[MUSIC] 0:00 Is everybody familiar with this campaign, or image? 0:04 No? 0:08 Awesome, okay. 0:08 So about six years ago IBM launched a new kind of corporate strategic initiative 0:10 called Smarter Planet, and this is some of the work that came out of that. 0:15 And the premise was that IBM wanted to kinda harness the intelligence of 0:20 the world, or kind of connected data within, companies. 0:25 And it resulted in a pretty big boost, I think, to IBM's, kind of, 0:29 brand position or image. 0:33 So, kind of long been known for 0:35 having kind of a stale kind of communication strategy, big blue. 0:39 This kind of campaign, this is kind of very attention-grabbing, and is useful. 0:43 Nice big, bold colors. 0:47 Strong shapes and 0:50 just kind of an overall design aesthetic that was, was really well-done. 0:51 And also it was really min, minimalistic, modern and 0:55 kind of harkened back to Paul Rand's work that he had done for IBM in the 50s. 0:59 And then even with some of his poster designs in the 70s and 80s. 1:04 And then out of that also came things like this, 1:08 his kind of system of iconography that they created for 1:10 all the different kinds dis, like branches of the kind of campaign. 1:15 Well at the same time internally when I was working at IBM, 1:20 they kind of sent this down as a corporate initiative to say, how, how are you 1:24 guys then gonna incorporate this kind of new strategy or campaign tagline. 1:29 Kind of rebrand into the work that you're doing. 1:35 And so, there was a lot of confusion as you might imagine. 1:39 And, you know, 1:42 I had buddies that were doing things like grabbing these kind of, these icons. 1:43 Ripping out the color palates from that, and 1:48 then sort of just applying that to the product design that they were doing. 1:50 Kind of in an attempt to align themselves with this kind of strategic initiative. 1:55 And you may have seen something like this in your companies before, but it, 2:00 it, it really raises a question. 2:03 You know, how are you exers, in particular, 2:04 supposed to take what was sort of these lofty ideas of this campaign or 2:07 kind of initiative, and then apply that to the kind of work that they were doing. 2:10 The short answer is, was very few people knew how to do that. 2:15 Fast forward a couple of years now, 2:19 I work on kind of the opposite side of the spectrum. 2:20 In an interactive agency that's now working with big brands, so, I get 2:23 a chance to work with places like IBM and Lenovo, ESPN, Dick's Sporting Goods. 2:27 Conservation International. 2:33 So, so these kind of big brands. 2:34 So and this is kind of a collection of the things I've been, 2:36 handed over the past year from these companies, so. 2:38 This is the kind of documentation that I tend to see from them. 2:42 So brand guidelines, kind of corporate strategic initiatives. 2:44 You know, you can see awesome Venn Diagrams like this where apparently you 2:49 brand idea is somewhere in between what's special about you and 2:53 what the world needs. 2:55 So good luck, you know, translating that into something meaningful. 2:58 but, as, as, kind of, a result of that, we get a lot of fluff, right? 3:03 And then we have to kinda figure out what to do with those things. 3:07 But what it's really taught me in the last couple years, 3:11 is there's, there's just this really big gap between UX and branding. 3:12 So, many UX teams just don't know how to acknowledge or 3:17 they really just don't understand the role that or 3:20 how to communicate kind of the brand to their audience. 3:23 And a lot of question, lot of times, 3:27 they just question, you know, why do they even need to be doing that at all. 3:28 So I kind of came up with these three scenarios that I have seen over 3:33 the past couple years to sort of describe this relationship. 3:36 This is kind of the most, one I encounter the most. 3:39 I call it passing the buck. 3:42 So. 3:43 The idea here is that it's just somebody else's responsibility to 3:43 handle the brand work. 3:47 And, and there's a couple reasons that UXers typically kind of 3:49 have this mentality. 3:52 One is depending on kind of the level or degree of your visual proficiency. 3:53 Or how comfortable you feel there. 3:58 That you just don't feel that it's part of, kind of, your conversation. 4:01 Or if you equate branding to visual design then, 4:04 you kind of just don't really think it's part of something that you need to do. 4:07 A lot of times people just feel that marketing goals, brand goals are not 4:10 really aligned with user goals and therefore there's kind of that conflict. 4:14 Another thing is, also is we have gotten more specialized as user experience 4:18 designers there's more of a tendency to say then, it's gotta be somebody else's 4:22 responsibility, because somebody else has to sort of be more specialized than that. 4:26 But kind of whatever the reason this kind of mentality of passing the buck onto 4:31 somebody else really creates a problem. 4:34 And one of the problems, or the main problem is, by passing it, 4:36 we sort of give up the opportunity or the, the chance that we have to 4:39 actually impact how the brand is understood in a meaningful way. 4:43 Second scenario that I see is called kind of this look alike. 