As the most successful designers will surely tell you, good design starts with good research. In order to understand the nature of the finished product, one must first understand the nature of the problem and the various hindrances and limitations that could be encountered before arriving at the solution. Immersive strategy and research is crucial to the realization of an effective—and efficient—finished product. With that in mind, we asked for the submissions in our Strategy & Research category to consist of "projects or products that predominantly utilize design research and strategy." 

The Jury Captain for our Strategy & Research category this year is Malin Orebäck, Director of Design Strategy at Veryday. Joining her on the Strategy & Research jury team are Denis Weil, Interim Chief Innovation Officer of Sanergy, Paul Gardien, Vice President of Philips Design, and Torun Degnes, Management Consultant at Dedinu. "It's so important to have different perspectives on how to use design, and how design can be used to tackle so much bigger types of problems today than only 10 years ago," says Jury Captain Malin Orebäck. "Some of the entries show and point in that direction."

"I was so impressed by seeing design finally being used for so many different, challenging issues," continues Orebäck. "Trying to use a design approach to solve big issues like energy, internet freedom, healthcare solutions—there's a way of using design that's now happening on so many levels that we haven't really seen before, and that's something that I value a lot. That's also something that we put a lot of value in in our judging process."

"The overall quality was really high and also the quality of systems thinking and visualizing the whole system and all the elements of the system was really high both in the Student and in the Professional area," added Gardien.

Core77 would like to express our deepest gratitude to the entire Strategy & Research Jury Team for recognizing the following projects.