End-to-End Brand Experience
Aristotle - Participatory Design System – Part 2
Rebrand
No more than a month after delivering the initial style guide for development, an acquisition/merger was announced. Brands for both companies were dissolved and a rebranding decision was announced. The product I supported remained a focus for the organization, but as a result of the merger, the portfolio of products and services changed, as did the stakeholders.
Prior to the merger, we had discussed brand and to what level brand impacts the Design Strategy. We had concluded that the brand was not a driver, that the design should primarily focus on a distinct look-and-feel for competitive differentiation, and that the design be iterative based on user research. This would allow us the ability to make incremental design changes based on usage and the needs of the user-base.
Post-merger the strategy changed. The new direction was to build brand equity for the new company and now all products would be branded to support that goal.
Brand Recognition
During the process of establishing the new design strategy, it was determined that Brand-is-Product and Product-is-Brand, meaning that there was to be no delineation between brand and product. They are one in the same, and corporate brand now drives product design. It is my opinion that if the company's strategy leans heavily on brand recognition, the product should support that direction. But what does that mean for the entire portfolio? To what degree should brand impact the user's experience, and how does each product tie-in for a cohesive brand experience? Therefore, does each product need to look the same? Or, can each product have distinct sub-branding that ties into the brand but allows for product recognition? If the brand styles have negative connotation with the user, how much are we willing to sacrifice usability for brand recognition?
Brand Strategy
I have been working with Adobe products for over 30 years, watching the emergence of new products, features and capabilities, but was amazed when I discovered that their brand design system was based on the color wheel. When laid out horizontally, I noticed some sort of pattern that resembled a color spectrum, but when laid out in a circular format, I discovered that each product has a place within the color wheel. Brilliant! Adobe's strategy for their brand experience ties-in to the color wheel for a systematic approach which allows for scalability when and if their portfolio expands.
Brand Analysis
The Adobe Brand Strategy was perfect for what I was trying to communicate to the newly found team. If brand impacts product directly, what is our brand strategy for the entire portfolio? Does each product look the same, or should they each have a distinct look-and-feel for product recognition?
For my presentation, I put together a brand analysis of our current portfolio. I compiled all the product's branding for a side-by-side comparison, showing how each products branding does not currently support the corporate brand. I also mocked-up some product icon design's that was inline with the Adobe brand experience, in order to present a more tangible representation of what our portfolio could be. I was soliciting feedback that would help me understand how the design system I was working on will impact the portfolio.
Brand Impact
The second bit of information needed to move forward was to better understand the level of impact the Brand needs to have on the product in order to support brand recognition. During the kickoff meeting, an example that was brought up as brand recognition within the product was Evernote. The argument was that Evernote leverages brand guidelines as their design system and the product for brand recognition.
Evernote has a really strong example of what I am calling an End-to-End Brand Experience. The marketing website is saturated in the brand since it is the initial touchpoint to the product, and brand recognition should be high in order to resonate for a lasting impression. The login page reduces brand saturation since the product is assumed to have been adopted and the brand has already left its impression. Within the product, brand's presence is significantly reduced since user experience is the primary focus and the greatest value screen real-estate can offer is to facilitate the goals of the user.
To demonstrate the varying levels of brand impact at particular touch-points of the brand experience, I used an F-Shape diagram in conjunction with screenshots of Evernote's marketing tools, sales tools and the product's UI. I then highlighted the number of opportunities for brand to impact our product. This presentation was intended to create a common understanding of concepts that factor into gauging brand Impact for an informed decision on moving forward with the design system supporting the brand strategy.
New Direction
The feedback that resulted from this presentation was great. Yes, there was a strategic shift in what drives the product's design, but everyone was now aligned and the rationale was recorded as an added data-point for measuring the the success of the Participatory Design System. We went from Trend-setter being what drove the design strategy, to brand being the driver. Below are screenshots of the Trend-setter direction (left) and the new, brand driven design direction. We went from a rich, textured UI treatment, to Flat Design. The most important result from this exercise was that brand and product were now aligned for implementing a cohesive, End-to-End Brand Experience.
The Aristotle Project documents a design system I created in 2017.
The 3-part series explains various sections of the project and the design and thought process.
Part 1 – What is Participatory Design discusses the scope and how it was defined through Experience Workshops.
Part 2 – End-to-End Brand Experience focuses on how I brought the Product Design Strategy together with a post-merger/acquisition rebranding, for an end-to-end brand experience.
Part 3 - Living Documentation discusses through examples, the process of defining patterns, creation of the sticker sheet, Adobe Creative Cloud design assets, the Craft Library, and publishing the specifications to a WordPress site as a guide for both designers and developers.
