Collaborating to Solve a Problem

The brothers from Tectonic work with businesses to identify holes in their marketing and business strategies.

Founded in 2017, the duo have some really interesting insights into what to ask when finding the best solution to identified issues.

In the lecture this week, they discussed the importance of the following:

• Audience – Who are they, why are they your audience and what do they do?
• They will usually fall into 5 categories of; Innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority and laggards.
• Do they understand the problem?
• Do they have the same problems.
• What do THEY think is the problem?

In tackling these problems they suggest writing down as many problems as you think the audience has – and then to question 5 times ‘why’ those problems exist. Other things to consider include:

• Is there already a solution
• Are there any competitors?
• How much would it cost and is it worth it?
• Avoiding vanity metrics and measure your solutions success.
• Think of your user’s experiences

Unique Value Proposition

a sentence that brings that turns an unaware person into an interested prospect.

Minimum Viable Product

the smallest possible thing that brings the most amount of value to your audience.

Rebranding in the Open

In 2016, Mozilla wanted to rebrand. They enlisted the help of the public to narrow down possible solutions in a public forum.

Johnson Banks were appointed by Mozilla to finesse the new brand. They narrowed down the selection to four possibles before sharing with a test audience, “who were asked to compare just one of the four designs to a series of brand attributes for Mozilla.

“This research phase will provide additional data to help us select our final recommendation,” Murray said. “It will help us discern, for instance, which of these four pathways resonates best with which segment of our audience.
The resulting rebrand earned both Mozilla and Johnson Banks two awards at the Brand Impact awards in 2017.

This proves people can be a great help in the design process. It’s also important to note that they can be a hinderer too! They may not be aware of tools available, effects or current trends.
Design, after all, is subjective and design by committee can be a frustrating situation.

‘We want to be known as the champions for a healthy Internet. An Internet where we are all free to explore and discover and create and innovate without barriers or limitations. Where power is in the hands of many, not held by few. An Internet where our safety, security and identity are respected.’

– Mozilla

Some feedback even made its way into the final mark. Several commenters were put off that the original “Protocol” used a capital “M,” when a URL code uses all lowercase letters. The final mark has a lowercase “m.”

Workshop Challenge

Develop a digital tool or process to aid the collaboration for future working from your findings in the previous three weeks.

• You should ensure this response is to your own emerging ideas on your own working methodology.
• Present your idea as a designed visual proposal in the format of your choice.

As a local government designer I work completely within the constituency of Great Yarmouth. I know there are many people doing the same job as me and yet, we never collaborate. Surely this needs to change?

Time to Sketch

Key notes:
The Virtual Studio (TVS) aims to support Local Authority creatives who work in isolation. The app will bring them together in one place for shared, collaborative success.

Problems:
Working in isolation brings a lot of problems which can be seen to the left. Collaborating in a quick and easy to manage way will allow for better, more considered designs across the County.

Anything like it?:
Collaborative apps and online workstreams such as Figma, Sketch and Adobe XD already exist. TVS aims to be a more holistic platform in which users converse in a social way.

Behance and Linkedin are sometimes used to showcase creative works but this can be limiting in terms of who sees it and who you can ask for creative and appropriate feedback.

A New Studio:
Like with new studio (discussed previously) a customer facing instagram/website could be produced from the best works across the County.

This would provide exciting commercial opportunities for the collective who would then be able to take on larger clients.

The pay would be split by workload and, as per my business case, each designer involved would get some money to reinvest in their local area.

APP pages:
I believe the app needs the following functionality and pages:
Profile page
Help me page
News feed
Search
Jobs helping on
Customer facing page
Notifications

Others that are similar

FIGMA
I haven’t used Figma so can only go from what I have learnt about it online. It appears great if you need to work with creatives based in different locations.

Thing is, with TVS, I would want people to share the opinions but not to be able to edit the documents.

As lead designer for your particular location, you are more likely to understand the nuances of council life. What is done in Kings Lynn may be frowned upon in Breckland.

This ‘live editing’ is something which I don’t think belongs in TVS. Comments and suggestions will be enough for this solution.

Instagram
The ultimate visual social media platform. It is now owned by Facebook too, allowing for easy access in sharing to both platforms.

It can sometimes be time consuming to upload your artwork regularly. Especially with a lengthy council sign off process.

By collaborating with other local authority creatives the customer facing instagram page would be consistently filled with exciting and visually interesting pieces from across the county.

This is an excellent way to publicise our work and would be great if it could be integrated with the app.

TEAMS
This is an excellent platform for communicating and has proven so valuable during Covid times.

Whilst it provides great communication tools such as, web conferences and chat features, it lacks in providing a way to discuss visual solutions.

I do hope to integrate some of the aspects of teams and hope that communication will be as easy on my suggested platform.

Project management and discussion is key to my idea and something like Teams would go a long way to it being considered a success.

Getting to Grips with Adobe XD

I really wanted to stretch myself in this module so decided to learn how to use Adobe XD.

I wanted to give the best possible example I could to demonstrate how the app may look and how it coul be used.

The final design and it’s complexity can be seen to the left and below where I have captured a screen recording of it in action.

Overall, I am happy with how the app turned out. It hints at the possiblilties and potential it has.

The next step would be to involve a developer and some key stakeholders to test, iterate – test and iterate.

I would love to continue developing this as I feel it has a need within the market. One that could be capitalised upon.

The Result

Ideas Wall

References

Johnson Banks (2017)Mozilla: Re-branding the Internet champion, [online]. Available at: https://www.johnsonbanks.co.uk/work/mozilla (Links to an external site.). [Accessed 11 June 2019]

Dezeen, Morby, A. (2016): Johnson Banks edges close to completing Mozilla rebrand using open design process (Links to an external site.) [online]

Margaret Rhodes Design (2017) Introducing Mozilla’s New Logo, moz://a. Get it? [online]. Available at: https://www.wired.com/2017/01/introducing-mozillas-new-logo-moza-get/ (Links to an external site.). [Accessed 11 June 2019]