VITALITY
CASE STUDY
Vitality was born from its founder’s pioneering work in glanceable technology: embedding Internet information in everyday objects to make the physical environment an interface to digital information. Vitality reinvents prescription packing with a simple wireless internet connection. 3.5 billion medication prescriptions are filled in the US every year. On average, people take their medication only 50% of the time, racking up $300 billion in avoidable healthcare costs. Vitality’s technology reminds patients via phone or text message if they forget to take a medication, emails loved ones and physicians with updates, and makes refilling automatic. Fundamentally, Vitality designs behavioral change by introducing smart packaging to public health. Vitality’s process is making people take prescription medications more consistently, keeping people healthier, and reducing healthcare costs.
On average, people take their medication only 50% of the time racking up $300 billion in avoidable healthcare costs
REEBOK
CASE STUDY
Reebok is all about having fun while staying fit and infuses this attitude in everything it does. The company has always seen the world a little differently, challenging convention and leading through creativity. This began more than 20 years ago when Reebok revolutionized the fitness industry with aerobics, and by telling women “it’s ok to sweat.” This innovation continues today; in Spring 2009, Reebok launched EasyTone footwear and made an immediate impact in the industry by allowing the consumer to “take the gym with you” without sacrificing style. The design team broke away from the chunky (dare we say ugly) designs commonplace in the toning market by taking inspiration from balance balls. This translated into a low-profile, moving-air technology which revolutionized the toning footwear industry in a matter of months. The more serious, quantifiable muscle-toning benefit of EasyTone footwear is lightened by Reebok’s fun, bold, provocative brand voice. Maintaining this attitude consistently between product, advertising, digital and retail has been a key to increasing awareness of EasyTone among female consumers in the US by 31 points in 6 months. It’s also helped Reebok increase product in the marketplace by more than 1000% over the course of 12 months during a global recession. Reebok’s approach to fitness innovation is leading to new successes with EasyTone apparel and ZigTech footwear. And Reebok’s retail partners are asking for more, sooner. Innovation has its rewards!
INCREASED AWARENESS BY 31 POINTS IN 6 MONTHS
LIBERTY HOTEL Founded in 1992, Korn Design is an award-winning brand design and strategy firm based in Boston and New York City. Korn Design helps businesses craft indelible images, and consistently produces work that is simultaneously imaginative and intelligent, refined and rooted. With expertise in the hospitality, luxury-goods, and culture categories, Korn Design partners with top-notch developers, entrepreneurs, chefs, and institutional leaders. Once the storied Charles Street Jail, The Liberty Hotel opened its doors to guests in 2008 following an extensive $150 million acquisition, renovation and construction process. Marrying historic architecture with the high standards of refined, modern travel, The Liberty Hotel is New England’s premier luxury destination. In developing the brand experience for The Liberty Hotel, Korn Design created a careful juxtaposition of the property’s past as a jail with its new identity as a chic, urban hotel. This incredible historic redevelopment project has brought life to this quiet corner of the city, creating a new gateway between downtown and the Esplanade, as well as a vibrant destination for travelers and local clientele who partake in its world-class social and dining venues.
CASE STUDY
ZIPCAR
CASE STUDY
Zipcar is a car sharing service that operates in urban areas and college campuses throughout the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. It provides self-service vehicles by the hour or day to residents and businesses looking for an alternative to car ownership. Zipcar’s revenue has grown from $13.7 million in 2005 to $131.2 million in 2009. The team has accomplished this by tapping into the secrets of experience design: how to stay focused and create a deep, clear understanding with customers. At every point of member contact, Zipcar uses design to drive loyalty and growth, from online and mobile interfaces to signage in the parking lot and notes in the driver’s seat.
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The value of this service is inarguable: its 400,000 members report an average monthly savings of more than $600 compared to car ownership, and each Zipcar takes 15-20 personally owned vehicles off the road. Zipcar’s challenge has been to establish a use system that is clear, easy, and reliable so that the first experience of booking and using one of their cars is as easy as the hundredth.
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INNOVATION DISTRICT
CASE STUDY
Despite the many advantages of global communication, people T T proximately located share technologies and knowledge more easily and implement innovations more rapidly than those spread across T geographies. Much entrepreneurial work is done outside of Tthe traBEACON HILL ditional workplace; creative workers spend as much as half of their work schedules somewhere other than their office.