4:48 So in this scenario, design teams do want to have some sort of acknowledgement 4:52 of the kind of brand goals in their work, but they don't really know how to do it. 4:58 So as a result of that what you'd tend to see is just kind of looking around, what's 5:02 the latest campaign, or what's the latest product design that we kind of put out? 5:07 And then just sort of like blindly grabbing some elements and 5:11 copy wrighting, or color palettes that those things have. 5:14 And then sort of just applying it to the work that you're doing. 5:17 And the idea is that, 5:20 well, if we just kind of make it consistent, then we're doing okay. 5:21 So the, kind of like, brand consistency. 5:25 The problem with that kind of mentality, though, is that, again, it, 5:28 it sort of equates branding to a purely visual, kind of a, a pure visual process. 5:31 And then a lot of times it's just misusing or misappropriating elements. 5:40 In this last scenario, as a seed a good amount at, 5:45 at a place like [UNKNOWN] so we have a lot of clients that come in. 5:47 A lot of the interactive projects or work that we're doing are frequently seen in 5:50 conjunction with a larger rebrand effort. 5:55 And, as a result of that, depending on what the client wants a lotta 5:59 times they have one kind of consultants doing the brand and 6:03 kind of campaign work and then we're brought in as an interactive team. 6:08 And so what ends up happening is these things have to happen concurrently. 6:14 So, as our design team is working through IA and 6:17 content strategy, interaction design, and then far on the visual design there's 6:23 another vendor handling kinda the brand and strategy work. 6:27 But a lot of times the way that that work is made they 6:30 don't wanna share that work until it's kinda fully baked. 6:34 And they create sort of like this God-like brand documented and 6:37 then that finally gets thrown over the fence to us. 6:39 And then we're having trouble about how we're gonna apply that. 6:43 So it ends up being this problem where we're kind of interpreting a style guide 6:46 and trying to apply it after, after it. 6:49 So you know, there's really three kind of observations here. 6:52 [UNKNOWN] what I've discovered is many extras just 6:55 misunderstand the role that branding plays. 6:57 They don't see how it applies directly to the work that they're doing and 7:00 as a result of kind of, teams being spread across organizations, 7:05 those sort of brand principles are not being shared. 7:09 So for [UNKNOWN] I'm, I'm hoping to change that perception and 7:12 see how we can make these observations be seen differently. 7:16 So I kind of want to go through a really compressed kind of 7:21 five-minute understanding of kind of the history of branding, 7:24 which I know in itself seems kind of crazy, but. 7:27 Just to give some context there I want to take you through a couple case studies, 7:30 that think of companies that are doing, I think a good job of this, and 7:33 then take you through a couple lessons that we can take back. 7:36 So between companies and consumers, 7:40 there is kind of this communication space, so pre 1950s, if you think about branding, 7:45 it primarily consisted of just a simple mark on a product or 7:50 a symbol that represented a product. 7:55 The purpose of that mark was generally to kind of show the creator the source 7:57 of that particular company. 8:02 Literally it had its ties in the livestock branding so 8:05 the ideas you got from sheep and 8:08 I've got some sheep and if they ever kind of intermingle we can separate them out. 8:10 We know who's is whose. 8:14 So we know the owner. 8:15 gradually, you can imagine that morphed into products like ceramics or watches. 8:16 So that kind of brand mark was put on there. 8:21 So, pre-1950s it's mostly, it, it is 100% visual. 8:24 But it primarily surrounds or 8:29 centers around this idea that the brand mark is there for ownership or 8:31 to indicate a source materiality, sort of like the localization of that product. 8:36 Post World War II, so after 1950, there's several kind of factors that 8:42 have altered then how companies have to communicate with consumers. 8:47 The first is mass production so 8:52 we're just as you're able to in, have factories in different places. 8:54 And your processes to create those products are more efficient. 8:59 That changes sort of the game in terms of the, 9:02 the kinds of products that are being created. 9:06 Mass transportation is another kind of factor so 9:08 now because you're able to ship those products either by plane or 9:11 increased thoroughfares, then the product reach that you have is no longer local. 9:17 So it is, is increased in kind of its scope in that way. 9:22 Enter mass communication. 9:26 So now besides just print ads, you have the ability for radio and television. 9:27 To get across or to communicate kind of a message of your particular brand. 9:32 And then lastly people just had a ton more money to spend and 9:37 they wanted to kind of spend it. 9:40 So, what this kind of created was this diluted kind of unlocalized market 9:42 and so if you could imagine you know, dish detergent A and dish detergent B. 9:50 Now the processes to create those are almost identical, 9:55 they're probably made out of the same kind of materials. 9:59 They do the same kind of thing. 