7 Reasons Why Design Helps You Achieve Better Business Results

1) Consumers go for experiences. Brands need to design compelling experiences that engage and connect with tribes. A sound Design Strategy helps you to achieve this.
2) We live in the age of design. Consumers today appreciate the heart and soul behind intelligent, emotive designs. They are willing to part good money for good designs. Your margins increase.
3) Great design sustains both the brand and business. Good design allows a brand to achieve breakthrough growth and market share. Apple designed the iPhone and reaped in billions. One single model.
4) Design communicates your brand value with high impact.
5) Design thinking allows you to innovate outside your business constraints.
6) It allows you to differentiate and gain greater competitive edge over your competitors.
7) A design-centered culture inspires people to work for you. Talents are attracted to innovation.

Please leave your comments, if any. iPhone image taken from Apple website.

Creating Design Strategies for businesses

A brand is a manifestation of design experiences. So are the products, services and marketing communications such as packaging, corporate websites and advertisements. The glass of water with your company logo that you serve your clients is one of them too.

Following this line of thought, it is almost easy to conclude a Design Strategy sounds very relevant to any business. Yet, Design Strategy is relatively rare in businesses outside of the creative industry especially SMEs in Singapore. My guess is that this is a relative alien or new concept where the definition and benefits are not very clear. We need to know what Design does first.

Design in business is hard to define yet its manifestations abound. From the way the logo, brand, tag line and the experience it delivers, it is like a light bulb which produces light but you do not feel it is really there. Increasingly, design in businesses is getting a heads up as we know what it can achieve. Design grows a business and ensures its sustainability.

 
Razer which designs gaming mice and peripherals is a testament of good design and branding. Gaming and mice are both not new categories yet Razer managed to capture nearly half of gaming peripheral market share in a matter of years. This model above is one of the fastest wireless mouse in the market. By this design alone, it is remarkable.Razer understood the language of gaming tribes and dived in deep. Designing true experiences for gamers by gamers which is also its brand tag line.

The Strategy aspects talks about a plan or model which Design is road-mapped like a business strategy. Hence, Design Strategy is about utilizing design or design thinking to help businesses gain competitive advantage over competitors.

In the next 3 posts, I will investigate how Design Strategy can impact businesses with examples.

Please leave your comments, if any. Image taken from Razer website.

How do we become more innovative?

Aeron Chair from Herman Miller Inc.

Attract more Design Centers, less Business Centers. Design leading businesses.
Build a proper Art School. Uplift the notion of being a designer. We need design maestros.
Brand innovation as a culture rather than an approach. Creativity is never an algorithm.
Gather tribes to promote innovation, TED.
Put a designer in every business meeting.
Design thinking with T-shape employees.
Encourage Validity over Reliability. Take risks. Fail forward.
Advocate design consultancies.
Government to rally in.
Involve the SMEs.

Please leave your comments, if any.

Brand Success Factors in Singapore

1) Boldness and being remarkable. Take a leap of faith and be bold in their offerings. For example, I noticed nearly all local optical shops look and feel the same. Where is the differentation here? If customers cannot find the tipping point, only their shop appearances and price matters.

2) Design matters. Design their own line of products to innovate and differentiate themselves. Design gives a huge competitive edge in brands. More importantly, they need to harness design thinking to solve their business challenges.

3) Customer Service or User Experience. Singaporeans have a huge gap to fill in this aspect. No brand experience is complete if staff are not trained to deliver the critical human touch. Stop talking Singapore Airlines, be Singapore Airlines.

4) Building a Brand platform. We are talking about customer engagement here. Brands should think about serving customers beyond the store. How can brand engagement START after customers END their purchases with them. Start them thinking about the next 3 visits. As the marketing mantra goes 'It's always easier to retain than to get new customers'.

Please leave your comments if any. Image taken from Nanyang Optical Website.

Apply Opposing Thinking

One of the most intriguing and difficult task from the use of Design thinking is having opposing thoughts to reside in our mind at the same time. Diversity and Singularity. Hot and Cold. North and South. Pulling us in different directions, our minds are forced to work somewhat illogically but it is where innovation and creativity will occur.

When it comes to branding products and services, the same opposing thoughts can be applied to challenge and change status quo. Why? Why fix something when it is not broken? Rather the question is, why have we not challenged the status quo. Then go on to create Purple Cows like the Sound Sticks II speakers.

 

Some 5 years since it was first launched, it is still seen around today. All speakers of equivalent age were already dusted off display shelves. What is their magic? Harmon Kardon understood design thinking of having opposing thoughts. Sound Sticks only has circular shapes, air cushion stands, totally transparent as opposed to the conventional speakers which are square/rectangular, sharp edges, opaque or quite simply...boring.