THE INNOVATION boston harbor DISTRICT WILL DOWNTOWN HELP ENSURE BOSTON’S CHINATOWN CONTINUED 15 min. LEADERSHIP IN walk THE INNOVATION BOSTON’S ECONOMY T
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The Innovation District - 1,000 acres of residential, commercial, and T boston industrial space along the South Boston Waterfront - will help encommon sure Boston’s continued leadership in the innovation economy. Mayor Menino’s belief is that even with the “death of distance”, place T T will matter more than ever for innovation and that a strategy for clusT SOUTH tering companies, providing new housing models, and investing in BAY VILLAGE STATION physical and social infrastructure will foster job growth and the T development of innovative products and services. Careful attention to the design of this area, its buildings and landscapes is critical to the success of this initiative, not only in attracting new businesses I-93 and residents but also in facilitating discoveries, inventions, and I-90 product development that will be a driver for economic growth in the region.
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ESSENTIAL Essential is comprised of a team of industry-leading research, design and engineering professionals who use design to translate strategy into breakthrough products and services. For example, Altec Lansing’s pricing-point pressures and increased competition required it to reevaluate its role in consumers’ lives. Essential researched growth opportunities and new categories, and envisioned ‘The MIX’, a next-generation Digital Boombox for music enthusiasts to play and share their music within a social context. The Cascata lavatory faucet helped Moen position itself as a design leader in a very competitive market. To create this engaging product experience, Essential designed the spout to be tipped, like a pitcher, for a more natural expression of water flow. This ‘gestural interface’ also incorporates universal design principles, requiring only gross motor skills. The SE535 earphones use Triple High-Definition MicroDrivers for incredibly ‘spacious’ sound, allowing users to hear details like never before. Essential thoughtfully designed replaceable cables, a more comfortable form, increased sound isolation, and a nearly invisible in-use appearance.
CASE STUDY
IHCD The Instiute for Human Centered Design (IHCD) is an international education and design non-profit consultancy, dedicated to proving the power of design to enhance experience across the spectrum of age and ability. In response to an ever-diversifying client base, IHCD analyzes the experience of older people and people with disabilities interacting with places, products, and service environments to identify potential impediments. IHCD’s team designs solutions that transform often subtle barriers into assets that work better for everyone. Never before in history has our population been more diverse in age, ability and culture. In the US population, 36 million people are over 65, there are 78 million baby boomers, and 54 million people with a disability; of the 306 million Americans, 1/3 of them experiences some functional limitation, but we live, on average, 30 years longer than 100 years ago. Design is the great enabler. There’s an extraordinary business opportunity to design products, places, information and services that minimize the limits of some while enhancing the quality of life for all. Universal design is a way of thinking, a lens for critiquing what is in order to imagine what could be. ‘Designing to include’ is the heart of socially sustainable design solutions.
CASE STUDY
We live, on average, 30 years longer than 100 years ago. Design is the great enabler.
GENZYME Designed by Behnisch Architekten, The Genzyme Center in Cambridge exemplifies Gemzyme’s spirit of innovation and quality. In addition to ecological sustainability, the center is a landmark building that fosters interaction, engages the public with Genzyme’s identity, and recruits the best talent. After a year of occupancy, 58% of Genzyme Center employees said they were more productive in the completed building than they had been in the former headquarters. This building is the largest Platinum-LEED office structure in the US, with energy efficient features and management systems that reduced the projected overall energy cost for the building by 35%. In an industrial environment, the design of the buildings, headquarters, and stores help to create an accessible and sympathetic public identity for an organization. Initiatives like environmental stewardship not only influence the public image, but also the identification of the workforce with their employer in terms of their morale, well-being, and productivity. Factors such as daylight, occupants’ ability to control their environment, and flexibility of space usage are crucial to successful architecture. In the service and software industry, 84% of operating costs are staff related, and only approximately 16% are related utilities and maintenance. However, this 16% can greatly affect staff efficiency. The Genzyme Center is as example of informed, collaborative design work that considers all costs in the short and long term. In a 50 year lifespan, the average US building generates maintenance and energy costs equivalent to 3 to 4 times the construction costs. A well-designed, energy-efficient and low maintenance building can lead to a savings of double the construction costs over the same span. As a result, it’s crucial that operating costs be addressed in the early phases of programming and design; higher investment in the planning and construction can lead to substantial savings in operations over the lifetime of a building. Strategy saves energy.
CASE STUDY
A well-designed energy saving and low maintenance building can lead to a savings of double the construction costs over the span of 50 years.
