fEATURE what is the reaL vaLUe OF desiGn? Notes By employing such design tools as empathy, 4. scott Cedrowski, “nike’s new Marketing Mojo,” CNN Money, creativity, and rationality, we are able to February 13, 2012. reframe problems in ways that forge new pathways toward innovative solutions. 2 BRanD expRessIon People today want to connect with brands as extensions of themselves. We see them, hear them, and interact with them in more ways than ever before. Some of the most valuable work designers can perform lies in the interpretation of a company’s brand elements and how customers connect with them. “Connecting used to be, ‘Here’s some product, and here’s some advertising. We hope you like it,’” says nike CeO Mark Parker. “Connecting today is a dialogue.” And nike has put its money where its mouth is. its spending on tV and print advertising has dropped about 40 percent in the past three years at the same time that its sales have increased to more than $25 billion—more than 30 percent bigger than closest rival Adidas. How? Nike is going straight to where the customer is—the digital world. nike has carefully crafted a multichannel digital presence that not only fosters open communication with customers, but also encourages those customers to connect with each other. in 2010, the company launched nike Digital Sport, a new division in charge of developing devices and technologies that help users track their personal statistics in whatever sport they pursue. By deepening relationships with (and among) its customers, nike enables customers to amplify its signature Just do it attitude. The result? Before, Nike could count its biggest brand audience as the 200 million people who tune in to the Super 4 Bowl. now, across all its sites and social media communities, it can hit that figure any day. nike continues to communicate the aspirational, active, can-do spirit that its customers crave across its product lines, and promotes it with platforms designed to amplify that energy. 3 solvIng unmeT useR neeDs Design research emphasizes the use of He kicked off Design for Delight, a design- empathy—an instrument for encountering the thinking-based internal program intended to world as others might. the importance of this tool help intuit development teams better understand cannot be overstated. After all, no matter whether customers’ frustrations and desires so that one designs products, services, or processes, intuit could design solutions to meet them. this consciously keeping the end users in mind helps deep customer understanding eventually led to to reveal inspiration for category-killing products, the development of Snaptax, a mobile app that as well as lower the risk of failure. Further, being allows users to complete their taxes in 10 minutes the first to find and develop solutions to latent or less. Within three weeks of its launch, the app needs, which one can uncover by studying saw more than 350,000 downloads and remains what people do, think, and feel provides the wildly popular on the iOS App Store and the opportunity for first-mover advantage, provided Google Play Store. the company can commercialize and scale the identifying and capitalizing on the discovery insight uncovered. of unmet needs leads to the perception of market in 2007, intuit founder Scott Cook decided leadership. if a company can do this on a systemic that his company wasn’t innovating fast enough. basis, that perception will become reality. 34 DMI Winter 2013