Hi Guys
Yesterday, I attended a workshop organized by Elephantversity & Continuum(U.S.A) on Product Innovation Process. Conducted by Daniel Buchner (V.P of innovation & design) & Tom Burchard (Vice President of Brand Experience) of Continuum Inc U.S.A,
The workshop provided some interesting things to be kept in mind while innovating. After a brief talk on the difference between business thinking & design thinking,
Participants( while working in teams) were given various activities primarily focused on User Experience, Brand attributes & User Persona through which they had to create a non working rough prototype of a mobile phone.
The main thing that I picked from the workshop was the focus on all three parameters which had to be kept in mind while developing a mobile phone - User Experience, Brand Attributes & Persona. All of these three parameters are of paramount importance while creating a new product or innovating with an existing one. Focus on all of these together can decide whether you will be a leader or follower. Eg: Think of Apple........the company pays great focus on User experience as to what experience its users have at both purchase & post purchase process and therefore even the packs are designed so as per experience to be provided, the company also pays very high importance to integrating its Brand elements in every product & service that it makes & the company knows who its target customers are, what they are like, what are their problems and what solutions it should provide them.
Any eg from India, how about Croma Electronics Store. Great User Experience- One can actually touch & operate the product himself (what we Indians like to do before buying), Brand attributes (Helpful) –that’s why I think they have their tagline as WE HELP YOU BUY and designed as per its user persona which are upper middle class who are not that much concerned about price but want products as per their needs- so the positioning is not as a discount store but as a solution store- that’s why WE HELP YOU BUY.
While creating new service or product it is very important to check whether certain level of thought has gone behind these principles & how they are integrated.
Overall a good day of learning.
In a discussion with Dan Buchner(V.P of innovation & design, Continuum), I happen to get some views about Innovation, design thinking, industries where innovation is easy, barriers to innovate in large organisation, how to eliminate them and during the current period of economic downturn whether the focus on Innovation should be less by companies or not.
Check them out.
Thanks
Neeraj