10:02 They can now be made in Michigan, another can be made in California, but 10:04 they can be sold in Texas. 10:08 So because you have this un, this kind of diluted market now. 10:10 A simple brand mark was not enough, in that kind of pre 1950 scenario to 10:14 separate or to distinguish your product from another one. 10:19 So they kinda had to create these new communication strategies to 10:24 break through sort of the sameness of the market. 10:27 And as a result, sort of advertising was born, and but you're still seeing for 10:30 the most part kinda unidirectional communications. 10:34 So the brand is just sort of companies companies communicating directly to 10:36 the consumer. 10:39 So later post-internet age, and, 10:40 you know, technology is again sort of like dramatically changed or 10:44 shifted our, this kind of space between a company and a consumer. 10:47 So, with the rise of social channels there's just a lot more means for 10:53 communication or avenues for communication. 10:57 The creation of off and online and interactions. 11:00 Which are also now even being merged. 11:04 Where both of those are kind of happening simultaneously. 11:06 You have direct communication so, you, now you can get online. 11:09 You can chat directly with a representative of a particular company. 11:13 Within kind of seconds so 11:17 that channel is opened up, forum support kind of websites are there. 11:18 And then we have instant accessibility to other people's experiences with 11:24 a particular company. 11:27 So where, again, if you think about that 1950 model, 11:28 I would have had to sort of been in the same location as that product. 11:31 I would of had to have bumped into somebody who also had that product and 11:34 then we would have had to share kind of our experience with it. 11:39 Now you can just get online and 11:42 you can read any number o things about someone's, how someone has done that. 11:43 So businesses are communicating to consumers but now consumers are able 11:48 to more directly influence how those companies are communicating to them. 11:52 So if you kinda look at a summarization here. 11:56 So that kind of localized business to consumer, very kind of static, 11:59 passive communication is now being replaced with much 12:04 more broad global types of communication. 12:07 Businesses to customers, customers back to businesses, customers to customers. 12:10 And then what was in sort of, sort of a passive static means of communication, 12:15 now you have much more dynamic interactive communication that is 12:19 occurring that gets to be more, much more experiential. 12:22 So, what, you know, what started as this kind of simple mark, it was just meant to 12:26 distinguish, or kind of one product from another in terms of its creator or source. 12:29 Is now blossomed into this, you know, pretty large ecosystem of this, 12:34 these connected experiences and services. 12:39 And so when you take it from a survey of what people were saying about that in 12:43 kinda the brand and marketing land. 12:46 This quote from Seth Godin. 12:48 So he talks about brand as this euphemism for 12:50 all these other things besides just a simple message. 12:54 Steve Sammartino from the Start Up Blog, excuse me. 12:59 Talks about brand being related to the sort of memory of 13:03 an experience that you have through an interaction. 13:06 Brain Solis of the Altimeter Group coined this phrase around branding of 13:11 experience architecture, that that's sort of the, the future that we're in,. 13:15 And then lastly Rick Wise of Lippincott talks about the, 13:20 the success of companies is going to be in their ability to craft these kind of 13:24 holistic, total customer experiences. 13:29 So, when you kinda look back at the diagram here and rethink how that might 13:32 look in a more, kind of summarized way, it's really about this creation of this 13:36 customized personal experience between a, a company and a consumer. 13:41 So it's this shared, kind of unfragmented experience that consumers kind of want to 13:47 be able to consume in many different ways. 13:51 So logical question then is whose responsibility is it to 13:55 design this experience. 13:58 So if you think back to 1950s or 14:02 even prior to that it was the actual creator of the, the product. 14:04 In the 1950s, talking about an agency, so 14:09 likely an art director, copy writer, and account manager. 14:12 They were sort of the ones responsible for 14:15 defining that message, and then forcing that to be sent thru the company. 14:17 But today when you start looking about the number of disciplines that can touch this, 14:23 you're talking about everything from product design to customer service to 14:27 industrial design to UX service design. 14:31 All of these kind of groups are responsible for helping shape that. 14:35 Because if you think about crafting the entire kind of experience, 14:40 if that's really where we are in terms of brand,. 14:43 Or that we need to define the experience architecture that's got to 14:46 go beyond just sort of a simple messaging being dictated by 14:50 what would typically be seen as kind of a, a singular creative group. 14:54 So it includes kind of all these touch points. 14:57 So you start putting some faces to this and 15:00 now we're talking about copy writers and art directors. 