The Near Field Communications (NFC) Community Circle of MIT’s Enterprise Forum met this week to discuss the current and potential impact of NFC on health and wellness. An interesting cross-section of experts in the field, from developers to marketers, debated the relative success of NFC to date. Though there was a general belief that NFC … Read more

May 13th’s Innovation Series from the MIT Enterprise Forum featured a panel discussion on the impact of big data on Healthcare in general and Pharma in particular. The panelists represented diverse backgrounds including academic research, large pharmaceuticals, and venture investment and proceeded to identify a series of challenges and opportunities manifest as a result of … Read more

The Design Management Institute’s European Conference wrapped up last Friday in Madrid. The conference theme focused on how design and innovation are contributing to new business models that are driving the renewal of our global economy and was attended by over 150 business, marketing, and design leaders from around the globe. (Twitter hashtag #dmimadrid). On … Read more

Once upon a time, shopping was simple. People drove to the store, viewed the selection at hand, decided what they wanted, and bought. Now, however, shoppers are confronted with an amazing array of channels through which they can research, browse, and purchase, engaging with both brands they know and those they don’t in increasingly complex … Read more

Over the course of every design practitioners career there are days when one comes across authors and their books that act as intellectual catalysts to spark new ways of thinking about how one approaches design. I’d like to introduce you to three such books on the subject of design management…all with one thing in common.Read more

The tangible success of design has propelled business schools around the world to innovate their MBA programs by introducing courses on design thinking as a valuable complement to traditional analytical business thinking. This has the potential to create friction between strategic designers and business strategists and begs the question: Will designers lose design strategy to … Read more

If you have ever struggled to explain why design thinking is important, why it is different than other forms of thinking, I can recommend reading “Designerly Ways of Thinking” by Nigel Cross. Since the 1970’s Professor Cross has investigated the evidence for design cognition as an essential aspect of human intelligence and whether design can … Read more

Over the years I have been asked to explain the value of personas. After all, they come in all shapes and sizes and can be expensive to create when you set out to do it right. When I say right, I mean supported by contextual research into the circumstances of the target audience followed by … Read more

The Continuum service design team ended our year with a series of short Service Safaris where we set out in small teams, pith helmets in hand, to immerse ourselves as customers in a range of what we perceived to be interesting service businesses. Apart from treating ourselves at the end of the year, the Safaris … Read more

In a recent blog I outlined a number of perspectives to keep in mind when designing for consistency across multiple channels with discrete devices and interfaces. With the iPad mini expected to enter the marketplace by the end of the year there have been some very interesting early observations about it’s place in the Apple … Read more

I remember a 2004 Fast Company article (“Every Move You Make,” by Linda Tischler) that discussed how marketing agencies were employing anthropologists and ethnographers to better understand what consumers do, rather than what they say they do. The story was told through the experience of Ogilvy & Mather’s ethnography group and their lead corporate ethnographer … Read more

One of the guiding design principles for creating a positive user experience has been the consideration of consistency as a critical attribute of the experience. Designers have evolved the principle within the context of the design of single touchpoint interfaces such as software applications or ecommerce Web sites. However, the challenges of designing integrated multi-touchpoint … Read more

In a recent blog in response to the excellent 2010 book entitled “Service Design Thinking” (Stickdorn/Schneider 2010) I noted that this was the first qualifier of design thinking, as least as I had witnessed at the time, that spoke to how design thinking might be applied to a specific design practice. I also noted that the sky was the limit as to how design practitioners could take design thinking tools and methods and apply them to their own area of practice. “Service Design Thinking” does an excellent job of just this mash-up. The key elements of an integrated service design and design thinking approach to the creation of new business service/product interactions can be outlined as follows:

• Empathy with customers
• Ideation / Co-creation
• Service Journey over time and space/place
• Service/Experience mapping
• Prototyping
• Concept validation / Co-creation
• Objective requirements
• Prioritization and road-mapping
There is a growing recognition amongst financial institutions around the world that differentiating the banking experience is a way to attract new and retain current customers. Many of these initiatives are the product of partnerships with leading design innovation agencies such as Ideo, Continuum, and others. Because of this, the new initiatives are benefitting from design thinking approaches that practice the best practices outlined above.Read more

Recent turmoil in the financial services industry has lead many consumers to question how they manage their financial lives, both now and for the long-term. The global recession has compounded the sense of unease consumers feel about entrusting financial services providers with managing and safeguarding the financial fruit of their labors. Trust is at an all-time low.
Trends emerging show consumers are looking for alternative ways to manage their finances, whether through new tools or completely new institutions. In addition, consumers are practicing a frugality that is inspired by a fear of loss of long-term hard-earned assets, leading to a more risk-averse society than has existed for the last decade or so. A recent article in the Boston Globe (10/16/2011 “Gen Y asks: ‘Why should I have faith in the stock market’”) reveals that Generation Y, those born between 1981 and 1995, are displaying a conservative investment profile more akin to someone in their late 50’s considering retirement than someone in their youth with more than 30 years of investing to level out their buy and hold approach.Read more