own. It is not the same to choose which platform to use, whether a home screen has to be frozen to reach launch, how to guide your design team, or the limits of the product you lead. Each front asks for different evidence.

I use the same criterion whether the role is design, product, or AI. What changes is who decides and how much authority there is, not the question. I have applied it in banking, travel, and enterprise, and also in products I have built myself, with very different teams and contexts.

Step 1: From business problem to brief

Before designing, I clarify which business decision sits behind the brief and what evidence supports it.

I have led analysis when several platforms covered the same flows and someone had to choose where to concentrate effort. I have gone into the field so architecture came from real insight, not assumptions about different audiences. And I have learned the limit on my own products: they can be good and the model valid, yet without financial backing the big distribution channels do not open.

Step 2: Scope is also a product decision

When the deadline is fixed, scope is what can move. I defend it with business arguments.

I have frozen additions to a home when the launch date could not move, and redirected the team to finish the committed redesign. Managing scope means knowing what sits on the critical revenue path and defending it. I have also advised against sections the organization could not feed: design criteria are framed in terms of the client’s capacity, not only product desire.

Step 3: Influence without deciding

Part of strategy is getting others to adopt the criterion. Sometimes with authority, sometimes without it.

I have spent months in weekly reviews with in-house teams without deciding myself: I guided what to prioritize and worded proposals so the team could own them. I have seen a talk turn into an expertise area, with internal training and criteria that reach into presales. Influence is leaving the criterion in place when you are no longer in the room.

Step 4: My own products as a decision lab

Building AI products end to end forces me to decide viability, cost, and limits, as well as interface.

In my own products I have deliberately kept systems from talking to each other: the bridge is me. That lab forces the same choices I later bring to a client brief: what to automate, what to leave blank, and where human judgment cannot be delegated.

Three decisions

In each one, the criterion played out in a different place: platform, scope, and own product.

One platform to unify on

Santander private banking

The bank kept several active platforms covering the same flows. I explicitly recommended which one should carry all private banking effort.

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Freeze to arrive

PortAventura

With a seasonal launch that could not move, I froze additions to the home and redirected the team to finish the committed redesign.

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The bridge is a person

CV Generator + Dashboard

Two systems for one search: one audits the offer and drafts the CV, the other follows the application. They never call each other. The bridge is me, on purpose.

View case

One platform to unify on

Freeze to arrive

The bridge is a person

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