15:02 They are still certainly a huge part of, of defining and 15:05 even possibly creating the initial strategy for a brand. 15:08 But social media managers, 15:11 industrial designers, marketing analysts, customer support specialists and 15:14 even UX designers are then part of this kind of model as well. 15:18 So next few minutes we'll just go through kinda some examples of companies that I 15:23 think are doing that pretty well. 15:28 So first example I wanna go through is airbnb. 15:33 So, if you know, not familiar with them they provide a means for people to host or 15:36 rent lodging, kind of in the vein of a peer-to-peer network. 15:40 So they're long-known for having a really great user experience design. 15:45 I think a lot of that is because their founders come from a marketing design and 15:48 user experience background. 15:53 And recently it made some waves of their kind of overall approach to their brand. 15:56 Pr, prior to the logo design so I'm not gonna talk about that. 16:01 but, prior to that there was a lot of discussions about what they were going to 16:04 do with the business. 16:09 So there were some questions on, you know, what's, what's next for 16:09 you guys, how are you gonna kind of expand the business. 16:12 And those, a lot of people thought they were gonna do that laterally so, 16:14 right now they're having peer-to-peer sort of network around. 16:18 Lodging those questions were you know, seen at the automobile so can we, 16:22 you know, share automobiles in big cities or power tools or something like that. 16:25 And they said no, that's actually not what we want to 16:29 be defined by this model brand what our brand really is about is hospitality and 16:32 kind of the pivotal point for them coming to that decision is they brought in the, 16:37 sort of the Snow White project, if anybody knew they [UNKNOWN]? 16:42 Okay, so the founder was watching Snow White and 16:47 understood sort of the background of how Disney created that movie. 16:51 And he got into this idea of storyboarding, so 16:55 he hired a Pixar animator to come in and 16:57 they storyboarded out the entire sort of trip experience of a user. 17:00 So this is everything from you just you know, 17:04 having an idea in your head that you wanna go somewhere all the way through booking 17:07 it to actually getting out of the cab and then realizing where am I gonna go now? 17:10 Or how am I gonna get to my location? 17:14 To the actual experience of the the, of the, of the lodging all the way back home. 17:16 And so they kind of got that out, and they whittled that down. 17:22 They kept editing over weeks to 30 key touch points or frames within 17:24 the total sort of like customer journey or the experience of a trip. 17:30 And what that revealed to them what there was a gap between what they how they 17:35 wanted to be perceived and communicate their brand in terms of hospitality and 17:41 the experience that they were actually creating, so 17:46 doing those story boards helped them do that. 17:48 So they hired a guy named Chip Conley who had run a bunch of boutique hotels, 17:51 around the globe, who's retired. 17:56 They brought him back out of retirement and said we want you to 17:57 be the head of our global hospitality division that they created. 17:59 And so as a result of that now they've created endless amounts of 18:04 documentation around kind of hospitality standards, hospitality tactics, 18:08 and all of this kind of kind of experience that they've had. 18:14 And they've even gone as far as trying to train people in how to be better hosts. 18:18 Because that fits sort of their, new brand model. 18:22 And then even in product design, so they have a open policy of we want to 18:26 improve our product and we're willing to listen to any kind of idea that you bring. 18:29 But the first question to ask is how does it improve one of those 30 touch points 18:34 that we have, so if it doesn't improve one of those, then it's not going to 18:37 increase or benefit sort of the, the brand experience that they're trying to create. 18:41 So it's a great example of a company that could have just been 18:46 seen as a company that was a booking application actually shifting that 18:49 into a kind of really personal customer experience company. 18:53 The second custody, case study I wanna go through is Urban Outfitters. 18:59 If you're not familiar with them they cover home goods and fashion or 19:03 a clothing retailer. 19:06 And I really like them as as a case study because in an industry the fashion 19:08 industry which is generally declining or 19:11 is not been seen this doing very well in the last couple years, 19:13 they've actually increased their profit margins and their sales. 19:17 And I think they're prominently doing this because they really know their audience 19:20 really well. 19:24 So their audience is primarily early adopters, so people who want to be kind of 19:25 at the, the forefront of technol, or fashion and, and kind of home goods. 19:29 As a result of that, then they model their kind of product line after that. 19:35 So instead of having kind of a, a more narrow focused set of products that they 19:38 have lot of that, so it's available to many, many people, they have a very, very, 19:43 very broad product offering, but a very shallow number of those products. 