Molecular Voices » Strategic Design

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.

November 10

Service design and/or Experience design?

Service Design Management was the theme at the 5th Design Management Forum in Cologne this past weekend. The title to the conference was “Creating Experience” which got some of us in attendance discussing the difference between service design and experience design.
In my own investigations before the conference I noticed that descriptions of experience design tended to suggest that experience design was actually the super-design practice, responsible for designing products, processes, services, events, and environments utilizing such diverse disciplines as graphic design, interior design, architecture, digital design, theater, exhibit design, theme-park design, game design, environmental design, and communications. I’d like to meet that designer! You name it, they do it!
Since I was attending a conference on design management I could not help thinking that experience design ought possibly be instead considered experience design management. As a design management practice, and not a design practice, it is responsible for orchestrating the distinct design services into creating the integrated whole experience. All the original design practices can continue to call themselves graphic designers, architects, etc., who not only do what they typically do but also at times contribute to a larger entity, the experience, in collaboration with many other design practices. Now as we know bringing different design practices together to work towards a single end is not unlike a very ancient craft…cat-herding! However, ultimately the greatest skill of the designer who also wants to be regarded as an experience designer may be their ability to collaborate.
Parting musings…my pre-conference investigations had experience designers designing services and service designers designing experiences. Is this possible?
It was also suggested that experience design is different than service design because xd is focused on the touch-point itself, the front-line of the experience, whereas service design also considers not just that but also the day-to-day processes that make the service work. That it goes deeper into the organization…and honestly as soon as you start doing that, are we back to being design managers again?

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

September 18

Want to Measure ROI? Design it Into Your Digital Assets!

by Chet Geschickter

Measuring Digital ROI with Website Data; The Link Between Strategy and Design
Measuring the business benefit of a non-eCommerce website can be quite challenging. Basic “out of the box” metrics like unique visitors, visited pages, site visit duration and number of leads provide useful top-line data, but they don’t generate insights into how well a website is performing against strategic objectives. For several years, the interactive marketing industry has been hitching its collective hopes on “engagement” as the ROI savior of Internet marketing measurement. The concept elicits reactions ranging from evangelism to skepticism. A recent whitepaper by Web Analytics Demystified called Measuring the Immeasurable: Visitor Engagement goes to great lengths to provide an in-depth explanation of how to create general top-line measures of engagement, so I won’t belabor the concept further. Instead, let’s shift the focus to key performance indicators for strategy execution.

A solid digital strategy identifies the ways the digital channel can be used to achieve broader strategic business objectives and outlines the criteria for measuring success. In recent years, the interactive industry has placed much of its design focus on user centric design. However, end user experience is not the only consideration that needs to be taken into account. Detailed design decisions have a big impact on what metrics can be collected. You need to design the site to produce the right metrics, a point that is lost on many interactive designers and design agencies. A good design team will not proceed without a detailed understanding of business objectives. An effective design team will design ROI measurement into a site. Here are some typical business objectives, their design implications and some measurement recommendations for tracking and optimizing strategy execution.
(more…)

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

July 30

Disposable Digital: Strategic Design and New Technologies

by Patrick Liddy

If you’re looking for a good example of a company leveraging their strategic partnerships to develop both a new technology and a marketing concept in order to leapfrog their competitors, check out the October issue of Esquire magazine at your favorite newsstand in September. It should be easy to find. It will be the one flashing “The 21st Century Begins Now” as images scroll across its cover. To help celebrate its 75th anniversary, Esquire contracted with E Ink Corporation to develop a version of its flexible display technology (used in the Sony Reader and Amazon Kindle) that can be used as an electronic magazine cover.

Being able to utilize the digital display technology in a magazine required overcoming two major obstacles: cost and power. To subsidize the cost, Esquire partnered with Ford Motor Company to feature the Flex Crossover vehicle on the inside cover, using the same E Ink technology. The problem of providing a battery to run the display for 90 days, yet small enough to be distributed in a magazine, was solved through a six-figure investment from the Hearst Corporation, which owns Esquire and is a major shareholder in E Ink.

So, what’s the significance of this new combination of technology and traditional media? Either Hearst has come up with the latest equivalent of the musical greeting card, or they’ve looked far enough into the future to see the value of driving a technological innovation, rather than waiting for it to evolve on its own. While the initial use of E Ink’s digital paper technology is limited and could be viewed as just a gimmick, it does reveal some of the potential of digital printing. Plus, Esquire has exclusive use of the technology through 2009.

The big question is: what is this technology’s ultimate capability? Can content be dynamically updated? Can it be interactive? Is this the portable digital platform that the traditional publishing industry has been looking for? Strategically, Hearst has positioned itself in both the technology and publishing spaces to be able to capitalize on the advantages this technology provides over its competitors.

Personally, I’ll be picking up two copies: one to save in my collection of new media innovations and the other to tear apart and see what makes it tick.
For additional information about this story, see:

“News Flash From the Cover of Esquire: Paper Magazines Can Be High Tech, Too” – New York Times

“Esquire Becomes First Magazine to Merge Digital Technology with Printed Pages” – Ford Motor Company

posted to: Strategic Design | 1 Comment »

June 25

Getting all “Googley-Eyed”…

by Heather Eddy

Without a doubt, we often look to the magical world of Google as a benchmark from which to evaluate and even validate exceptional user experiences. How do they do it, we wonder? Well, even if this manifesto of sorts on their core design principles (it’s part of their corporate information) has already crossed your virtual path, it would serve you well to go back for another look. For inspiration, as well as food for thought, consider if and how these principles manifest in your own “digital daily life” of Google interactions. What are the principles on which your design philosophy is built?

1. Focus on people – their lives, their work, their dreams.
2. Every millisecond counts.
3. Simplicity is powerful.
4. Engage beginners and attract experts.
5. Dare to innovate.
6. Design for the world.
7. Plan for today’s and tomorrow’s business.
8. Delight the eye without distracting the mind.
9. Be worthy of people’s trust.
10. Add a human touch.

Read the more detailed descriptions at: http://www.google.com/intl/en/corporate/ux.html

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

June 20

You Have More Than One Audience

by Eric Karofsky

Over the past few months I’ve noticed a disturbing trend, sites are becoming less usable — only appealing to a specific segment of their audience. Marketers are so consumed with creating “brand” and “experience” that they risk creating a frustrating experience for those not considered. While tools such as Flash and Silverlight allow designers and marketers a seemingly unrestricted canvas, unfortunately usability often becomes a secondary concern. (more…)

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