With design, military officers seek to fundamentally shift their perspective over an issue for transitioning to a more holistic perspective opening up new pathways to address this issue. Design implies both sense-making over an unknown, complex or ambiguous issue as well as the art and science of novelty for addressing this issue. This research is particularly important as design is applied by military officers including some in senior leadership positions. Design is shaping the management of violence in the planning of operations and there is a lack of literature documenting its transformational impacts across NATO members and partners and in the countries officers intervene. This project sought to fill this gap by developing a sociologically informed analysis of design in four selected case studies: Danish, Swedish, Polish and French Armed Forces. This approach, and the knowledge generated from it, are contributing to guidance for better design practices including in professional military education through dissemination and teaching. In conclusion, the research identified key conditions making designerly ways of thinking possible such as crisis contexts, a lack of ressources and open-mindedness to diverse views to name a few. The research observed a strong counter-intuitive relationship between armed forces that are more doctrine-informed such as Swedish Armed Forces and those that are less doctrine informed such as Danish Armed Forces. The most doctrine-informed organisations are generally more receptive to design since their organization tend to follow doctrinal trends in the United States including the development of design doctrine since the mid-2000s. However, the less doctrine-informed organisations tend to have a greater range of individual using design with an educational background often from the United Sates.