19:48 So increases this idea of exclusivity, with this particular audience, 19:54 it generates a high demand for 19:58 it and, it kinda limits the amount of availability that they have. 20:00 So they state in their mission that they wanna be a, 20:04 a voyage of discovery for their customers and as a result of that, the entire 20:08 experience that they create around their company kind of reflects that. 20:13 So, some of the things they do. 20:18 In the upper right, you see one of the images of a store they have,. 20:21 They don't have kind of a set guideline for every store. 20:25 So in every city across the globe, 20:27 where ever you see an Urban Outfitters, the store is a reflection of the, 20:29 the community, the demographic, the needs of that particular group of people, and 20:32 it even affects kind of the products, that they have in the store. 20:37 So if you were to go to, variety of them across the globe, in itself just going 20:40 into one is gonna sort of be a new kind of discovery for you. 20:45 They also, even in their product line, 20:50 the catalog that they have online is different than the catalog they have, 20:52 or what they have in the store is different than their print catalog. 20:55 So again, each one of those avenues becomes a sort of voyage of discovery. 20:58 And then even in the left here, 21:03 the kind of branding that they do, specifically visually. 21:04 The logo tag treatment changes frequently. 21:08 Again, to reflect this idea of, like, newness. 21:11 Or, sort of, you're coming to a new place of discovery. 21:13 And then this also even translates into their product design. 21:17 And even their technology decisions. 21:22 So this is an app that they have. 21:24 That is specifically around this idea of voyage of discovery. 21:26 So you take the app in store. 21:29 Interactions that you have with products and kind of goals, things that they 21:31 outline in the app within the store by socializing those, by completing those, 21:35 you get reward points and then you get to use those for to buy products. 21:41 And then even on the other end of the spectrum. 21:45 In technology decisions. 21:48 A couple years ago they changed their recommendation engine that they used, 21:50 now they use a product called Bay Note and 21:53 the reason that they chose Bay Note was because they thought that it mapped best 21:56 to their wisdom of the crowd approach to recommendation so the idea that 22:00 this particular audience frequently shares kind of, recommendations with each other. 22:05 So they wanted a recommendation, and 22:09 [INAUDIBLE] would model that sort of behavior. 22:11 And as a result of doing that, now they have one out of every four, customers that 22:14 go online clicks on a recommendation which is extremely high in e-com, industry. 22:19 And then they also have increased their online sales based on 22:26 recommendations from 1% to 7%. 22:29 So in about 90 days the technology decision that 22:31 they made to use Baynote kind of paid off. 22:34 And the kicker to all this is they used zero money on marketing and advertising. 22:37 They spent all their money on the creation of these sort of experiences. 22:43 Either in the store, or these apps that they create. 22:47 So, um,they, they kind of magnifies that. 22:50 And then, what it does, is, is the experience is the brand. 22:53 The brand is the experience. 22:57 And that becomes their sole marketing tool. 22:58 So the last example is Warby Parker. 23:02 So if you're not familiar with them, 23:05 they're an online retailer that sells, prescription in sun glass eye wear online. 23:07 And so in 2010, they kind of flipped the, the eye wear industry on its head by 23:12 saying that you're getting ripped off by these sort of other eye 23:18 wear companies that are charging you about 400% more than what you should be paying. 23:22 And we're here to remedy that kind of problem. 23:26 So the, their primary customer connection from the outset was sort of 23:29 positioning themselves as a customer service business that also sells products. 23:35 And specifically they have accomplished that by really 23:41 taking the hyper-personalized kind of experience do you have in a store, 23:44 looking at eye wear, and translating that online, so they've invested in 23:48 kinda really into intuitive, innovative, tools to help you do that. 23:52 So they have tools to help you measure pupilary distance, 23:56 which is necessary if you're gonna buy eye wear. 23:59 They have a try-on, a virtual try on tool. 24:02 So you can dump a bunch of glasses in. 24:06 Try those on. 24:07 Scale them appropriately. 24:08 Rotate them. 24:10 really, really well done. 24:11 And then they encourage you to share those out so kind of mimicking the idea of 24:12 taking a friend with you to the store and then sharing that out and trying to see 24:17 and get other people's opinion on the kind of glasses that would look good. 24:21 And then it even extends to the home try on program. 24:25 So you select a bunch of glasses. 24:27 You get it in this nice box that has these divisions which would be 24:29 similar to a tray that you'd be given. 