SONOS Sonos is the leader in wireless multi-room music systems for the home. Their system lets users play ‘all the music, all over the house’, controlled easily from the palm of their hand. The Sonos team is dedicated to designing magical music experiences; internally, they’ve created a culture of user-focused design that leads the company’s products from sketch to store shelf. In return, Sonos’ consumer brand loyalty can be described as a cult of music-loving, Sonoscrazy customers. Sonos’ products are consistently rated with a Net Promoter Score of 80%, which means that when asked to rate how likely they are to recommend Sonos to friends and family, on a scale of 0 to 10, the majority of customers choose 9 or 10. This is good news for Sonos sales, and a clear indicator that customers appreciate good design.
CASE STUDY
Sonos’ consumer brand loyalty can be described as a cult of music-loving, Sonos-crazy customers.
THE BARBARIAN GROUP
CASE STUDY
The Barbarian Group is an award-winning digital marketing services company. Founded in 2001, they partner with the best brands, technology companies and content creators to help navigate the treacherous waters where advertising, user experience, technology and marketing merge to create some of the most successful work on the web. Barbarian Group’s partnership with Red Bull allowed for a coherent design methodology to their websites. The Barbarian Group worked with them to develop design standards and a development platform to allow for the migration of some pre-existing 800 sites all over the world to one, unified platform, yielding tremendous traffic growth.
IN THE FIRST MONTH AFTER THE UPDATES TO RED BULL’S SITE, TRAFFIC INCREASED BY
+24%
IDEO IDEO is a global design and innovation firm that believes that good business is good design. As such, IDEO is a pioneer in ‘business design,’ creating impact beyond final products and services and using design to help companies evolve how they engage their customers, how they organize for delivery, and how they find new paths to growth. IDEO believes that design’s ability to impact and influence a business and its strategy is increasing rapidly. An example of the work IDEO’s business design community has done includes ‘Keep the Change’ for Bank of America, which is a service innovation to attract and retain bank members. This program has led to more than 12 million customers saving more than $3 billion. 93% of Bank of America customers who have signed up for the program to date have chosen to retain the service. IDEO designed GE Caulk Singles for Momentive Performance Materials. In addition to establishing new ways to ‘fill in the gaps’ for an expanding market, GE Caulk Singles is a great story about the how design thinking can reinvigorate an everyday product. “In tests, we found that the packs actually applied neat streaks with greater ease than a caulk gun.” source: Popular Mechanics
CASE STUDY
“KEEP THE CHANGE” HAS LED TO MORE THAN 12 MILLION CUSTOMERS SAVING MORE THAN
$3 BILLION
CONTINUUM
CASE STUDY
Blending design thinking and business analytics, Continuum partners with its clients to drive fiscally-sound, human-centered design innovation. For example, Continuum helped Preserve leverage stronger branding and created a simple closed-loop “mail back pack” system to connect with more consumers and accelerate its sustainability-focused business model. Preserve’s mail-back pack launched at Whole Foods and Target in 2010. Within 3 weeks of the launch, the new package outsold Preserve’s previous package by 37%. Continuum has also helped Insulet leverage innovation design and engineering to create a tubeless insulin pump, the Omnipod, that makes diabetes a less invasive part of patients’ lives. The clear functional benefits of this product have enabled Insulet’s projected annual revenues to reach $100 million in 2010. Additionally, Insulet successfully raised $120 million in funding between the years of 2000-2006, and raised an additional $120 million in their initial IPO.
WITHIN 3 WEEKS OF THE LAUNCH AT TARGET, THE NEW PACKAGE OUTSOLD PRESERVE’S PREVIOUS PACKAGE BY 37%. BEFORE
AFTER
BARBARA LYNCH GRUPPO Consisting of nine Boston entities: No. 9 Park, B&G Oysters, The Butcher Shop, Plum Produce, Stir, 9 at Home, Drink, Sportello, and Menton, Barbara Lynch Gruppo translates the talents and accolades of Chef/Owner Barbara Lynch into superb, consistent dining experiences. BLG works closely with C&J Katz studio to design effective interiors and brand messages by immersing themselves in the world of food, hospitality, and, at times, glamor. The Lynch and Katz teams recognize that designing every point of contact with the customer is critical to the opening and ongoing success of a hospitality venture. And it has paid off: Barbara Lynch Gruppo has had 9 hits in 12 years, each with its own unique, target customer, consistently happy that their their time and dollars are well-spent. The Boston Globe gave Menton 4 out of 4 stars; “When adventurous diners wish upon a star, Barbara Lynch has plenty of answers at Menton.�
CASE STUDY
9 HITS IN 12 YEARS