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Posts from Strategic Design

Design (of all varieties) is often underused or poorly used by many businesses. Those that do use design well stand out in the marketplace. Often the difference is in how well design is incorporated into a companies dna, how well it is managed, and how deeply it is integrated into a company’s strategy process, from formation through execution. For many of these firms design and designers drive innovation.

January 14

Molecular Thought Leader Contributes Essay to Book on Design Thinking

Welcome to the fascinating world of design thinking—a new and extremely effective tool that can be applied to the design of innovation, systems, business processes, and the design of businesses themselves. In a new book by Design Management Institute president Thomas Lockwood called Design Thinking, Molecular’s Brian Gillespie contributes his thoughts on the importance of design thinking in an essay titled “Service Design via the Global Web: Global Companies Serving Local Markets.”

Built on case study examples and work done for Molecular’s clients, Brian examines the challenges and opportunities companies face when launching a global Web presence. In the essay, Brian critiques a range of options, including gateways, scope, user research, uniform versus local presence, language, content development, design, site implementation, domains, and URLs.

If your organization is looking to cultivate innovation and build a solid brand foundation, Design Thinking is a must-read! But don’t take my word for it – check out some of these rave reviews:

“A much-needed book, which paves the way towards a better understanding of design thinking and its power. A fundamental reading for all those who like to grasp the multifaceted nature of design.”
—Roberto Verganti, author, Design Driven Innovation; professor of innovation, Poitecnico di Milano

“This collection of work from some of the design industry’s top thought leaders will further stimulate valuable discussion on how, through collaborative and innovative thinking, we can design a better future for all societies and business.”
—Stefano Marzano, president, Philips Design

Have a question for Brian or want to share your thoughts on design thinking? Be sure to leave your comments below!

posted to: Strategic Design | No Comments »

September 28

Visualizing Strategy

by Brian Gillespie

Connect the strategy to design dots!

Designers partnering in business strategy formation bring many fresh tools, techniques, and perspectives to the process. From methods for gathering information, forming insights, generating ideas, imagining concepts, validating concepts, and articulating a design vision that can make ideas real, design strategists (or strategic designers) bring unique value every step of the way.

One of the most powerful tools at the disposal of the strategy team is the collection of all of the strategic intelligence that realizes the strategy into a single visualization that quickly communicates the forces driving the strategy. From the digital business perspective visualizations often reflect strategies for single or multi-channel products, services, and experiences. The end result may be a completely new web site, a specific set of web-based services for a target market, or a multi-site strategy reflecting a diverse marketing campaign embracing social networks and other discrete touchpoints.

Visualizations can be all-encompassing, covering a full range of inputs that typically include over-arching corporate strategy, brand positioning, competitive positioning, and target consumers as well as outputs such as strategic drivers, principal ideas and concepts translated into prioritized products and services, and brand and design principles to apply when tackling implementation. On the other hand, visualizations can also focus on one contributor to the strategy information stream. A good example is the quantitative and qualitative research driving the establishment of market segmentation and creation of target customer personas.

Strategic design visualizations provide business design strategy a number of great benefits. Here are a few.
1. At a glance they provide a visual framework and a strategic context within which to house a quick view into the extensive research, insights, and findings driving the strategy. The report in word, the extensive presentation deck, the reams of research documentation are all still valid. Yet the visualization allows the viewer to quickly grasp the essence of the strategy and its principal highlights.
2. Visualizations are excellent ways to begin the socialization of strategy process across the organization.
3. Visualizations can be an excellent way to show how all departments within a company play a role in the execution of a strategy.
4. Visualizations can communicate the business logic driving design initiatives. In other words, one can draw a line through the visualization connecting the strategic dots that connect a piece of content, a new feature, a tone of voice, a certain aesthetic, to the core strategy.
5. Visualizations provide support objectivity when brainstorming ideas for new products and services.

Hey reader! If you have used great information design at your company to share your design and business strategies you may also have noticed the benefits. Why not share them here!?

posted to: Creative, Digital Strategy, Strategic Design | No Comments »

July 10

Design drives Innovation! Read all about it!

by Brian Gillespie

“Design as a Driver of User-centered Innovation”
“Using Design to Drive Innovation”
“Design Thinking for Innovation”
“Fostering Innovation Culture In An Unpredictable Economy”

Wow. You’d want to be crazy not to involve designers in your strategy for innovation! Right?! There is quite the clamor to replace, or at least partner, strategy with innovation, business thinking with design thinking, and technology R & D approaches to innovation with consumer-driven approaches. There are some great stories, making great headlines, about innovative new products and services, which are the result of a design-driven approach. Some are truly deliberate from the start; others had a happy ending and could rewrite history to fit the good story! And this is a good story. One that has lessons and insights for every business with faith in the need for innovation and a desire to continually improve their customer’s experience of their business, however they interact with the business. It also requires a will to lead their industry and leapfrog the competition, to regularly provide new customer value, and to inspire their internal teams to succeed.

