When we changed our name from BBK Studio to People Design, it was an idea – more of a spark than a revolution. We chose a name that describes who we are becoming and who we aspire to be.
A little over a year later, I’m happy to announce that we continue to grow and fit into these new clothes. As I write this, we’re up to our eyeballs redesigning our firm. This year we roll out an evolved position, new service offerings, web offerings, and tools.
Our own medicine
A lot of our consulting work centers on strategic positioning, but it’s a lot easier to prescribe than to take one’s own medicine. We want to live up to our name. So we’ve spent some quality time thinking through how we add value to our clients’ businesses. Where the need is, and how our offer is different and better.
Our deeper exploration on experience design has led us to three areas of focus, a process for customer experience innovation that can be described in three movements: Empathy, Strategy, and Realization.
On one hand, this process is the way we’ve been doing for the last five years or so. On the other, five years of learning, research, and reflection refine our model, language, and understanding. We’re a learning company, and this is just one point in the evolution of ideas. A significant one.
Empathy
What does empathy have to do with business innovation? A lot, actually.
Most organizations, as they grow, become more and more separated from their customers’ experiences. If a business doesn’t understand its customers – really understand its customers – how can that business deliver an experience that will keep customers coming back? We believe — and our experience demonstrates — the value of principles that Larry Keeley, Jeremey Alexis and others have been championing for some time now.
A direct, visceral understanding of the customer experience – empathy – is critical for customer experience innovation.
Our Empathic Research methods are maturing to better help our clients learn about the context of their customers’ lives. What are your customers thinking, feeling, and doing as they approach decisions about your products and services? What is her mindset? What are his feelings? What are their beliefs? How inviting or intimidating is their decision, or your purchasing environment?
Empathic insights from this kind of research fuel the world’s most innovative experiences – products and services that disrupt their markets. We put Empathy to work to craft compelling experiences that help and delight people and earn customer loyalty.
Strategy
Most businesses would agree that a great customer experience is key. But how many create a plan for having a great experience? Too few.
Firms that aim to lead must develop strategies for engaging the customer in ways that are empathetic to their needs, and bring meaningful value. Crowded markets and shifting demographics will demand customer experience innovation is a key competitive differentiator.
Consider: What is your customer’s Ideal Future Experience? And how will you provide it? What are the most critical gaps you must close in your customer’s experience? How much of your budget should you invest in each stage of your customer’s life with your product or service? What are the Experience Touchpoints in the lifecycle of your ideal customer experience? You will need a strategy that synthesizes insights into your customers’ lives with your business goals.
We work with our clients to design, test, and plan product and service experiences that are engaging and memorable, that satisfy real customer needs, yield the behaviors you want, and build loyal relationships.
Realization
How many well formed plans wither and fail because they aren’t executed with precision, care, and craft? Too many.
Design development, management, and execution require training, experience, attention to detail. Today’s customer experiences are built by a wide diversity of creative talents in a world of rapidly evolving new media.
We’re lucky to have a talented group. Our designers regularly win international design awards. Our production partners are the best in the world. But we never take our skills or products for granted. We work hard to stay on top of the latest and best thinking in our fields of interaction design, graphic design, and environmental design.
Studying our customers’ customers’ real needs – the people for whom we’re designing – results in work that is always inventive. We find fresh ways to deliver carefully crafted messages. We test our work, measure our results, and manage your design programs to be sure you are delivering on plan.
People Design 2.0
Did I actually type People Design 2.0? Yipes! It’s a cliché, I know. But clichés work, of course. That is why they exist. You might consider our firm as having entered it’s second release (and second decade) upon our name change. It did, but if that was the first release of People Design, we’re gearing up for the fully featured version. Did I just strangle that metaphor?
We’re excited about what the next year will bring, and what we will bring to our clients. Our new website will launch before long. It will describe our new services, embody new thinking, and be a better expression of who are are today. Our experience pays dividends in the form of better processes, tools, and ultimately a stronger team. Its adds up to our adding even more value to our clients’ offerings. We’re the same firm, only better.
We help companies conceive and produce innovative customer experiences. We work with leaders to gain customer insights, discover fresh approaches to their markets, and make this vision real.
Interested? Stay tuned.
