The hefty price of uncritical acceptance

I’m not the first to ask whether tech is a double-edged sword. It’s given us unparalleled access to information, enabled instant connectivity and brought us new forms of visual communication :)   

By the same token, it’s obviously had a huge impact on the pace of life. An attention economy has emerged and we’ve become hypersensitive to external stimulus.

We click, swipe, scroll. Scroll, swipe, click.

We’re approaching media saturation, a ‘hyper-reality’ where physical and virtual realities merge. This dystopian film by Keiichi Matsuda is kind of alarming.

It seems like our emotions are hijacked, given less chance to settle, and we’re left with little patience as a result. We’re aggravated by short waits, by minor inconvenience, and embark on digital detoxes that promise separation from notification-induced dopamine.

In my recent talk at the Wolff Olins Tech Week event, I argued for the need to reassess our relationship with our tech. We need to create space in which we’re conscious of how it affects us, as well as how we can affect it.

Harvard psychology professor Ellen Langer - pioneer of ‘non-meditative mindfulness’ - identifies with this. She talks about ‘awareness of the interactions between your self and a designed object’, and how that ‘encourages positive behaviour and wellbeing’.

I’d like to join the call for us to actively engage in our technology, rather than hiding from the discussion of its impact. If we embrace it fully, and become more mindful of our intention, we can use it to positively influence our states of minds.

I suggested to our audience that, as fully invested tech community members, we must design around the needs of people, not users, embracing the irrationality and unpredictability of human emotion. I’d like us to go beyond speed and ease, to create moments for contemplation and exploration, awe and wonder even. This chimes with a lot of our recent thinking. Members of our leadership team have spoken in the last few months about fighting the tyranny of optimization and being mindful about our role in the development of AI.  

To understand the deeper impact of products and services, we should observe the longer cycles of human behaviour and explore how we might better serve basic physical needs. For example, could website owners put their websites ‘to sleep’ at specific hours, as envisioned by the founders of this project? What other interventions should exist?

Designers must work to reveal instead of obscure; build friction instead of hide it; allow control over limitation; invite participation rather than demand interaction. We could all take inspiration from cyberneticist architect Cedric Price and his fun palace concept.

A more conscious relationship with technology - one that questions and engages deeply rather than simply accepts reductive interfaces - will not only help us to improve our own wellbeing, it will help us shape its impact on larger socio-economic systems.

“The hefty price for accepting information uncritically is that we go through life unaware that what we’ve accepted as impossible may in fact be quite possible.” - Ellen Langer

Illustration by Kate Rinker

Hacking the future workplace

In October our London team moved into our new office in Bayswater. Like all change, the move was anticipated with some trepidation, but quickly was unanimously voted a change for the better.

But at Wolff Olins we don’t rest on our laurels. And to maintain the momentum and positive energy of the move, we decided to run a hack day to imagine the future of our workplace.

We immediately steered teams away from the more predictable website and app ideas and asked them to build something with a physical component. We provided tons of kit, from arduinos to beacons as well as sensors, RFIDs, security cameras and even conductive ink. 

The four teams had 24 hours to come up with an idea, build it and present it to the group.  Ideas varied from a fish scale meeting room availability indicator to a 3D printed Duck that tells us when it’s time to go to the pub. The judges voted WOPA (a button/slack integration manifest as an online PA with attitude) the most useful and innovative idea and we’ll be rolling it out in our London office next year. And team Pepper Spray’s concept of a welcome hologram for our new reception won the public Twitter vote (#WoHack).

If you’re curious, you can learn more about these ideas on our hack day microsite or watch this whistle-stop video tour of the day. 

You can also find our favourite bloopers from the day on our Snapchat account, (WolffOlins).

Next year we’ll run more hack days like this: hacks for working women over 60 and ideas to kick start client change programmes, so... 

Watch this space. 

Is technology a catch (’em) all?

I can hear the pitch rooms right now…“Pokémon Go but for dating.” “Pokémon Go but for groceries.” “Pokémon Go but for emergency boiler repair.”

Technology is nothing if not faddy, and those of us that were wondering where Augmented Reality’s (AR) killer app was going to come from have now been answered. As I type this, I am literally watching two grown men across the canal from me, catching monsters, and I’m not ashamed to say that I’m tempted to pop out in a minute and join them.

Of course, the technology that drives the phenomenon that is Pokémon Go is hardly new. Marketeers, for one, have been trying to activate with AR for at least 8 years. Platforms like Aurasma and Blippar have been around for years, but have arguably failed to ignite the mainstream; Pokémon Go developers, Niantic, have had Ingress, a massive multiplayer AR game, running since 2012.

So why has Pokémon Go caught our imagination now?

The simple answer is that it’s exactly the right combination of IP, technology and experience, all meshing seamlessly with one another. It is a mistake to assume that AR will "automagically" work for your business problem in the same way. This strikes right at the heart of how we consider technology within the creative process. Simply throwing some cool new tech at the problem will rarely yield results. Instead, we must deeply interrogate the mechanics of the tech and allow the creative expression to emerge from it.

To paraphrase Marcus Aurelius (or Hannibal Lecter if you’d prefer), we must ask of any technology, “What is it, in and of itself?” What are its mechanisms?  What can we utilise from its inputs and outputs? This is the very core of design thinking and it applies equally to technology as it would to brand.

Abstractly, all digital technology is essentially input -> computation -> output. So what are the inputs in the case of Pokémon? Location derived from GPS, mapping drawn from Google, player position and orientation from the device sensors, a feed from the camera and server-collected data on other players’ activity. It’s worth mentioning that this combination of elements allows for one form of AR – while others might rely on image recognition algorithms or a more complex set of sensor inputs (such as that in use with Microsoft’s HoloLens.) 