So you are a business leader and you have seen the headlines and you have a few questions. So what does innovation by design mean? How does design drive innovation? Innovating what? Design thinking, huh? What do I need to do? Who can help me? How do I engage their help? Should I worry about ROI or just let the designers have at it? How can I afford to invest in innovation during a recession? How can designers help me? So many questions, so little time so today I will answer the final question…and only in part. Here are three ways that designers can help. There are more than three, but we’ll work with three today!

Designers can provide a framework within which to drive your innovation agenda. A simple and effective framework is an essential strategy and innovation process, revolving around three essential activities:

1. Gathering the business and consumer insights that will drive ideas
2. Generating as many ideas or business opportunities as possible,
3. Visualizing and prototyping the best ideas.

The icing on the cake is validation upon which to base your measurement strategy and return on design investment (RODI), which in these recessionary times is often an essential component of the decision to invest. Within this framework designers can draw from a wide range of proven tools and techniques to reveal ideas that can drive innovation. Experience audits, differentiation analysis, customer experience immersion, creative brainstorming, rapid prototyping, consumer participation, and strategy visualizations are but a few.

Designers can work with consumers, customers, and users to drive user-centered innovation. User-centered designers bring empathy to their investigations into opportunities for innovating product and service experiences. Insights revealed by first-hand immersion in the consumer experience are often the sparks that lead to great ideas. Building these ideas on a foundation of business and customer intelligence guarantees that your design strategy lines up perfectly in sync with your business strategy. That’s a good recipe for success in good times and tough times.

posted to: Digital Strategy, Experience Design, Industry Trends, Strategic Design | 1 Comment »

June 8

The Dynamic Duo of Persona and Consumer Journey

by Brian Gillespie

consumerjourneycollage

One of the principal strategic design tools employed by design teams today is the persona. The persona has come a long way in the past few years and is being broadly accepted by business as a critical component to defining a business strategy for new product and service innovation. The reasons for this acceptance are clear: the best personas are being created from insights developed through a balanced effort of qualitative and quantitative research. Marketing stakeholders are finding that personas, aligned with their market segmentation, really bring to life the characteristics of customers they have become very familiar with over the years, in a very real and dynamic way. In addition, the methods for socializing personas within an organization make them relevant such that they become a readily referred tool for a wide range of business planning activities.

However, the value and use of personas can increase considerably when paired with another empathic design tool…the user or consumer journey. At its highest level, a consumer journey outlines the various stages in the lifecycle of a consumer’s interaction with a brand, from initial awareness through to long-term retention. At a practical level marketers plot the potential channels through which they can acquire, convert, and retain customer’s interest in their products, services, and experiences, both analog and digital. It is becoming increasingly attractive and complex to orchestrate an overall, holistic experience of the brand that communicates in a clear, consistent, on-brand fashion. Marketers have a great number and mix of potential customer touchpoints at their disposal, beyond the direct contact with the product or service. Ancillary experiences through digital touchpoints, such as search engines, social media, digital signage, etc call for a broader understanding of the possible destinations for target markets.

Personas allow marketers to evaluate their options for interaction through the lens of key personas, representing target market segments. When personas are mapped to consumer journeys, digital marketers can be more deliberate about the communication strategies they roll out across channels. For design teams conducting customer research it is important to investigate the broader digital space that target users interact with. Are they bloggers…lurkers or leaders? Do they attend venues with digital signage? How do they use social networks? How are they influenced by others online? What web sites do they trust for actionable information? What web sites do they purchase products and services on? How do they use search engines? By investigating the answers to these questions designers can piece together insights into consumer’s current experience and how that can likely be stated as a prospective consumer journey over time and the key touchpoints that are likely to expose the consumer to a company’s product or service.

More and more digital designers are being enlisted to provide the insights and intelligence needed to strategize this open digital space. That’s good news for designers and good news for business!

posted to: Digital Marketing, Digital Strategy, Experience Design, Strategic Design | No Comments »

January 14

The Hole in the Whole, and other notes from Design Research 2008

by Heather Eddy

Way back in late September, I had the inspiring opportunity to attend the Design Research 2008 conference and workshops sponsored by the Illinois Institute of Technology: Institute of Design, held at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art. This conference, in its 7th year (formerly known as About, With & For) gathers design professionals and students across various disciplines to share insights on emergent and innovative research methodologies as well as to discuss organizational strategies for promoting the value and advancement of design research practices.

Both the challenge and the excitement of attending conferences is finding the kernels of wisdom that are not only going to shift your own processes and perspective, but when shared with enthusiasm, will also inspire others to get on board and take action themselves. Here are my kernels: (more…)

posted to: Experience Design, Strategic Design | No Comments »