I was having coffee with my good friend, Mark Tomaszewicz, Chief Experience Officer at Bulldog Drummond. Mark was sharing with me this idea that at the intersection of brand promise and brand experience is authenticity. Mark recently wrote a blog about it. What I like about this Venn diagram Mark shared in his blog is how … Read more
In today’s experience economy, successful companies don’t stand out because of their efficient production or their better engineering. It is their dedication to understanding their customers and their strong commitment to solving customers’ problems and servicing their needs. Experience Design focuses on the customer problems and needs. Applying human-centered design helps companies become more agile and flexible in their … Read more
Lately, I have been hearing a lot talk about design thinking and human-centered design. What are they? How are they different? Are they the same? It reminds me of the old debate around user experience and “usability. You may have missed that one… The usability folks felt that “usability” was a hard science with an … Read more
Mental models are psychological representations of real, hypothetical, or imaginary situations. They were first postulated in the late 1800’s by the American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce but it was the Scottish psychologist, Kenneth Craik, in 1943, who describes mental models as the mind constructs “small-scale models” of reality that it uses to anticipate events, to … Read more
Humans are irrational. We think we make rational decisions but science tells us we are incapable of making rational decisions. We cannot make a decision without emotions. It is the emotional part of our brain that informs our rational part to make a decision. And if the feeling is strong enough, we will justify our decisions to … Read more
My wife called from the garden to my daughter asking for the time. My daughter replied three fifty (3:50). I immediately thought “why didn’t she say ten to four?” Then I realized that she rarely looks at an analog clock – she probably doesn’t even know what “ten to four” means. Or how about “half … Read more
As was the case with the mobile revolution, and the web before that, machine learning is causing us to rethink, restructure, and reconsider what’s possible in virtually every experience we build. At Google, they call this Human-Centered Machine Learning – staying grounded in human needs while solving for them—in ways that are uniquely possible through … Read more
Empathy is the tool that we use to gain understanding. Understanding leads to insights. Insight is what informs experiments. Experimentation results in innovation. Empathy is the experience of understanding another person’s thoughts, feelings, and condition from their point of view, rather than from your own. You try to imagine yourself in their place in order to understand what … Read more
As previously discussed, Design Thinking means thinking like a designer. It is not so much a process but a mindset. There is a process that designers follow… in the simplest of terms, it is research, design and test. Designers do have a bias to designing. They want to create elegant solutions that make peoples’ lives … Read more
Design Thinking is a discipline – a mindset. A way of thinking – not a process. Thinking like a designer, Design Thinking applies the designer’s sensibility and methods to match people’s needs with what is technologically feasible and a viable business strategy. The process follows the designer’s methodology from vision to implementation. Starting with understanding … Read more
One question I consistently get is “Are all Designers like this?” This is usually in the context of the challenge to management them. The answer is, “only the good ones.” The Designer’s job is to make things better… better for the people that experience what they design. To do this well, they must be adept … Read more
A mission statement is a written declaration of an organization’s core purpose. Properly crafted mission statements: serve as filters to separate what is important from what is not clearly state which markets will be served and how communicate a sense of intended direction to the entire organization A mission is different from a vision – … Read more