In fact, in tech terms, the mechanics of Pokémon Go are actually quite shallow. Our phones cannot (yet!) give a true understanding of the environment they’re in. From mapping data we can only broadly derive if we are near parkland or water (and therefore spawn appropriate monsters to catch), but those digital assets cannot interact directly with the environment. Hence, the only available action is to throw an image of a Pokéball at an image of a Pokémon superimposed on your camera’s feed. This works so well because the game’s core mechanic and experience - discovering monsters and capturing them - is precisely aligned with the essence of the technology itself.

Achieving this is no fluke. Simply placing cool tech on top of an unrelated concept and expecting it to magically engage an audience is doomed to fail. In particular, AR and VR can suffer from an ‘uncanny valley’ effect where the more that they try to simulate the real world, the higher our expectations are that they behave like the real world. Fail, and the suspension of disbelief is broken and our engagement with it. Those with Nintendo’s Wiis collecting dust will know what I mean.

It is well established that technology can be a valuable disruptor and engager. But technology is really just an enabler, part of the creative toolkit. To use it successfully, technical thinking must be deeply embedded within the creative process and not applied as a ‘magical’ layer. Instead, examine your goals, the needs of your audience and the expression of your brand. As you unpack that into a creative experience, identify where the core mechanics of technology can reduce friction, provide dynamism and generate delight. The answer to your problem right now isn’t AR, VR, 3-D printing or blockchains. It’s in embracing technical thinking at the heart of your creative ideation.

…and Pokémon Go for dating is a dreadful, dreadful idea.

Illustration by Oliver Thein

Andrew Dobson is Technical Director at Wolff Olins London. You can follow him @andrewdotdobson

How experience is accelerating the world

Change is the only constant.

Organisations are increasingly understanding and appreciating the value of being experience led. What does this mean for businesses? That the potential of UX thinking will continue to add more value to customers and the world, and that companies will become more equipped to deliver on them and its cultural values through the employee experience. This presents an unprecedented opportunity for the developing profession to extend its impact beyond the screen and actually affect broader issues for business and society.

So how do we create inherently better and more meaningful experiences that truly address change?

1. Have a singular radical purpose

For experience design to have meaningful impact in the world, it must serve a clear-cut vision and purpose. It has to be the vessel for an exchange of value – one that starts as a sharp and focused intent, before trickling down to every aspect of the organisation. In the constantly shifting landscape we live in, it can often feel like the world is in decay. This means the value an entity offers needs to be increasingly disruptive. Here we can learn from the world of start-ups, who famously pursue a singular purpose really well, for instance, a company like Zocdoc and their ambition to give power to the patient.

By holding up a clear and radical objective as our yardstick, we can then constantly ask ourselves- does our work contribute or take away from it? Is it building towards, and delivering on, a fundamentally better outcome?

2. Base it on universal truths stemming from human nature

As people, we are all malleable. The experiences we expect and need are constantly changing as the tech around us evolves. We quickly adjust to new baselines of ‘good’ design that meet our immediate needs. How quickly do we become irritated these days when the Wi-Fi goes down for ten minutes? This inflation of expectations will only increase as we continue to assimilate new advances in areas like robotics, AI and genomics in the future.

As our surface needs evolve in tandem with technology and culture, the deep fundamental human truths of who we are remain. By focusing on those core universal truths, we can shape future-facing experiences – ones that look beyond the current limitation but remain grounded in today. This then allows us flexibility in the ‘vessel’. For example, in our work with Grubhub, we built around the fundamental truth that people want food for health, well-being, enjoyment and social bonding. Not solely because they want a delivery service.

3. Think in systems, from the micro to the macro

For experience design to truly shape the direction of an organisation, it must operate on multiple levels. We have to consider the wider context an experience operates in, whilst understanding every granular interaction where a purpose manifests, from the overall vision to the swipe of a button.

The user is one input in that system, along with service, product, manufacturing, materials, energy, organisation, environment, social etc. It’s still necessary to go deep into the human needs, but we consider the relationship with the cultural movements they are a part of. For instance, we can shape the user’s experience to encourage a better lifestyle, giving a positive effect for the community at large. But, as in the work we’ve done with Virgin Active, the ambition to help people live better needs to work in every micro behaviour, nudge and interaction with the overall experience.

4. Focus on signature moments

For maximum impact, we should focus in those key moments of interaction between organisation, employee and customer where we can channel meaningful value. Such moments aren’t always required; most interaction points only need best practice UX design. But where the right opportunity to deliver a unique, purposeful branded experience exists, we should craft those touch points to cultivate an understanding of the overall entity and what it offers.

Doing this usually involves multidisciplinary teams thinking about the multiple senses. For a recent project, we’ve been creating mindful experiences for an urban development in China. This has involved working with industrial, sound and landscape designers, while developing a programme of events to embed those holistic signature moments.

We should always be thinking about the impact our work has in the world, and our part in shaping the narrative of technological progress. If we don’t, we miss out on using our deep understanding of people and design to its potential. We will be limited to churning out standardised patterns in a sea of homogenous experiences where tech becomes one big blurry click vying for our attention. This would be a loss as we have the opportunity to navigate and define the value of emerging technology and the futurist scenarios that are unfolding around us.  

Illustration by Erika Baltusyte

Kartik Poria is Senior UX Designer at Wolff Olins London. You can follow him @kartik_jp

How to make sense of 8 billion touchpoints

Recently, we welcomed Sieun Cha as Creative Director at Wolff Olins London. Prior to us, Sieun served as Creative Director at Method where she led multi-disciplinary teams delivering integrated brand, product and service experiences for clients including Lush, Sky, Skype, Deutsche Telekom, Google and Thomson Reuters. She collected numerous accolades for her work in multi-channel experiences in health, retail and beauty.

