5 ways we’ve used AI in our creative practice this year and what we learned. AI technology is growing in leaps and bounds and we’ve been experimenting with it in our creative practice. It’s become extremely useful in areas that we hadn’t planned on, and not as useful in areas where we thought it should be a slam dunk. Here’s a run-down of 5 different ways we’ve been using AI and what works (hot) and what left us wanting (bot).
Co-creation in design is like bringing in a co-pilot for your project. You and your team have spent a lot of time in the design process; walking a mile in the user’s shoes, talking and learning about their journey’s, using your newfound knowledge to come up with some great ideas through brainstorming, developing them into fully functional concepts and then having built them into rapid prototypes. That is phenomenal progress which most companies are hesitant to fully consider for their
What do you think of when you read the phrase Rapid Prototyping? Making something out of nothing really fast? Playing with models to see how they work? While the phrase might conjure up ideas of a Star Trek replicator or some wild 3D printing factory, rapid prototyping is a design thinking tool that all companies can execute in-house to learn those critical first lessons about their conceptual idea or product. At it’s core, rapid prototyping is creating a visual – sometimes
Concept development might seem pretty straight forward; you’ve completed the user journey, interviewed them to learn their perspectives and conducted detailed brainstorming sessions. Now you’re ready to select the best ideas and build them into winning solutions that will fit within the creative brief (or project goals, business criteria, etc… ) before being unleashed upon your market. But is it that simple? As long as the right processes are followed, yes, it can be. But what are the steps and
Do you ever wonder how creatives at ad agencies come up with new ideas on a daily basis? What type of brainstorming processes do they use to stay relevant to attract the viewers’ attention? At its heart, this overused buzz term is essentially that really focused, results-driven sister to daydreaming. Brainstorming generates ideas, challenges conventions, and brings about new perspectives to the status quo. This is usually the best part of the design thinking process. Everyone involved in the project
Talking is one of our most primal and basic functions, yet when presented with interviews or data on a computer screen, more and more people are choosing the impersonal interaction. User research has always held a high place within design but it now has come to the forefront with more people competing for customer attention. While a number of user insight approaches exist such as A/B testing, heat mapping, and expression tracking, these all tend to get overly complicated and
Imagine being the proverbial fly on the wall watching your customer’s journey from recognition of your brand, through research to contact and ultimately purchase? What would that journey look like? What types of ‘a-ha’ moments would you hope to uncover? Journey Mapping is taking the hypothetical customer journey and plotting it out in a flow-chart, Gantt chart or another visual format. This map envisions the actual journey, documenting touch-points and areas of friction. It can also envision the ideal journey,
Some people are better at founding and starting companies than running them. In the startup world, there is an undeniable myth that founders make the best CEOs. This myth was probably started by founders looking to retain their control over their baby, which is usually supported by only telling half of the story of the heroic founder-CEO. It is commonly forgotten that founders like Steve Jobs, Jack Dorsey, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, were either ousted as CEO or stepped
Designers are visual people, creating for the eyes and in-turn, the mind. With incredible skills developing colour pallets to fonts, tactile objects to expansive spaces, stunning images to coveted fashions, designers truly live in the now of visual creativity. Designing the interfaces on our phones and buildings for our offices the universal language of design is user interaction – how to simplify or enhance how people interact with everything they create. Visual design touches the eye first, but it is
Demographics, a cornerstone of marketing, is quickly being replaced by Customer Personas. Marketing theory has traditionally said that customers all fit within prescribed demographics; age, gender, socio-economic status, education, profession, hobbies and more. While the traditional way of segmenting customers might have worked in the past, the theories can only serve to act as a lesson on what not to do. These profiles sound nice, but they’re nearly worthless and provide next to no valuable insights into a market. Empty
Founders are the first to place a bet on their company because founders are investors. These investments come in a few forms; seed capital, sweat equity, partnership or in-kind contributions. Regardless of the structure, one truth remains – if you want to grow your business from a side hustle into a scalable, full-time operation, you need capital. You’ve put in the sweat equity to-date, and moved your idea from notes on paper to a business plan or working prototype. Now
Think of all the great creative work we see on a daily basis. How the right image paired with the right words evoked reactions. How a new interface felt like a friendly piece of software that you were able to use with ease. Or a new product that came in such precise packaging that you wonder if you should keep the box as well. All of these pieces, products, and designs came to life from a creative brief. A creative
The bags under your eyes betray the forced smile on your face. It takes twice as long to get ready in the morning, picking the right clothes feels like a monumental chore, and in the end, you’re dressed in black anyway. Stress has overwhelmed you, hampering your ability to simply pick an outfit and now you need to come up with creative and innovative ideas. While we’ve all experienced burnout and have developed solutions to survive it, there is added
Nothing kills the good feeling of deploying a great looking product to your audience than receiving a bill far higher than you had anticipated. Sure, there were some revisions but the back and forth for those final little changes didn’t seem like it took too much time. If you’re not mindful of it, revision costs can cost you hundreds or even thousands of dollars. Most studios, agencies and freelancers bill by the hour – every little colour change, type movement,
Being a designer is a dream for many. Full days creating beautiful pieces and stunning interactions. This is great for members of a design team, but it’s only the beginning for a design leader. We’ve all seen agencies and studios promoting their skills and why they ‘know brands’. But once you look a little deeper, it becomes clear that most don’t really walk the walk – and worse, are posers copying designs and reselling them as their own original creations.