24:32 If you're at a eye wear brick and mortar store and then again they have 24:33 instructions on how you would kind of translate or share that out. 24:37 But one of the things they do really well, 24:42 pretty cool, they created a YouTube channel that is primarily, 24:43 centers around very personal communication back to you, as a consumer. 24:47 So you might have had a customer support call with them. 24:53 And about 10 minutes later, you'll get an email with a link and 24:55 that'll take you to the YouTube channel, where the person that you just spoke to 25:00 will actually s, call you out by name and give you about a 10 or 25:03 15 second video that's a follow up on the call that you have. 25:07 They do the same thing with their kinda social channels. 25:10 So if you tweeted them or Facebook, it's a way for 25:13 them to sort of to communicate back. 25:16 So if you think back at those diagrams, and 25:18 you talk about that gap between a company and, and a consumer. 25:20 They done a really good job of like, kinda closing that pretty tightly. 25:24 It's a, it's a good example of a brand that's defined by 25:28 the customer service that they offer. 25:31 So there's this sort of merger of the experience they've created in 25:33 this cluster, customer service that they have offered. 25:37 So one end now with kind of four UX lessons that I think we can take back, 25:42 so we talked about some common scenarios that I think exist in 25:47 this relationship between brand and UX. 25:51 Talked a little bit about the history of branding looked at 25:52 a couple case studies so here are kind of four lessons that I think we can take. 25:56 So the first is finding common ground. 26:00 So too often I hear that there's kind of like no place for brand goals and UX and 26:03 it's just not sort of a responsibility that we have. 26:08 Kind of highlighting that pass the buck idea that I demonstrated before. 26:10 And, and I read this in an article though that I'm not going to tell you who, 26:16 who wrote it but it said the brand is an important part of the company's identity, 26:18 but is entirely separate from the UX designer's job. 26:22 The user will experience it but the purpose of the brand has nothing to 26:26 do with the user's goals, only the company's goals, therefore not UX. 26:29 So it's sort of this, this problem where there's an understanding that the user is 26:34 going to experience the brand but 26:38 then the idea that it's just not part of a UXer's job to be considering that. 26:42 And I recognize it's only one voice. 26:47 I'm kinda, I'm not, I'm not pulling the quote out of context. 26:49 But I'm not giving you the rest of the context. 26:51 But it is sort of indicative of this, that passing the buck mentality. 26:53 Or some things I've seen. 26:56 But I'd like to suggest there's actually more common ground between branding and 26:59 marketing goals and user experience. 27:04 So in 1960 Jerome McCarthy penned these kinda four Ps which are kinda the was 27:07 saying is the four touch points so. 27:12 Product, price, placement, promotion. 27:14 And this was typically how brands were instructed to sort of or 27:16 companies were constructed to communicate their message. 27:20 And admittedly, you know, it kind of created this artificial layer between 27:25 the product and the consumer, how it was communicated. 27:28 But I don't actually think this model, I think, I think it's a model that we think 27:34 it still exists or we sort of have in our mind might be happening but. 27:37 What I've seen is much more talk, much more, kind of, 27:42 dialogue, that has shifted from this idea of touch points between a product or 27:45 a company and a consumer, into what's being seen as outcomes. 27:49 So impression, interaction, 27:54 responsiveness, resilience are typically seen as the way that marketing and 27:56 brand, kind of, groups are trying to communicate to their audience. 28:01 So the idea of impression, so it, does this service or 28:06 product meet my needs is a question that they ask. 28:08 Interaction, is this product or 28:11 service doing what it says it does when I'm interacting with it? 28:13 Responsiveness, is this service or product approachable? 28:18 Is it accessible? 28:22 Is it, again, listening to my needs for what I have. 28:24 And lastly, resilience. 28:27 Does the service or product care about me? 28:28 Does it care about others? 28:30 Does it care about some greater sort of cause. 28:31 So if this is a truly what marketing and 28:34 brand groups are sort of some of the goals that they have. 28:36 I would argue that all those questions that I just outlined are questions that we 28:41 would oftentimes ask as user experience designers, and 28:44 therefore there's a much tighter common ground, or 28:48 that becomes a points of conversation that we can have with each other. 28:50 The second lesson I wanna go through is this idea of becoming the glue. 28:55 So think about successful companies and sort of you know, how, 29:01 how they kind of communicate their, their products or their, or their companies. 29:05 A lot of times it's that this inner section of, 29:09 branding technology business and kind of human kind of needs. 29:12 And so you think about companies like Ben and Jerry's. 29:18 Or Burt's Bees. 29:21 Apple. They sort of do a really good job of, 29:22 of making those kinda insights kind of available. 