With over thirteen years of digital product and experience design background, Sieun is most excited about expanding the scope and scale of both for Wolff Olins’ clients and is specifically interested in how experience design can help build connected brand experiences. Krisana Jaritsat, our Head of Global Content sits down with Sieun for a quick Q&A to share her thoughts:

Krisana: Coming from your background, what is your perspective on how important the integration of digital is by brands?

Sieun: Firstly, the digital distinction now dissolves into our daily lives. Digital is becoming more embedded in our daily lives, and soon the term ‘digital channel’ might become so obsolete that we don’t recognise it anymore.

As such, brands have entered into a more complex space: there are more touch points and more communications with more boundaries becoming blurred and platforms becoming more multi-dimensional. Because of this paradigm shift, it’s important to start thinking with a digital/mobile first approach. Digital is not an added touchpoint any more, it’s becoming the primary platform where the customers actively engage with and define brand meanings for themselves through experience.

Krisana: What role does experience design play in this?

Sieun: Experience design is the framework to understand business requirements and distill and translate customer insights into tangible solutions. I’m most excited for Wolff Olins and our clients to explore how experience design approach can influence the brand and works to be more driven by customer insights, helps close the gaps between touch points and ultimately create coherent brand end-to-end experiences.

Krisana: Why is this important to how people interact with brands today?

Sieun: Now people carry brands in their pocket. Research shows that Americans look at their mobile phone 8 billion times a day collectively. We need to understand how to engage with these moments in meaningful and positive ways. These moments are opportunities to deliver a brand promise and a deep understanding of customer needs in contexts is crucial.

Customers don’t see differences between touch points. So when they are moving from one to another, they expect the same seamless experience. No matter how many touch points there are, customers ultimately want simple and elegant solutions that answer their needs.

Krisana: So, how does experience design solve this problem then?

Sieun: Experience design is a holistic approach for businesses to meet customer needs. It starts with collaborating with businesses to identify and solve the right problems, and assumes a deep understanding of customer needs and behaviours in order to create experience solutions that produce value.

The design of brand experiences should not only consider a broad view of the touchpoints where customer interactions with the brand occur over time, but also go deep to create the moments of engagement through products and services.  Looking at the customer journey from mobile/digital perspective helps identify the possibilities that create micro-moments — intent-driven moments of decision making and preference shaping.

In turn, we will be able to deliver clear and connected stories across channels that bring the customer into a deeper level of engagement and most importantly, create a flexible and adaptive brand design system that leaves a space for the brand to grow.

Sieun Cha is Creative Director at Wolff Olins London. You can follow her @sbtwin

Putting the group in group cycle: A Q&A with Andy Caddy and Dael Williamson

Last week Virgin Active launched The Pack; a new group cycle product created and built in collaboration with Wolff Olins. Caroline Goodwin, Delivery Director at Wolff Olins and member of The Pack team, had a chat with Andy Caddy, Group CIO and Dael Williamson, Enterprise Architect about their experience of working on the project.

1. What are your roles at Virgin Active? Andy: I look after our Technology and Digital strategy across the company. I am the sponsor for The Pack meaning that it’s my job to get everyone bought in across nine countries and ensure that there aren’t any major obstacles for Dael and the rest of the team.

Dael: I head up our Enterprise Architecture team and play a leadership role in the technology strategy and vision for the business globally. In terms of The Pack, I am the tech lead on the software design and programme management in the UK and I also coordinated the work of other territories involved, including South Africa, Iberia, Italy and APAC.

2. What makes The Pack interesting? Andy: This is the first product that we have developed that has had a high technology component and a worldwide roll out capability. This has meant that we’ve needed to overcome a number of logistical challenges! Luckily, we are all united in trying to create a brilliantly innovative experience for our members and so everyone has been supportive in getting the product to launch.

Dael: We were innovators in group cycle 15 years ago and now, for the first time, we have created our own cycle product that is tech driven, and which we can bring to the mainstream. At an industry level, I think we’ve created something that is going to push data-driven, multi-sensory, group health experiences forward in a big way; it’s really exciting to be part of something so unique in such a busy space.

Through our test trials we’ve also found that the experience offered by The Pack has widened the appeal of going to a traditional group cycle class to many more people. We’ve already had great member feedback where people are saying things like, “I don’t normally like group cycle, but I would do this.” I think it’s the human connection with your team that means that The Pack appeals to so many more people. It’s no longer just a room full of solitary cyclists.

3. How does Virgin Active approach product innovation differently from others companies? Andy: We are fortunate to be in a global company that can draw on different trends and cultures. Our product teams have the expertise to create bespoke products and programming for our members where we think there are gaps in the market. For example, last year we completely reinvented functional training through the creation of The Grid – designed to get people moving better, faster and more effectively. This focus on creating our own innovations means that our members get a genuinely unique experience.

4. How did you get your vision for The Pack off the ground? Dael: We had a broad ambition for what we wanted to do around group cycle. Working with Wolff Olins was critical to help us consolidate our thinking and come up with a brand-led concept that fitted our product vision. Studio design was also a key focus for us and Wolf Olins helped us incorporate fantastic lighting into the experience, and also broaden our view on the longer term effects we could go on to build into the class.

From a personal perspective, I needed the glue that would hold this project together and Wolff Olins created the framework for the Experience Manager, which has worked really well. It meant my team could really focus on creating something technically feasible, while Wolff Olins translated the vision into a UX story and prototype that unified the teams and disciplines by showing them, very early on, what was possible.

5. What role did the prototype play in preparing you for the final build? Dael: The real impact was on pace; it proved very quickly that we could create software that drove the experience by connecting multiple inputs like programming, music, biking data and put them together in a really smart way to drive outputs like lights, sound and visual display. In fact, it became our business case for the project because people could see what we wanted to do really clearly and they were excited by it.

