Design management of interaction design

Traditional product and service industries have developed design management systems over a long period of time (Felber, 1984; Sebastian, 2005). Typically these assume a product development process where (re)production is separate from design. For the software and system development industries, where digital interaction design is the predominant design discipline (Lowgren & Stolterman, 2005) few studies have been done on design management. Studies concerning design management issues for digital interaction design have identified problems for interaction designers to find a stronghold in organizations (Carlshamre & Rantzer, 2000), or characteristics of the software development context that is distinct for management of interaction design (Holmlid, 2006). As their point of departure these studies have taken organizations that develop ITsystems as if they were products. As a contrast, in this paper we expand the current literature by analyzing two studies of design management in an organization that uses software as part of their business process. We claim that for such organizations, design management of digital interaction design primarily is a concern for the operating core and the strategic apex, thus driving and directing the efforts made by support staff and technostructure.