How to Engage
Design problems are wildly heterogenous and require a flexible approach in reaching a solution. I build a custom team and process for each engagement fit to the unique problem the client is facing.
Here are few of the core ways an engagement can be structured.
Consulting
Brand Design
Brands are complex mixes of message and behavior. To build a great one you need to start with the underlying purpose or soul of an organization and build up from there. Name, visual identity and behavior must rest on a strong authentic foundation.
Brand engagements usually begin with a series of co-creative workshops that unfold into design sprints. Depending on the scale of the project and the ways in which the brand must be expressed these engagements can run from four weeks to several months.
Future Scenario Design
Sometimes called foresight design, future scenario design is building plausible future worlds around a specific area of inquiry, usually on a five to ten year horizon. This is not prediction so much as a modelling of possibility.
Clients find this process useful as a strategic planning tool, to set vision, and to build innovation roadmaps. Engagements of this type are ususally structured as six to twelve week courses of study.
Product & Service Design
Bringing a new product or service into the world is about the journey from the abstract to the concrete. Product and service design engagements usually begin with an initial client workshop and then move through research, ideation, prototyping phases with the goal of arriving at production ready designs as quickly as possible. Depending on how developed the idea is at the beginning of the engagment this process can last anywhere from four weeks to a year. Longer engagements are usually broken into phases to keep things focused.
Production / Deployment
From product launches to D2C ecommerce sites, sometimes you just need to build and deploy. Production work from brand films to site builds is fast paced and concrete. Typically production engagements are built on the asumption that strategy is already locked and brand is well understood at the client level. Once briefed I build a team of specialists to execute the work at the highest possible level of craftsmanship. These engagments are scoped based on the brief and usually run from six to eight weeks.
Workshops
Sometimes you need to catalyze your internal team. I offer short educational workshops built around design and design thinking and collaborative design sprints with this in mind. These workshops are typically one day events and can be conducted in your offices or at an offsite location. They are ideal for four to ten participants, larger bespoke events can be designed on request.
Interdisciplinary Design Thinking
Design Thinking—Everyone talks about it, no one is sure what it is. This workshop demystifies the term and helps operationalize it for your team. Over the course of the day we will explore Design Thinking at a theoretical level, pick apart how it can be used in interdiscipliary settings, and finally condcut a short excercise to see it in action.
This workshop can be tailored for both audiences on both sides of the Creative/Management divide. It is a great way to catalyze design within your organization or bring unexpected ways of problem solving into your management practices.
Design for Product Managers
Why is design powerful and what can you use it for? This workshop is a one day exploration of design in theory and practice centered around the PM role and the way PMs interact with designers. It will help you communicate better with your designers and open up new possibilities for how you can use design resources.
We start with the widest possible view of design and its place in the world and then steadily, through the course of the day narrow the apperature to a specific exercise in UX practice. Attendees will leave having made a chair and a simple user flow. Lunch will be served.
Innovation Sprint
The innovation sprint is a one to three day workshop made up a of guided exercises aimed at tackling a specific client defined problem. The goal with this workshop is not just to uncover possible solutions but also to provide your team with tools that activate and empower their innovation practice on an ongoing basis. The workshop is tailored to the problem at hand and may include special facilitators like storyboard artists or coders.
Foresight Sprint
Foresight sprints aim to model plausible future worlds around a specific area of inquiry, usually on a five to ten year horizon. Structured as a one day workshop, the sprint begins with a series of guided exercises that take your team into the near future. We will develop and evaluate possible futures and map out paths to the more desirable ones.