6. What was your greatest challenge while working on The Pack? Andy: I would say the biggest challenge has been the sheer scale of launching a global product into six different countries, across 30 studios, with 100+ instructors in a way that was consistent but still had room to have a local flavour. Like The Grid, we want The Pack to be a signature product for us so ensuring that it lands well is incredibly important to us.

7. How did you overcome this? Andy: Lots of hard work by Dael! Using different music suppliers for different regions has helped to ensure that local tastes are catered for. Ensuring each country had control over their own studio builds, but within a central brand means you will always know you are in a Pack studio but it will have the essence of the country you are in as well.

Dael: By keeping the different workstreams focused on specific components of the product – such as music, studio design and training – so that everyone was focused on their area of expertise and could really own the delivery of each component. This created a great cross-functional team. We learnt very quickly how differently disciplines approached their work and it’s really interesting and useful to understand and cater for these different dynamics.

8. What are you most proud of having achieved on The Pack? Andy: Bringing together so many different workstreams into a single coherent product that really works. In the first real member class that I participated in, there was a distinct buzz and lots of conversation between teams afterwards.

Dael: Being a tech guy, I’m blown away by the product we’ve created. There are many complicated elements, but they are so well done, that the ultimate experience is simple and really enjoyable.

9. How do you think creativity enhances technology, and vice versa? Dael: I think that there are two parts to this, the first being that creativity challenges the boundaries of technology and forces tech teams to take it up a notch. The second is that technology is what brings the creativity to life and moves ideas beyond images into something interactive and experiential.  

Andy: Without the creative input we had from Wolff Olins, we would have had a room full of bikes throwing out data. It would have been technically impressive, but as an experience it would be limited. What we have ended up with is an immersive group experience that brings all that technology to life.

10. Finally, how do you think technology will change the world of fitness over the next 5-10 years? Andy: As the products mature, technology focus (devices and products) will give way to an insight focus. Today we don’t get excited by the smartphone anymore, it’s the apps that enable our lives; in the next five years the focus on wearables and watches will give way to data and insight. I think this is potentially the largest change that we will go through – smart apps and bots giving you actionable information about your health and fitness.

Dael: Although a lot of focus has been on wearables in the press, I think it’s actually the ingredients behind that tech - the data and biometric insights - that will transform the fitness industry. I think the current trend for what we call ‘blue-line fever’, where everyone is measuring and tracking their activity in devices and apps will spread, and enable smarter equipment in health clubs like our own.

For more information about collaboration, check out the Virgin Active: The Pack case study or Design Director Dan Greene’s piece on ‘How to create a connected experience.’

Caroline Goodwin is Delivery Director at Wolff Olins London. You can follow her @Goodweenie

How to create a connected experience

Recently our friends and collaborators at Virgin Active launched The Pack, a new digitally connected group cycling experience. It’s a product that reimagines every aspect of group cycling: from the studio layout, to the screen design, to the in-class activities themselves. But in order to design the radical new experience they needed, what were the key principles behind our approach and how have we adapted our ways of working to support them?

1. Be empathic Great experience design is always empathetic. It focuses on people-first, not technology-first and responds to human needs, emotions and desires.

The central idea ‘together we ride' is a genuinely motivating idea – born through a process of first-hand experience, lively research sessions with instructors, in-class tests and a lot of creative problem solving. The outcome is a surprising and exciting product designed to shift people's mindset from a laboured exercise routine to a fun, multi-sensory experience.

2. Build off the insight Our research and observations showed us that it's being part of a collective that inspires individuals to work harder and push further, so we made fun competition integral to the creative idea and execution.

By starting with the in-class challenges – the games – and figuring out how to make them fun and interactive for the group, we could unlock the potential of The Pack. Whether your team is competing in Sumo, Big Burnout, Speed Freaks or Hold The Line, the aim is to move the group cycling experience from a 1-2-1 interaction to a collective effort. The result is a much more engaging class, with greater social interaction and ultimately improved performance.

3. Make the design helpful Each challenge is brought to life by an intentionally simple design system made up of three arrow icons. Each icon represents one of the three teams on screen. The teams themselves are divided by light channels within the space in corresponding colours, intended to create a more sensory and immersive environment. The same three arrows are used across all communication touch-points and form the basis of the logo. It’s a singular system with multiple purposes: dynamic, bold and above all else – helpful.

In the context of a group cycle experience, less is very much more. The user already has a lot to deal with: listening to instructions, keeping up to the beat of the music, reacting to the on-screen prompts and of course trying not to fall-off, information overload can occur very quickly. Helpful, in this context, means informing and guiding riders to just the right level of detail.

4. Work openly and without ego In order to create such a dynamic solution we pulled in many different skill sets: a crew of UX designers, full-stack developers, visual designers, animators, industrial and light designers – all working quickly and collaboratively. The different perspectives and processes of each expert ultimately shaped the final product, pushing the creative outcome.

Experience design also demands a much more joined up approach with the client. Their expertise in product development (most are still actively working as instructors) means we could tweak and evolve the product experience to work across multiple formats while not watering down the ambition of the idea.

5. Keep iterating One of the greatest benefits to working on this type of job is that the impact of the design is instant and tangible, making it easier to observe where the design is perhaps falling short of users needs.

From simple things, like moving the clock from the center to the left-hand side in order to avoid the folds in the screen, to completely re-thinking challenges in order to make them easier to understand. It's also essential that user testing and feedback forms a much bigger part of the design process. By challenging and adapting the product in response to the user from the outset means that the product constantly improves.

Ultimately, the ingredients for creating a joined up experience act as a great foundation for any creative process – from building a website, through to a global brand. By being empathetic, insightful, helpful, open and iterative you create a process where creativity thrives, pushing everyone involved to design the most radical creative outcome.

