Elements of a Project Brief

(part of creating a Design Strategy. Saffer D, 2009 Designing for Interaction, Chapter 3)
 
Design Strategy — Focus, vision, customer value and scope

Consider Corporate strategy, Operational strategy and Business strategy.

3 generic business strategies— Cost leadership strategy, Focus strategy, Differentiation strategy.

The Long Wow—Achieving long term customer loyalty systematically impressing your customers again and again.

Framing the problem/situation—make it simple and narrow

Problem Set—Naming the things to which designers will attend and frame the context in which designers will attend to them.

Find the problem > Frame the problem > Apply skills

Gather information — Views from clients, stakeholders, colleagues, teammates and others who may have thought about the situation are essential.

Information may be gathered through— Traditional research, Design brief and stakeholder interviews.

What is your design strategy in 30 words?
ENHANCE TOURISTS TRAVELING EXPERIENCE IN SEOUL THROUGH BETTER EXPERIENCE TAKING SUBWAY TRANSPORTATION.

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Elements of Design Brief
> Layout reasons for employing the designer
> The starting point to gather information
> Brand considerations, Technical contratins, expected timetline and deliverables, detailed goals of the project and contact information of major stakeholders
> Designer generated as a result of stakeholder interviews, traditional research, and competitive analysis.
> Capturing and communicating what was learned during the initial information gathering period.
> Brief could raise questions as it solves.
> Pricing
> Visualization and Visioning

Creating Design Strategies

KAMILALI.COM

Creative Design strategy
Create a successful category
Make the category 1st
If category is successful, brand will be successful

Positioning
Perception, not product
Launch the brand in the consumer's mind, not market place
Being 1st in the mind, being 1st is hard to forget

Differentiation


Finding Niche Market


Make the process visible—creating a new experience

Talking About Design Strategy

Design strategy takes place at the beginning of the design process. It is a combination of defining a vision for the end state of a project...

It provides a framework for designers to justify the project to the business.


"Many designers now research and plan for the larger context of people's lives when creating interactions" — Brandon Schauer

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Design strategy means finding opportunities.

Every solution must lead to aiding a need.

Understanding the Importance of Life Context

Existing culture,  products and innovations and the ways of living are key factors that should be considered during the process of creating or enhancing experiences. This includes people's behavoir, pattern of living and working, shared cultures, concerns and beliefs. This helps shape the context of the user to gain a clear understanding of the overall approach.

"It is itself a world of experience that in turns shapes other experiences and can help us understand the changing expectations people have of the experiences provided by goods and services."
— Press, M & Copper R, 2008, The Design Experience, p 74

Importance of Experience design

Learning keypoints from Tedde Van Gelderen
 

Human interactions (emotions) provides a positive enhancement/impact. Experiences always contain a sensory component—See, smell, touch, taste.

Experience design follows the principles of User-centered Design.

Holistic view on an audience interacting with their surroundings (fixing where "the ball was dropped")
Tangible and intangible aspects of a product, software, service or event.
instead of solving problems in an isolated manner.

Social aspect is new characteristic in developing experiences. Growing importance to experiences.

Experience is what your audience lives through in the end, it is what you deliver, give, provide or create. It's more than missions, values, visions etc.

Why now?
Expectations rises. Customer loyalty, user orgnisation efficiencies.
Excellent experiences empower humans

Business: Make money
Human: 4 pleasures
Content: Managing information
Technology:  Social media provides user generated content providing data

Internal process
Divergening and Converging of
Strategy > Research >  Design > Testing

External process
Experience Life Cycle

Awareness > Exploration > Compare > Purchase > Out of Box > Setup > Operate > Maintain > Upgrade > Recycle

Maintaining a relationship after a product/service is sold to a customer

Audience & Organization View
Important to think about the audience's perspective (right area) when considering to push a brand experience (left area).

Ultimately finding solutions to 'de-risk' customer's investment



Video links:
The Importance of Experience Design, Keynote: Tedde Van Gelderen - part 1
The Importance of Experience Design, Keynote: Tedde Van Gelderen - part 2
The Importance of Experience Design, Keynote: Tedde Van Gelderen - part 3 
The Importance of Experience Design, Keynote: Tedde Van Gelderen - part 4  

Experience Design — Personal reflection

With the vast growing numbers of creatives emerging through the recent years, the landscape for designers today goes beyond what was previously expected of the roles of a regular designer. Playing a large role in this change is the advent of technology. Tasks which were either too expensive or too time consuming to produce were now made possible through several clicks of a button i.e. Adobe CS5's content aware fill in Photoshop is one example.

I believe every designer possesses a unique quality that sets him or her apart from the other. The various disciplines of design—fashion, product, architecture, graphic etc. helps to segment these roles but it is our life's (or professional) experiences that gives us this edge. David Oglivy (1911-1999) is a classic example, using his background as a cooking stove salesman and applying the principles of salesmanship to advertising.

As for myself, the past 5 years have gone by so quickly that I have yet to rest and reflect on the experiences studying and working in 4 different countries over 5 years.

