Boldo | Enterprise Design

The word design is one of the most misused in contemporary language.
Often reduced to aesthetics or surface, it evokes the beauty of an object or the ergonomics of an interface.

Yet its scope is far broader. At its core, design is a culture of conception, a way of observing, understanding, and transforming complex systems.

It is a discipline that connects the human, the technical, and the organisational worlds to bring coherence and meaning to the whole.

It’s within this perspective that EDGY, the open-source visual language developed by Intersection Group, comes into play.
EDGY invites us to think of the enterprise itself as a design object : a living organism where strategy, experience, and architecture are no longer silos, but interdependent dimensions of one system.

In other words, it’s no longer just about designing products or services, but about designing the organisation itself: its identity, its interactions, and its structures.

Beyond aesthetics : the broader meaning of design

As defined by CY Design School, “Design is a culture and a strategic problem-solving method that fosters innovation, value creation and connection, improving quality of life for all through innovative products, systems, signs, spaces, interfaces, services and experiences.”

This reminds us of something essential: design is not decorative art. It doesn’t aim to make things beautiful, but to make them meaningful.

Design is a discipline for solving complex, multi-dimensional problems, at the crossroads of technology, human sciences, and creativity. The designer acts as a conductor of complexity, combining user insight, technical feasibility, and human impact to create coherent, sustainable solutions.

It is a systemic method of innovation, rooted in multidisciplinarity, bridging imagination and responsibility. Far from appearances, design means thinking in relationships: between people, tools, and structures.

EDGY, a language for designing the enterprise

To think of an enterprise as a design object is to change scale.
We’re no longer talking about products or services, but about the organisation as a whole, what it believes in, what it brings to life, and what makes it possible.

Like any complex system, it is composed of several interdependent layers that constantly interact:

EDGY, a Design Language

Identity

“The values and beliefs enterprises exhibit through their messages and actions.”

Identity is what gives an organisation its soul, its purpose, values, story, culture, and the way it acts in the world. It is not limited to brand messaging, but to a lived coherence: the alignment between what an organisation says, does, and embodies.

When identity is clear, it inspires behaviours, shapes culture, and guides decisions. When it fragments, the entire organisation loses its direction : contradictions appear, silos form, alignment fades. Designing identity means giving the organisation a shared intention.

EDGY breaks it down into elements such as brand, story, content, and purpose, building blocks that express what the organisation believes in and why it acts.

Experience

“The impact through interactions the enterprise has on people and their lives.”

Experience is the real impact an organisation has on people’s lives, through everything they perceive: its products, services, spaces, employees, interfaces, and messages.
It is through these concrete interactions that individuals evaluate the organisation’s promise, not by its org charts, but by how it simplifies, moves, or disappoints them.

EDGY explores this dimension through key notions such as tasks people aim to accomplish, their journeys, the channels they use, and the products that materialise the link between promise and reality.
These elements help conceive experience as a system, not as a series of isolated touchpoints. A seamless experience reveals coherence; a fragmented one exposes misalignment between intention and execution.

Architecture

“The structures needed to make an enterprise operate and connect to the ecosystem.”

Beneath every experience and every identity lies an architecture, the set of human, technical, and organisational structures that keep the enterprise running. It connects people (organisations), capabilities, processes, and assets required to deliver products and services.

But an enterprise is not a machine that can be dismantled and rebuilt at will. Part of its architecture is deterministic (what can be designed, modelled, planned), while another part is emergent (what arises from behaviours, interactions, and culture).
The art of architecture lies in designing what can be designed while accompanying what emerges. It is a discipline of connection, linking ambition (identity) with operational reality (experience), and transforming vision into structures capable of realising it.

When IT meets design

Enterprise Architecture was born in the 1980s within the IT world. At IBM, John Zachman sought to document and structure information systems for consistency. Frameworks like TOGAF later extended this logic, describing, standardising, and aligning technical architectures with business needs.

It was a foundational approach, but one often seen as technical and top-down, focused on compliance and control. As technology spread through every layer of the enterprise, the architect’s role evolved, from managing systems of information to shaping systems of organisation.

The architect has become a mediator between intent and execution, between leadership and teams, between processes and experiences. Viewed through this lens, architecture and design naturally converge: both aim to create meaning, coherence, and shared understanding.

Mapping as a shared language

This is where EDGY finds a natural echo. It invites us to see architecture not as a deliverable, but as a common language, a way to visualise dependencies, connect disciplines, and build shared understanding.

The architect becomes a facilitator of meaning, enabling a collaborative design of the enterprise. The map is no longer the end, but the conversation support that aligns perspectives around a common vision.

From governance to storytelling

Adopting a design approach also means recognising that architecture tells a story, the story of an organisation seeking to understand itself in order to act better.
A clear architecture doesn’t impose; it enlightens. It expresses a collective intention, revealing how people, technologies, and processes connect to create purpose. It becomes a strategic storytelling tool, at the intersection of meaning and structure.

Conclusion

What EDGY offers is not another framework, but a shift in perspective. It invites us to look at the enterprise not as a stack of systems, but as a living organism, composed of structures, interactions, and intentions.

A vision that resonates deeply with our approach at Boldo: to turn architecture and modelling into tools for storytelling, ways to reveal how an organisation functions, evolves, and connects its moving parts into a coherent whole.

Because a clear architecture doesn’t just document it creates understanding, builds alignment, and drives collective action. By making complexity readable and shareable, transformation becomes understood, adopted, and sustainable.