Dan Greene is a Design Director at Wolff Olins London. You can follow him @danny_greene

Health Warning: Innovating without empathy can be lethal

It’s an exciting time to be in healthcare. Many traditional scientific, medical and pharmaceutical companies are broadening and redefining what they do, for health. What it takes to be a successful healthcare company is now beyond scientific, manufacturing and discovery capabilities. It is being able to address human needs creatively. For example, last year CVS signalled a change by becoming CVS Health; their commitment has been reflected through action, for instance by banning tobacco products across all their stores. Having spent a lifetime in a medicine making family I’m compelled to say, these kinds of companies intuitively know their customers (patients) and how they can impact them. They’ve been tapping into unconventional resources and new technologies to expand and introduce new innovative products and services.

More and more tech companies are plugging themselves into this world or even starting fresh. This cross-pollination is rapidly fuelling innovation. With the announcement of the OS 2 for Apple Watch and ResearchKit, it’s evident that health is becoming increasingly important to Apple. And if Apple is doing it, certainly it must world dominating. Other examples are emerging among start-ups such as ZocDoc, 23andMe, Doctor On Demand, Fitbit, Oscar and many more.

While many companies are on the cusp of cutting edge technology, not all of them are successful in healthcare. Innovation is essential but innovating with empathy is unbeatable.

Understanding your patient

Data and data analytics have evolved significantly enabling a depth of knowledge about patients, encouraging the bridge between health and technology even more. The number of people who are living with disease is higher than ever before. The World Health Organization reported the global burden of chronic disease as 46% in 2001 and is predicting that it might increase to 60% by 2020. It’s important to understand what these kind of patients want.

As Atul Gawande, a surgeon, writer and health researcher says in his book - Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End,

“A few conclusions become clear when we understand this: that our most cruel failure in how we treat the sick and the aged is the failure to recognize that they have priorities beyond merely being safe and living longer; that the chance to shape one’s story is essential to sustaining meaning in life; that we have the opportunity to refashion our institutions, our culture, and our conversations in ways that transform the possibilities for the last chapters of everyone’s lives.”

Creating an experience of care

Experience plays a crucial role in healthcare, especially in hospitals. Many people avoid visiting a hospital unless they have no other choice; I certainly do. As obvious as it sounds, primary care shouldn’t be neglected and there are so many opportunities for hospitals to create welcoming experiences.

A constant example of unparalleled patient care is from Ward 5B at the San Francisco General Hospital. It started as the only one of its kind and a model unit for the treatment for AIDS patients in the United States. John Lere, an early patient at the ward said, “I'd stay home and die if I couldn't come here” about his hospital care.

Several other US hospitals such as Mayo Clinic and Kaiser Permanente have increasingly made efforts to ensure experience is prioritised equally with cutting edge technology and equipment. They have innovation arms designated to constantly improve their standards of care. Mayo employs a diverse group of creative thinkers ranging from researchers and educators to experience and product designers. Kaiser has a center to prototype all their ideas including technologies, simulations and product evaluations.

Even non-conventional healthcare companies such as NXT Health, a design and innovation studio, are making experience in healthcare their priority. Along with Dupont, they are designing and prototyping what is anticipated to be the ideal hospital of the future: patient room 2020. They are incorporating screens within the architecture, casework to automatically sterilize equipment after use, patient engagement platforms among many more design and tech interventions. The western world is undoubtedly taking on ambitious projects and building spearheading technology.

Adapting for affordability

Unfortunately, much of this innovation has very limited access. While technology is inspiring great inventions such as fully functional 3D printed organs and neurally controlled prosthetic limbs it will still be a long time until these become a reality and a viable option for patients. An interesting challenge in the development of health products is to also have a vision and a sense of urgency to make them affordable.

When a group of Silicon Valley divas were asked what we need the next Uber for, the most popular answer was – healthcare. With companies like Apple, Microsoft, Google and Samsung all showing eagerness to break into the healthcare sector footprints will shrink and affordability will come to the forefront; in fact this has already begun.

Theranos was setup as a company that understands many patients don’t actively engage in their own health and by the time they show symptoms it’s often too late.  They manufacture blood-testing products requiring only a drop of blood via finger-prick making the experience convenient and as painless as possible. They cost a fraction of any other lab testing starting at $3 (based on what the test is for) making lab testing accessible and as affordable as possible. Theranos was able to tell a great story about the change they want to make in the world of health and serve as a call to action in being better informed about individual health. In the past couple of weeks however, Theranos has been under tremendous scrutiny for their technology and how they use it.  

In the future technology and expertise will become more universal. What will truly make a healthcare organisation distinctive is the level of care they provide to their patients along with game changing technology.

Illustration by Calle Enstrom.

Mallika Reddy is Content Strategist at Wolff Olins London. Follow her @mallikareddyg

Long live the brick and mortar

Pirch, recently on the Forbes list of most promising American companies, is a chain of stores that sells high-end kitchen, bath and outdoor products. The CEO and founder Jeffry Sears uses the philosophy of, ‘Stop thinking digital and start thinking human.’ Amen, brother. Pirch hits all the right notes, tapping into our natural drivers of human behavior in their store experience… Connection, growth, assurance, variety. Walk into any of their spaces and you’ll immediately understand. It has that welcoming, ‘I could hang out all day here’ kinda vibe. Built around the ‘try before you buy’ ethos, it allows customer to test, learn and engage with products enabling the person to get lost in world of possibilities and also leave with the confidence that they made the right choice. They’re obviously doing something right since the average person stays in Pirch for 2 hours, testing the aromatherapy showers or attending a cooking class. Whether they know it or not (and they probably do), Pirch is fast becoming that 3rd place in people’s lives which bodes well for their future.

