Every engagement starts here.
The Diagnostic is a structured process of opportunity discovery — a six-week deep dive into the relationship between your business strategy, your product portfolio, and how the market actually experiences what you build. It is the foundation on which every other engagement rests, whether that becomes an ongoing advisory relationship, a fractional leadership role, or an industrial design project.
Most companies that reach out already sense something is off. The products are competent but not distinctive. The brand says one thing and the portfolio says another. There is activity everywhere and clarity nowhere. Leadership can feel the gap between where they are and where they should be, but they cannot locate it precisely enough to act on it.
The Diagnostic locates it.
The process examines three things. First, market position — where your company sits relative to competitors, how the market perceives you versus how you perceive yourself, and whether your current trajectory is strengthening or eroding that position. Second, portfolio health — the coherence and quality of your product lineup, which products are doing strategic work and which are dead weight, and where the white space is that nobody has claimed. Third, organizational readiness — whether your team, your processes, and your decision-making structures are set up to execute on design at the level your strategy requires.
The output is not a slide deck full of recommendations you will never act on. It is an actionable brief — a clear map of where design can create the most value in your business, what is blocking that value today, and what the first moves should be. The brief is specific enough to act on and honest enough to be useful.
If we continue working together, the brief becomes the foundation. If not, you walk away with something you can move on independently. There is no obligation beyond the diagnostic itself.
The Diagnostic typically runs six weeks and involves direct access to leadership, product teams, and the work itself. I look at products, packaging, communications, retail environments, customer touchpoints — anything the market touches. I talk to the people making decisions and the people executing them. I look at what the company intends and compare it to what the customer actually experiences.
The gap between those two things is where every engagement begins.
If you are at a moment where clarity matters more than activity — a repositioning, a leadership transition, a portfolio that needs direction, a product launch that cannot afford to be ordinary — The Diagnostic is designed for exactly that moment.
— Todd Bracher