Design is in the C-Suite. So what happens now? The cheers can be heard from art school classrooms, from behind drawing tablets in design studios and in long forgotten cubicles occupied by internal creative teams living in corporate purgatory. Design has won, it is now at the boardroom table. What will smart executives do with this opportunity? Design leaders are ready to introduce the world to Design Thinking. You know, that inherent, natural, gut-driven process that creatives ‘just get’ and
Many first-time founders don’t realize this, but it’s crucial to understand that an investment round is not only the investor choosing the startup to invest in but also the other way around. Choosing the wrong investor can ultimately bring significant consequences which might take months or even years to correct. Recently we discussed what entrepreneurs should look for in their investors, what type of interview questions and track records they need to understand before they can bring a term sheet to
As all designers know, great design doesn’t start with specs, but with the user. How will they interact with their creation? What type of look, feel, emotion, response should the design evoke? While the final products that designers create ultimately become the consumer face of a company, design has always lived its life in middle management, rarely straying into the C-Suite. As all designers have experienced before, when it does finally make it to the executives, decisions are informed by gut
Practically every startup founder has or is on the hunt for the right investor to seed their vision. While the wrong ones won’t necessarily ruin a company’s chances, the right ones can make your life as a founder infinitely easier through those all-too-critical initial sales. Below we look at five areas of alignment between a founder and investors and then explore five common returns entrepreneurs want from their investors. A lot has been written about what to look for in
“That seems like a lot for a freelancer, why don’t we find a cheaper junior option?” And with those words, the start of the project from hell came to be. Not because the project had crazy requirements, but because in the quest to save some cash, a founder hired a lower cost freelancer only to get stuck in revision purgatory and with it, a vicious final bill that was over triple the intended project cost. Lots of entrepreneurs face the dilemma
“We really need some design help on this! Should we get an agency, or does anyone know a good freelancer?” This phrase has been uttered one way or another in practically every startup’s office within their first year of business, and it leads to the common dilemma, agency vs. freelancer? In my career – which spans running an agency, working as a freelancer, and helping startups as an advisor and consultant – I’ve heard this question countless times. Unfortunately, there
We’ve all had that client. The one with a huge, last minute, complicated project and then try to play the role of ‘worst client ever’. They do things like neglecting to answer their phone or email, love to change their minds about details in the brief, all the while demanding that you do the impossible in a matter of minutes. Of course, they forgot to mention they expect you to do these things free of charge. Clients like these are
We’ve all dealt with difficult clients — every studio has them. You know the one, the client who frustrates you to no end, who seems to have no respect for your craft/business, monopolizes your time and makes continuous unreasonable demands. Sometimes you might have more than one, and you probably spend your weekends in the studio putting out their fires. It’s the classic 80:20 principle; you spend 80% of your resources on 20% of your clients. Which makes the remaining
The moment you start fundraising, you begin running two product lines. The flagship product that you sell directly to customers (what most people know you for). AND Your company Investors are not clients of your product, they are looking at your whole company as a separate product that they may want to purchase part of. This means they look for nice “features” in the business like; founding team, traction, business model, revenue, etc. Here are 10 more things you should
Type matters in an era of consolidating type foundry’s, digital design and Google Fonts, we’re seeing eroding emphasis on the importance of type. More and more, design is taking a ‘good enough’ approach versus taking the time to craft graphical arts, and the first casualty is type. Now I’ll admit, type was never my favorite as a junior designer – it’s complex, there are hundreds of thousands of typefaces, it requires patience and skill to really typeset. As my career evolved,