Shopping in store can be an emotional, visceral experience, with the potential to be far more memorable and exciting than anything found online, behind a screen. And yet, still, too many people are having too many poor experiences too consistently that they’re choosing the screen! And I get it… bad customer service, incredibly long lines, unintuitive wayfinding, too little information or worse, confusing information. It’s no wonder people would rather research/browse/ shop online. My question is why would any company want their customers to feel hassled by any experience with their brand even if they’re shopping with them online? Why wouldn’t you try and make every point of interaction with your customer amazing? A happy customer is a returning customer.

It seems that over the last hundred years or so, retail has gained in size and lost its humanity. What was once an industry with great disruptors and leaders in innovation are now the bane of people’s existence. That may sound harsh but I don’t think it’s too far from the truth. Get this, 60% consumers have bailed on a transaction or not made an intended purchase because of poor customer service and 65% of consumers said they’ve cut ties with a brand over a single poor customer service experience. I think it’s quite easy to understand the impact of a bad customer service experience on a brand’s bottom line with statistics like that. Not only the loss in sales but the effort and investment it will take to win back that customer is no easy feat. In fact it will take more than 10 positive customer experiences to make up for that 1 negative experience. And those dissatisfied people talk! Clearly when the perception and affinity for one’s brand could change in a blink of an eye, it’s something worth investing in.

Customer service is just one piece of the overall in store experience, but a pretty important one. What about how people actually explore, discover, learn, and interact with the products? Oftentimes I feel like companies have taken the lazy approach to designing the in store experience which doesn’t take into consideration the customer’s needs at all. Apparently two in three shoppers who tried to find information within a store say they didn’t find what they needed and 43% of the left frustrated (Google/Ipsos Media, 2014). Companies should use the floor (literally) and leverage it as a platform to tell their story and build a relationship with the customer. If people are taking time out of their day and making the conscious decision to spend it with a particular brand, wouldn’t you hope it would be simple to find what you’re looking for or even better yet, be inspired by something you saw? Luckily there are brands that are putting the customer at the heart of their experience, designing for their needs, wants and intrinsic human desires.

At Wolff Olins, we’ve worked with a wide variety of brands that wanted to step up their retail game. From apparel to tech and consumer goods, we helped them define the consumer experience and deliver it with clever and innovative design. If what you’re looking to do is create a more meaningful and valued relationship with your customer, I would always keep these principles in mind:

1. Put the individual front and center of any decision you make. Truly understand your customer, not just their needs but also their underlying human desires. Solve their problems, make their life easier and as a result become their trusted, go-to brand.

2. Design for the total and complete experience across physical and virtual touch points. Make sure every interaction is genuine, seamless and delightful. Remember, one bad experience can unravel any trace of a good one.

3. Make it fun! Put the joy back into shopping. Engage all the senses and find ways to inspire, educate and excite people. Don’t be afraid to make it fun and make people smile, they’ll surely come back for more.

Pirch is just one example of a company who’s taking actions and disrupting the ‘brick and mortar’ retail experience. Others like West Elm, LuluLemon and REI are also taking the shopping experience to new heights by engaging staff and customers in inventive and creative ways. These companies are pioneering a new way to do retail and personally, it makes me very hopeful for the future of my shopping adventures.

Illustration by Steve Reinmuth.

Danielle Horanieh is a Senior Program Manager at Wolff Olins San Francisco.

Creativity + Kanye

Listening to the recent Zane Lowe Kanye West interview, it struck me how Mr West's thinking on creativity can be applied to the changing landscape of our own industry. Riffing off a few soundbites from the man himself, here’s some things creatives, and creative businesses, could learn from Yeezus…

'Think, and be involved in the product' Focus on making the product, the service, the thing better, beyond the visual.

We live in increasingly messy creative times, lines are blurring between agency specialities and as a result, problems and solutions no longer fit neatly into buckets. This presents a great opportunity for all creative businesses to get to the heart of a problem early and explore the important issues, like how can we make the actual product and the experience of that product better?

‘Nothing should be exclusive' Think mass, not design for other designers.

All too often the strength of new work is judged on an exclusive collection of voices on a super niche blog or magazine. Who cares? The work must impact positively on the everyday to be great. Does it make someones life easier? Has it improved something? Will your Mum and Dad notice?

'Fusion is the future. Period.' Collaboration is key for creative work to be great.

Like a team of super producers huddled round a mixing board creating sonic odysseys, it’s important to get people with different perspectives around the table to solve business challenges using creativity. Not only designers, programme managers and strategists but technologists, animators, typographers, sound designers, the list goes on. More minds make better solutions.

‘The world can be saved by design’ Don’t underestimate the potential of the work.

As design and creativity become a regular topic of conversation around the boardroom table, design is a big deal. We live in a time where it is no longer seen as the ‘arty fluff', but as a credible business tool with the potential to drive cultural and societal change. As Yeezy may say… dat shit kray.

How to make your tone of voice sing

Brands come to life and express themselves in a variety of ways: from core identity elements such as a logo and typeface, all the way through to service design and user experience. As brands seek to become more human and more engaging, tone of voice becomes a key component in both recognition and differentiation. Perhaps one of the best known – and most loved – verbal styles comes from Innocent Smoothies. You could argue that innocent single-handedly caused a revolution in how brands not only talk to but also chit-chat with their audience.

Interested in how they adapted their distinctive tone of voice for a new product offering - the turbo charged Super Smoothies range - we interviewed Dan Germain, Group Head of Brand and Creative at Innocent.

Why did the Super Smoothies need something different in terms of visual/verbal identity?

They’re a range of drinks in their own right, so they needed something to make them stand out. They’ve got a bit more oomph about them as well, so we wanted to use some bolder colours to make them sing.

What did you retain from the core tone of voice and what did you evolve?

What we’ll always retain is a natural, human tone of voice. Anything from innocent should always sound like it has been written or spoken by a real person. In terms of evolution, we were probably a bit more straightforward and to the point.

How would you describe the Super Smoothie tone of voice?