< 2009 Singapore
> 2010 Phnom Penh,Cambodia
> 2011 Melbourne, Australia
> 2012 Seoul, South Korea

Seeing how different individuals go about their livelihood in their cultures (life contexts) has provided some good insight as to what I would like to explore as a designer; certainly the people I have met and worked with played a large influence. And recently being exposed to different fields of designs — Service design, Universal design etc, has given me a more solid platform (frameworks and approaches) to steer me towards a more sound idea.

More competition + More choice + More cash = More complexity



"Life is a process of accumulation, the gradual building up of character, a slow unfoldment. Experience, after all, is the storing up of knowledge. Knowledge is essential for all understanding." — Jiddu Krishnamurtic

Rebranding?

Samsung is one of the largest electronics device manufacturers in the world today. In 1993, they adopted a new corporate identity which we are all accustomed to. In some way we are able to identify the brand somewhere amongst our daily lives, for me it's the Chelsea Football Club in UK.


The beginning of Samsung  
Samsung was founded in 1938 as a small trading company that made noodles and sold dried seafood. The name Samsung (삼성/三星), which means “three stars”, was chosen by the founder Lee Byung-chull who wanted his company to become big, powerful and everlasting like stars in the sky. 
 
<source: http://www.samsungvillage.com/blog/2011/03/did-you-know-three-stars-on-noodles.html>
 
For the sake of this post, my intentions are to look at the reasoning behind rebranding (or better known as changing your corporate identity (CI) before the term commercial term 'branding' was coined).

From a visual perspective, the reason is clear – the CI is outdated, and it needs a new look. But who actually determines whether a logo is outdated? It's not the design studios or leading brand agencies like FutureBrand or Landor...the answer is the people.

Ultimately, every logo today has become a commercial commodity. Unlike medieval times where the logo would be in the form of an emblem or crest to symbolize ones alliance (in other words ones identity). Should these people still be around, I would have good reason to believe that their emblems would be given some form of facelift.

The reason is simply the shift of of consumer attitudes that has evolved and shaped how we perceive brands. In the past (say 2000 years ago), we would hardly be given a choice between purchasing a table for our home. Our options were limited to simply what the carpenter would build in the neighborhood we live in. Now fast-forward 2 millenniums later, industrialization and globalization has presented us with options to choose a table from thousands of over designs from anywhere in the world.

Leading from the reason above, businesses simply had to adopt to this evolution to remain relevant to invoke some form of competitive edge. And this is the present society that we live in today.

Bearing those thoughts in mind, this would better rationalize a fair reason as to why Samsung had opted to change their corporate identity (apart from the reason that they were celebrating their 55th anniversary).


Fun fact: The first Samsung product sold under the company logo was Noodles.

The Three Lenses of Human Centered Design

The HCD process examines starts with the people being designed for, examining thier needs, dreams, and behaviors. The process steps through the following 'lenses':

1. Desirability - What do people desire?
   eg. Rocket pants, space cars, unicorns, and sporks. To be desired something dosen't necessarily have to be feasible, which brings us to...
2. Feasibility - What is technically and organizationally feasible?
   And now we have to cross rocket pants, space cars, and unicorns off the list, leaving us to examinine the viability of sporks.
3. Viability - What can be financially viable?
   So, I am assuming the spork business is pretty competative and covered by many interenational patents and we're back to the drawing board.

In summation:

<source: IDEO HCD Toolkit>

Four Pleasures

In the 2nd chapter, there is a framework in Designing Pleasurable Products (Jordan, W 2003) that provides a holistic approach to consider when designing a pleasurable product.

1. Physiological Pleasure 
2. Psychological Pleasure
3. Sociological Pleasure
4. Ideological Pleasure

The example of the Calvin Klein underwear will be used to facilitate a summarized explanation:

Physiological Pleasure (physical aspects)

The comfort, fit and quality of a well made underwear are senses that bring satisfaction

Psychological Pleasure (emotional aspect)
The aspect where one will use the product and feel like a ripped Hollywood hunk (all hail Mark Walhberg) when donning the underwear. The underwear is a great example here as it is something felt on the inside. With the advent of brain-washing advertising, underwear these days go beyond being just an undergarment and have evolved into becoming a fashion statement or a symbol of masculinity.

Also the pleasure of purchasing an expensive (branded) product gives the user a sense of making the right decision. Cognitive dissonance—a Phenomenon of searching for evidence that confirms what a person wishes to believe.  

Sociological Pleasure (relationship aspect)
How does it reflect on a person that 'likes' the CK Underwear page on Facebook? Here one would fine pleasure in a sense that he is cultured and trendy, one whom does not just purchase non-labelled underwear (or fashion accessory) for it's pure function or usability benefits.

Ideological Pleasure (values aspect) 
One could have bought branded underwear for possibly the following reasons: 
— CK does not embody slavery in that manufacturing process which appeals to me (maybe?)
— I spend the money on expensive products so my country's economy may prosper
— CK only chooses the types of models I like and that's how sexy models should be


The deliberate note on last point emphasizes that ideology is heavily dependent on the individual. Basically ideology configures ones personal identity and behavior towards life.