29:24 And using that to, to kind of communicate. 29:27 Well, a lot of times the problem is that insights within the companies, 29:31 most companies,are coming from siloed teams. 29:34 So you know, 29:37 brand insights, human insights, technology insights are handled by different groups, 29:38 they don't often communicate with one another, and they're fairly siloed. 29:43 And obviously, you know, I can't kinda solve that kind of problem here, but 29:47 what I can suggest is if you think about the groups that 29:51 we interact with as user experience designers, so users. 29:54 And technologists and 29:58 designers and business development teams and marketing teams. 29:59 We're, we're sitting at those kind of intersections of those insights. 30:03 The problem is, we just of have to kind of make those things sticky. 30:07 So at Vigit one of the kind of common things we talk about as 30:11 user experience designers internally is the idea of us being Sherpas. 30:15 So how do we sort of guide other teams through sort of the terrain of a, 30:20 of a project? 30:24 And when you kind of apply that to the same kind of way that we 30:25 would address branding and 30:29 kind of marketing goals there's a couple of things I think we can do. 30:31 I think we need to kind of get out of our own silos. 30:34 And start to go and interview these other teams, so start talking to people who 30:37 are doing and defining marketing goals and brand goals for your companies. 30:41 I think we can even use things that we have such as personas and 30:47 other means to document those goals to identify UX needs that they have, or 30:51 moments in which we can kind of help them create those those plans. 30:56 And finally we kind of facilitate those meetings among the, the people. 31:02 An example I give is when we recently did some work at ESPN we 31:07 had a contact there and she was really amazing at being able to bring in 31:10 people from almost every kind of department that were, uh,was at ESPN. 31:16 So editorial and technologists, and their marketing teams. 31:21 And by her sort of being that glue, and 31:25 bringing all those companies together, they did a really amazing job. 31:27 They were able to start talking to one another, understand their needs more. 31:30 And then allowed us to go in and 31:34 identify opportunities that we could kind of help them out,. 31:35 So it's a lesson I've kind of had a hard time learning, you know? 31:39 The faster that we stop sort of waiting for that mandate to come down, and 31:43 someone to kind of give us that kind of plan. 31:46 And we're the ones responsible for bringing those teams together. 31:48 And finding those kind of common points then the better I 31:53 think our experiences are gonna end up being. 31:56 The third lesson I wanna take is, this is getting macro. 31:59 So I think we do a lot of micro kind of we're really 32:01 good at micro designs so even at the tiniest scale. 32:06 So you know, understanding how users interact with buttons or gestures. 32:10 That kind of design. 32:15 We're also pretty good at even micro projects within a company, 32:16 so designing a campaign site for a company or designing a mobile app for 32:20 a bank or even doing usability testing within on a kinda legacy kinda product. 32:25 But if we're thinking about designing kind of the total brand experience then we've 32:33 gotta kind of back out of that micro kind of view and 32:37 we have to start considering how these are going to, 32:41 how these decisions are seen in kinda larger brand ecosystem. 32:43 And one example of this I think is really well. 32:47 This is from Tom Schneider, he's the VP of UX at Rosetta and 32:49 he crafted these ideas around grand experience metaphors. 32:54 And these are kind of some diagrams or metaphors that he creates. 32:59 And the idea here is the UX can actually help in bland, 33:02 brand communication planning. 33:06 By mapping common user experiences thru these sort of metaphors, 33:09 and then looking for brand opportunities, but kind of rooting them in 33:14 this context of of, brand metaphors, or experienced metaphors. 33:18 So this is a example of a company who create medicine for 33:24 an adult that has kind of bladder control problem. 33:29 So. 33:32 He starts the, at the core of the metaphor is this idea of a parent 33:33 who needs to is watching their kids and kind of spectating. 33:38 But there's like not a bathroom kind of near there. 33:43 So, that's the kind of metaphor of 33:46 the situation that they might find themselves in. 33:47 And then from that, he then starts to think about other metaphors that 33:49 are similar, so that might be being in a movie or being on a long car ride or 33:52 going out on a dinner date, similar kind of uncomfortable situations. 33:57 And once he has those larger metaphors, he's then able to look for these sort of 34:00 opportunities for co, how you could communicate the value of this product. 34:05 So that might be things like refreshment stands or 34:11 movie ticket sales, outdoor media, that type of thing. 34:15 So what he's looking at is brand intersections that are both A, 34:19 the customer experience but also then reinforce the brands value. 34:25 So that sort of combination. 