It’s more direct, and it has to be a bit more authoritative. There are some seriously healthy and powerful ingredients in these drinks, and we want to make sure that this is clearly expressed.

What did you learn from this process in terms of the limitations and/or strengths of the innocent brand?

I think we learned that we are very comfortable writing in our ‘classic’ tone of voice, and we had to push ourselves to write differently. We have a few people who write copy and content at innocent, so it was also a case of getting different people to have a go, and see who came up with the right thing.

And lastly, if an Innocent 'Pearl Barley and Veg' veg pot were to meet an Innocent kiwi Super Smoothie at a party, would they be friends?

I think they would be fine friends. Fruit and veg always seem to get along pretty well.

Dan’s responses highlight the importance of having core (or “classic”) brand elements that are not only strong but known and understood by a spectrum of people across the business. Only then will you have the foundations to explore further afield, whilst taking your audience with you on the journey. 

Experiences for (lots of) individuals

In our third piece in a short series on creative partnerships, Global Principal Tom Wason on how we design experiences to be more intelligent, responsive, connected and useful for everyone.

At Wolff Olins we’ve always believed that individuals – not just leaders, but customers, employees, partners, creators, consumers, everyone – are the force that positively propels organisations and society forward.

Technology has put incredible power in the hands of individuals to disrupt at scale: to change how others think and behave; to change established systems; to force organisations to change. Dramatically. Fast.

An individual’s experience of a brand determines how they think about it. How they talk about it. Whether they want to have anything to do with it in future.

People experience an organisation in so many ways. Mediated through different contexts, cultures, channels and devices. Directly through partners and existing customers. Never isolated, always part of a wider journey. The simple, single customer journey ‘funnel’ beloved of traditional marketing is devoid of context and an abstraction too far.

What determines how that experience goes is the person – their needs and context; the extended organisation behind it – their business, culture, systems and partners; and the medium through which the experience is occurring.

So we try to understand people from all angles. Starting with the individual. We work with the research partner and play with vast troves of data to visualize the scale and differences. But we also meet the people.  Farmers in Guadalajara. Retail assistants in carrier stores. Skype users in their bedrooms. News readers on their smartphones. We talk to them in their environment. And we bring them into ours. The whole team gets to know them – not just the research partner.

But it’s naïve to suggest that we can simply ‘put the customer at the center’ and expect all to be hunky dory. That usually leads to a lovely design that looks great in a case study but is never used by a paying customer. To actually reach people we need to determine the right balance between what the organisation could be capable of delivering and the needs of individuals.

We help organisations decide what they really want to be good at for that individual. And what can come later. Poor parts of the experience can be improved by best practice. But to really delight someone, the great parts of the experience should be the heroes.

To design a coherent whole, we have to understand the whole system that can affect people’s experiences. Marketing. Retail. Sales. Engineering. Legal. Product. Customer Service. Partners. Suppliers. Creating a new event stand, Facebook page, or advertising campaign isn’t going to cut it (although they might be part of the answer).

Then we help organisations change their internal behaviours, culture and processes to deliver these new experiences. For example, introducing new measurement systems that encourage people to take responsibility for the customer experience, and launching beacons of change that show the organisation what direction to head in.

For the individual this means ever-improving experiences that add up to a clear and coherent idea of what an organisation, their products and services, are going to be like.

Our clients often touch billions of people’s lives. They operate in all the cultures in the world. We try to have a lasting impact for everyone, everywhere, over many years.

Chin up

By Tom Petty

"Anyone want another drink?"

*tap tap tap*

*swipe*

"Anyone?"

*pinch to zoom*

BBC Radio 4 would call you a Zeitgeister, The Guardian newspaper? Something annoying like The Digerati, but I'll simply refer to you as One Of Us. We are those that love nothing more than making things out of emerging technologies. The chance to create immersive experiences that ooze ground-breaking-yet-intuitive interactions has been given to every one of us, and my god have we taken it.

The good news is, as an industry, we're killing it. An amazing new product promising to re-define [insert non-problem here] is launched every week. Cue millions of downloads. Congrats, a billion dollar valuation!

The bad news is, as an industry, we're killing it.

In an astonishing feat of supersonic-darwinism, we're now so good at browsing, tweeting, tagging, snapchatting, sharing, and IM'ing, that we don't actually bloody talk to each other any more.

All this well intentioned hard work has led to the now ubiquitous scene of a group of friends not chatting to each other. A hyper-connected drone army with a hive mind, they don't need to talk to communicate, they have smartphones instead. It's like a scene from I, Robot. I'm coining it iRobot.

I'll prove it. If you're reading this on public transport, look up: I bet all you can see are the tops of heads, fingers tapping away on tastefully designed interfaces. And if you're out with someone but still reading this: you're part of the problem. You're a disgrace. Go and talk to your mates instead.

"Crisps then?"

*three-finger swipe*

All these exciting new sites and services are so good that we don't want to do anything else. No one wants to talk to one friend standing next to them, when they can spy on dozens of old classmates and keep up with Rich Kids of Instagram. The problem is that we've made it all too much fun.

The upshot is that, as the creators of the problem, we're in a position to get us not just back to 'normal', but a better, more enjoyable normal. What's most needed are services that improve every day life in The Real World. I'm not going to use Airbnb or Hailo as examples (oops) of businesses using smartphones to enhance our daily routines. I've been doing that for a while now and, frankly, I'm bored of it. What I'd love to be doing instead is reeling off a list of a thousand things that use these incredible new pieces of technology to improve my actual life. That make the real world more interesting than my iPhone. Unfortunately, I can't, but that's where we come in. This is our chance at redemption.

All this is especially exciting if you're in the energy, food, healthcare, or transportation business. These are the oft-overlooked industries that make up the fabric of our lives; who else is in a better position to make it all a bit better?