Lets take the Bao which is a popular snack bun commonly found in Singapore and apply this form of thinking. Conventionally, the safe way to rebrand this snack would be just to create new fillings with fancy names, contemporary logo designs with new shopfront image. However, they still look the same as the $1.30 ones I got from AMK Blk 233 coffee shop. It is still boring and unremarkable. Does not make you stop and take a second look. Probably for a short while.

If we are to apply opposing thinking, the new Bao would look rather different. In its size, shape and the way it is delivered to customers. Mini baos served on a stick like satay, odd shaped ones, long ones filled with whole shrimps, filling on top of it, above it, underneath it etc. A new Bao concept.

Will the existing tribes or loyalists protest? Maybe but brands today are not here to please everyone. Being safe is risky. Being mediocre is mediocre at its best. It gets us nowhere.

Please give your comments, if any.

Apply Design Thinking to Branding

Design thinking and branding are two different yet related concepts. Both are ways to solve consumers’ needs and wants. Their synthesis could result in an impactful way of how we look at branding and achieve brand differentiation. Branding is a way to tell customers about products and services; what brands stand for and why do they matter to customers. It is ultimately about creating and managing perceived value.

Design thinking (IDEO) is an approach that involves exploring diversion thinking (think multiple ‘what ifs’), prototyping and storytelling before arriving at the solution. There are actually much more than this and I only extract the essentials for this post. Design thinking is a highly collaborative and possibilities-first way of solving problems. It is about bringing ideas and experiences to life through story telling. This approach is on the way to enhance business processes, health care and even social problems. I am a fan of design thinking and branding. So why not combine the two. I believe this synthesis will elevate innovative thinking in brands. Try Change by Design by Tim Brown on design thinking approach to find out more.


Here is my attempt to combine the two. 


One the star qualities of design thinking, is the visualisation of ideas or prototyping to bring out the essence of solutions proposed. For example, if IDEO needs to design a new surgical tool (Pic B), this is how a quick prototype (Pic A) can be assembled to get a feel about the shape and form factor. Primitive yet it tells a powerful story. Hold it and you know what this idea is about. Further discussions formed around this prototype are a lot more impactful.

Pic A: Prototyping the tool

 Pic B: Final product

Lets apply design thinking to branding. For example, a mock up corner of a new Food Republic theme, complete with empty stores but with applying authentic thematic design elements. All these to test out the new brand experience. The idea is to simulate and test the brand experience through immersion and participatory thinking. Clients can also take part in this exercise and go through their ‘consumer’s experience’ together with designers and brand strategists. Ideas are added and/or refined along the way in this prototyping environment. The end result is a brand experience that is closer to reality and what the customers will go through.

Design thinking has essentially allowed branding to be lot more experiential driven, exploring innovative solutions that could not be thought about on paper or on computer screens. Critically, experiences are assessed, discussed and gauged at the pre-launch brand design stage. 

Market research has taken a stab at such new product development (NPD) work through conducting surveys and focus groups. The missing ingredient I discovered has always been the lack of brand/idea immersion or letting the ideas play a role in consumer lives. Hence, the insights gathered tend to lack depth. A brilliant idea may lack the legroom to fully reach its full potential and risk getting buried rather quickly before it can see any light.

Additionally, diversion mindset (‘what ifs’ come first) from design thinking is also another powerful tool to elevate brand differentiation in the current fiercely competitive landscape. We want our brands to be Purple Cows. 

“A Purple Cow, though, that would really stand out. The essence of the Purple Cow -- the reason it would shine among a crowd of perfectly competent, even undeniably excellent cows -- is that it would be remarkable . Something remarkable is worth talking about, worth paying attention to.” –Seth Godin  

Purple Cows are remarkable and worth talking about. Design thinking can help you achieve that.

Please leave your comments, if any. 

Why don't Singaporeans like to stand in between MRT carriages?

MRT move millions of passengers daily. Cheap, reliable and fast. However, the train experience could be better improved to accommodate more passengers per trip and being less crowded. How?

Solution: Move more passengers in-between carriages.

The connecting segment between train carriages are great to accommodate more passengers. However, the experience is unstable and unwelcoming. All test subjects of an earthquake simulator would rather get off that thing double quick time. So would I! This segment of the train certainly feels like one. Small, unstable and awkward. Not a very pleasant experience at all.

Applying design-experience thinking can possibly deliver more pleasant. Heres how.

First, you need to make some fundamental changes. Having stability for the passenger gives a sense of security for them. Have handrails above their heads will definitely encourage more passengers to move in. Currently, there is none at all. Many are forced to touch the ceiling. I am one of them.

Second, that space is great for advertisers to put in their ads and messages. Passengers are 'locked in' that space, let them have something to look at or solve. Ever wash your hair in the salon and forced to look at the ceiling? If I am the owner, I will put my products up there! Same principle for patients in hospital being forced to stare at the ceiling when they are lying on the bed for treatment.

Third, implement a more stable platform for the passengers to stand on. Currently, not many can balance on the metal plates after a tiring day at work.