34:29 And then once he does that, he takes it into a more traditional, 34:32 sort of like customer journey map, where we take, 34:34 look at a user and how they might go from being unaware of a product, all the way 34:39 through conversion and then finally being an evangelist for the product. 34:44 So he's taken a task that was, for 34:49 the most part, absent of any kind of UX or user real input. 34:50 It was mostly just done by brand teams that were planning, weren't really taking, 34:54 kind of, the user in to consideration. 34:59 And he's placed it in sort of a meaningful context now. 35:02 And so it's, it's a good example of, of just planning or 35:05 rooting brand planning into sort of a meaningful customer experience journey. 35:08 And so the last lesson I wanna leave with is this idea of embracing the X and 35:15 D of UXD. 35:19 So I think if we're being honest, we kinda look at the landscape of 35:22 the dialogue a lot of times around user experience design right now. 35:25 There's a lot of discussions. 35:29 Hyper-focus, kind of, on the processes and the technology that we use. 35:31 A lot of debates about methodologies. 35:35 And while those are, not saying the discussions are necessarily bad. 35:37 but, sometimes I wonder if we seem to be too, 35:41 more worried about how we're getting to a solution rather than 35:44 actually evaluating the quality of the solution that we're creating. 35:47 So I've kinda wondering if we've lost sort of that spirit that many of us had when we 35:52 wanted to use our experiences, on, which was to root this in actual experiences. 35:57 So has anybody seen this Simon Sinek's Golden Circle? 36:03 Have you watched this TED Talk? 36:06 Yeah, so it's great. 36:08 So, the premise, you know, is the idea that most communi, 36:09 companies communicate from the outside of the circle in. 36:12 So they start by, here's what we do and here's how we do it, and 36:14 then they finally get around to telling you why they do it. 36:18 But he discovered that most successful companies actually start with the inverse, 36:21 so they go from the center of the circle out. 36:27 They start with the why, and what he says is, 36:29 people don't buy what you buy, they buy why you do it. 36:30 And he supports this theory by demonstrating that the part of the brain 36:35 that's responsible for decision making or behavior change is motivated by the why. 36:39 So if you think about it, if we start with the what and the how, more often 36:45 than none, by the time you get somebody to that point, they don't care anymore. 36:49 If you actually hook them or you engage them through the why, 36:53 you have a much higher percentage of chance that you're going to 36:57 change their behavior, or influence them in some way, 37:02 which does get back to this idea of the experience that we create. 37:05 So, you know, 37:10 the challenge I think we have is starting our projects more with asking why. 37:10 and, you know, not to be controversial, but if the why then results in 37:17 this thing that we should use an agile UX process then great. 37:21 If the why results in us doing lean UX, great. 37:27 If it results in us designing in the browser, great. 37:30 But let's make those decisions not because there's industry dialogues saying that we 37:35 should be doing it, 37:39 but that is rooted in the actual why of the, of the product that we're making. 37:40 So kind of in summary, so the first thing, 37:47 finding common ground, though UX marketing and brand goals, I'd like to say that 37:49 they're actually more aligned and that there's a common ground there between it. 37:53 If we can start to think about those things like resilience, 37:58 responsiveness, kind of interaction becoming the glue. 38:00 Let's use our sort of unique position at the intersection of all of 38:03 these different company insights, these silos that are there. 38:07 To start pulling those teams together, and 38:11 creating and crafting kind of more holistic experience. 38:12 Let's get macro, so understand our role within the kind 38:16 of larger brand ecosystem, or understand what we're doing as a result of that. 38:21 Understand how what we're doing is more tied to the larger brand ecosystem. 38:26 And then embracing the X and D of UXD like we just talked about. 38:32 So, kinda close out. 38:37 I think, you know, 38:38 this is, this the image that I think many of us conjure up when we're thinking about 38:39 sort of like the role of or strategy around branding and kind of marketing. 38:43 And I'm not saying that this still doesn't happen. 38:49 I'm not saying there's not necessarily a, 38:51 a place for this kind of role or kind of attitude. 38:53 But I do think we have to move past it based on this idea that companies need and 38:57 see their brand being tied to the experience that they're creating for 39:03 their customers or their users. 39:08 I also don't want you to leave thinking that I'm standing up here saying that I 39:10 think that UX design is or UXers are the new kind of brand leaders, but 39:15 I would like to challenge us to start considering how the role that we're 39:19 playing is affecting the kinds of brand and marketing decisions that are made. 39:23 Or, more importantly, how we can create more meaningful and 39:28 honest brand messaging and experiences. 39:33 So, with that, thanks. 39:37 I'll put these online. 39:39 [APPLAUSE] 39:39