Let's stop encouraging the generation of content, sharing, and general detachment from our surroundings, and instead start championing products that promote deeper engagement with the world at large. By focusing on people and not users, it's much easier to think about lives that exist outside of a standard use-case. Lives that we can sex up a bit. After all, Real Life is just Instagram without the filters.

Tom Petty is a designer at Wolff Olins London. You can follow him on twitter @tp.

  Image via ABC

The Dark Ages

By Tom Petty

I've recently been dealing with a large utility company as a customer. I use the term customer loosely, since at this point I feel a bit like a discarded crisp packet being blown around an empty car park. In the rain.

It made me think about something critical to businesses these days: your brand is what you do. It's not something you pay for and get, it's the cumulative effect of every single action you take and every interaction you have with your customers.

Recently my interactions with this un-named company have been piped versions of Duran Duran's greatest hits and a rather fetching mono rendition of Greensleeves. There was also the glossy brochure that came through the door just as the engineer was leaving (the problem unresolved) — it cheerfully told me that prices were going up by a record amount.

The truth is, when you increase prices more than competition, when you can't call people directly, when you cut customers off whilst they're holding, when you can't book an appointment in anything less than 6-hour windows, and when engineers do arrive they absolve themselves of responsibility, your brand is a joke. No amount of identity changes, strategic initiatives, ownable interactions or experience principles will help you.

For a brand to mean something, you have to do something. You have to back up your words with actions.

There are businesses that do this well. First Direct will answer your call almost immediately. American Express will let you text or email, as well as call them. DPD gives tight, accurate delivery windows, and makes it easy to change them.

It's tempting to see 'brand' as a sort of panacea — a way to define how the world perceives your company, but instead what's important is how customers actually experience your company. Without that, you're blowing in the wind.

Tom Petty is a designer specialising in experience and interaction at Wolff Olins London. You can follow him on twitter @tp

Food is the new music

By Melissa Andrada

I was planning a trip home to NYC and the first question I asked my sister is: “Where should we eat?”

Ten years ago, my first question would have been: “Are there any good shows happening?” Like many Seattlites who grew up in the ‘90s and early ‘00s, I spent my youth seeing Death Cab at local venues before they got big, scouring indie record stores for hidden gems, and creating mixed tapes for my friends

Fast forward to 2012. The closest thing I have to a mixed tape is my Spotify playlist.

Thanks to technology, music is more personalised, democratic and accessible than ever. It began with the iPod, which revolutionised the way people listened to music.  We went from buying CDs and listening to whole albums to downloading MP3s and listening to individual songs. The “Top 25 Most Played” song list became one of the most telling and intimate parts of our cultural identity.

More recently, we’re shifting from downloading to streaming. Through Spotify, I have millions of artists and songs just click away. Through Pandora, I can go on autopilot at work and listen to Phoenix and bands that sound like them. I couldn’t live without Spotify and/or Pandora, but they take away the magic of discovering a new band or musician. Sure, concerts and shows bring back some of the magic, but it’s just not the same.

Hipsters and non-hipsters alike now ask: “Have you tried this new restaurant?” Chefs are the new rock stars. People follow David Chang in NYC, Heston Blumenthal in London, or Tom Douglas in Seattle as if they were the lead singer of the band.

Unlike music, technology has not yet erased the magic of discovering a new restaurant or chef. While Yelp and Zagat have made it more challenging to keep favourite spots hidden, going to a restaurant or eating your way through a food market is such a visceral, multi-sensory part of culture that it has to be experienced in person.

Melissa Andrada is a strategist at Wolff Olins London. She’s passionate about the intersection between technology, social good and brand. Lee Fields is currently at the top of her Spotify starred list. @themelissard

 Image via Esquire

Watching HBO

Last night, my mother sent me an email worth sharing with the industry. It's a pitch perfect example of how any brand would want a mom to react to a digital experience of it. And it speaks to something we really believe at Wolff Olins- brands that make it super easy for people to use and share their great products have the advantage- their loyal customers do the marketing for them. 

subject: Watching HBO

Rach,

did you ever try to get onto hbo go?  Even on my computer, I think I can access any hbo show, any season, any episode, so if I have the time I could start watching the Wire from episode one, or Deadwood or any of the series from the last 6 or 7 years.  

You could watch Treme which is great or True Blood which is crazy!

Let me know, 

Mom

Rachel Blatt is the Content Manager at Wolff Olins.

Surprise Me

            By Melissa Andrada

Surprise. 

In today’s, data-driven, anticipatory world, surprise is something I seldom experience. The world has been engineered to create planned serendipity based on our likes and behaviours online.

But since arriving in London a month and a half ago, I’ve stumbled upon three offline experiences that capture this desire for unexpected, sensory experiences:

Lost Lectures

Re-thinking the boring, traditional lecture model, Lost Lectures takes attendees into secret locations “designed to surprise, delight and bring the imagination to life.”  To give you a taste, this month’s theme is “Lost at Sea,” featuring a National Geographic adventurer, a time traveller and an improv comedy duo.

Punch Drunk Travel

Felix Barrett, Creative Director of Sleep No More, will be taking immersive theatre to the next level. He’s setting up a travel agency that takes a city as its backdrop so your life becomes a show. According to Barrett, “There’s nothing better than giving something to an audience that has no idea what they’re walking into.”

Dans Le Noir

Dans Le Noir is a chain of restaurants across scattered across Europe and NYC where customers eat and drink in complete darkness. Dans Le Noir has been around for several years, but continues to surprise and challenge guests’ sense of taste and smell. 

When was the last time you were surprised?

  Melissa Andrada is a strategist at Wolff Olins London. She’s passionate about the intersection between technology, social good and brand. A recent London transplant, she spends her spare time exploring the city for fun, unexpected experiences.  @themelissard

Image via NY Post