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At Designsensory, we are always on the lookout for new ways to bring better service to our clients. We’re especially pleased to be able to enhance our capabilities with still photography, video and motion expertise.

Our goal is to provide more integrated, end-to-end solutions with branded content in every medium. Our photography, video and motion graphics capabilities have already made a difference to several of our clients, including Patricia Nash Designs and the Tennessee Department of Tourist Development’s Travel South and Vacation Guide behind-the-scenes videos. We’ve been able to offer help at every step, beginning with preproduction services like scriptwriting, storyboarding, location scouting and booking talent, through the art direction of photo and video shoots, to postproduction editing and motion graphics.

Why is this new capability important?

First, it’s crucial to carry branding across all media, with content that reinforces the brand at every turn.

Second, the statistics are staggering: Web video keeps visitors on websites longer, boosts sales and minimizes buyer dissatisfaction. According to studies by Internet Retailer, 52 percent of consumers say that product videos help them feel more confident about their online purchases, and 66 percent will watch a particularly informative video more than once. And, visitors who have watched a video are as much as 174 percent more likely to buy than those who have not.

BizChair.com has tracked 33 percent of the company’s online sales to just 13 percent of its visitors—those who watched the online videos. Smartphone companies have tied video to increased sales in a very specific—and convincing—fashion. One million video views usually translates to 1.2 million units sold in the 12 weeks after a new product launch. Video is important to search engine optimization as well, since videos appear in about 70 percent of the top 100 listings for a search.

Our new capabilities mean a more integrated and more efficient process for our clients and—-we hope—-will translate into noticeable success.

Watch some of our recent work »

For some, the term empathy connotes soft emotions, sappy feelings and a general sense of the “warm and fuzzies,” all potentially incongruent with business, boardrooms and branding. Empathy, though, in its truest definition is a powerful tool, integral to the brand engagement process, leading to insights and innovation.

The Oxford English Dictionary’s definition of empathy is “The power of projecting one’s personality into (and, so fully comprehending) the object of contemplation.” In the blog post “Empathy: Not Such a Soft Skill,” Harvard Business Review (HBR) editor Katherine Bell writes, “It’s an act of imagination in which you try to look at the world from the perspective of another person, a human being whose history and point of view are as complex as your own. At all levels of management, empathy is a critical skill. If you can imagine a person’s point of view—no matter what you think of it—you can more effectively influence him.”

Although a broad spectrum of consumer information can be gathered from client meetings, online surveys, focus groups, ethnographies and other data-mining tools, the transformation from simple information toward insight and innovation occurs when everyone within both the client and brand consultancy incorporate empathy. This empathy toward the customer fosters positive solutions, but, just as important, is empathy among colleagues and client-partners.

In a recent HOW magazine article, “The Empathic Designer,” David Holston shared that “design success is often as much the result of the quality of the relationships formed with clients, as it is the quality of the design.”

5 Tips for Better Collaborative Design Relationships:

1. Humility: The ability to control emotions at critical times, and to maintain a level of detachment is critical for managing productive client/designer relationships.
2. Listening: Active listening techniques include restating ideas the client has suggested to reinforce the idea that you understand; being aware of body language that might communicate disinterest; focusing on the content of the conversation; prompting for details to better understand the client’s point; and, suspending judgment so as to not cut off communication.
3. Questioning: Being able to ask meaningful and relevant questions not only prompts the client to provide more information, but also positions the designer in a lead role, not just a passive tactical role.
4. Feedback: The ability to give positive and negative feedback is a key factor in creating trusting relationships.
5. Transparency: By providing clients a transparent process in which they understand what is going to happen, when it will happen and what their roles and expectations are, designers take a step toward building strong relationships.

In HBR article, “Leadership in a Combat Zone,” Lieutenant General William Pagonis, director of logistics during the Gulf War, wrote “Owning the facts is a prerequisite to leadership. But there are millions of technocrats out there with lots of facts in their quivers and little leadership potential. In many cases, what they are missing is empathy. No one is a leader who can’t put himself or herself in the other person’s shoes. Empathy and expertise command respect.”

In his latest book, Design Is How It Works: How the Smartest Companies Turn Products into Icons, author Jay Greene shares insights from designers, CEOs and strategists. Case studies of Porsche, Nike, LEGO, OXO, REI, Clif Bar, Ace Hotels and Virgin Atlantic provide separate yet similar looks into design cultures of the companies and their customers.

A key element of these successful design approaches is for the company to truly listen and empathize with their customers, to understand their needs and how the products and/or services fit into the context of their lifestyles.

Rather than stay inside safe and conservative parameters, company leaders were also willing to take risks that might result in failure, and were able to accept, admit and grow from those failures when they happened. In other words, they employed Design Thinking.

Design Thinking is a way to solve any problem.

A hallmark takeaway from the book is the rise of Design Thinking as an approach to overall business strategy and consumer engagement that extends well beyond traditional ideas of where design is supposed to fit within the model.

Design Thinking combines empathy, creativity and rationality to solve problems in a balanced way.

Most folks think of design as an applied art, as an action or expression that occurs after someone else analyzes, deduces and solves a problem. The issue with this approach is that analytical thinking does not bear much innovative fruit. The act of design is then reduced to simply translating and expressing a derivative idea, product or experience.

Last year, Roger Martin, dean of the Rotman School of Management, presented on this very subject at the annual AIGA Design Conference. His presentation (watch the video, download a presentation PDF) delved into contrasts between two dominant styles of thinking: Analytical and Intuitive. He argues that the process of design (Design Thinking) balances the two approaches and confers competitive advantages to businesses.

Design not only concerns itself with the expression of things but can and should play a central role in actually defining them (that’s the “thinking” part). What’s required is:

• skilled designer/strategist that can understand the language of business,
• willingness to engage in an exploratory design process,
• openness by business managers to challenge deep-seated conventions with insightful questioning.

Here at Designsensory, Design Thinking is something we are very passionate about. It is our design process and something we advocate to prospects and deliver to customers. Design Thinking infuses creative ideas seamlessly into all aspects of our process—business planning, visual communications, technology, strategy and content development—allowing us to deliver greater value to our customers and their end-users.