THE SOLUTION

Brand strategically as a team, the UX Design Thinking Process to analyze, and then synthesize, a wealth of information into a relevant solution.

Our team would use workshopping exercises from the UX Design Thinking Processes to analyze our gathered research. We would then synthesize this wealth of scattered information into a relevant solution that could be iterated upon and updated until it perfectly targeted our personas. Luckily, we had access to representatives from those audiences to test with. Their feedback would become integral to the look, feel, and execution of the brand.

In order to discover our brand, we used the double-diamond design process to converge our research into a targeted solution. We used the Design Thinking Process to empathize with our audiences, analyze our findings, synthesize them into a solution. We then tested concepts with our stakeholders to make sure our message was relevant to all.

EMPATHIZE

Our Research, Interviews, and Personas

Our process was to start with client interviews and research, so we asked the client for as many documents as we could get our hands on. We poured over these documents while recording any relevant findings on notes, stickies, and text files. The team would collate this research later once we had enough information to begin our brainstorming and synthesis process.

Thanks to the work put in by the team (Mary Wilcox, Keva Blair, Chuck Hudson, Amanda Moreau), six audience segments had been discovered and concentrated into “proto-personas”, or a distilled collection of audiences, each with their own concerns, questions, and needs concerning the platform. Our message needed to be crafted carefully to be relevant to each group.

"Start with Words"
As a team, we placed possible brand descriptors from our research that reflected the needs and concerns of our audiences, onto stickies that could be grouped during digital workshopping sessions. Using an affinity mapping exercise, each potential brand descriptor was organized into a group of similar descriptors. These clusters ultimately emerged as themes; or possible directions the brand could take. The themes that proved to be the most relevant, to the most audiences, would build the foundations of our brand attributes, position, and pillars.

DEFINE

Mapping our User, Stakeholder Research for Relevancy

Using our persona/audience research, we mapped each of the themes that would matter for each audience. The descriptors packaged in those themes would drive the language and art direction going forward.

We then mapped each of the audience concerns to the 15 story beats developed for a promotional video script written using the research from stakeholder interviews. The story beats that spoke to the most concerns, from the most audience personas, were deemed most relevant.

The language used in the most relevant parts of the script would now take center stage, guiding the rest of the brand’s visuals and message.

IDEATION

Choosing our Solution

With the most relevant parts of the brand message now identified, our team used collaborative workshops to build brand pillars and positioning statements that were inclusive of our target audiences’ concerns, questions, and interests.

Finally, we had developed the strategic “gold source” messaging that to drive the brand! We had successfully synthesized a relevant
brand story, brand attributes, brand pillars, and brand position.

Using this “gold source”, we worked together to create four separate stylescapes (below), or possible art directions, that could be tested with our client. These stylescapes each evoked the brand position and story in their own visually-unique way.

TESTING

Prototyping the Brand and Testing with Audiences

Finally, the mysterious brand was starting to come into view. Excitement was in the air.

We tested three stylescapes with stakeholders to see which one most aligned to their vision of the new system-of-systems platform.

The client loved all of the stylescapes, but felt the future of their efforts was best represented by a stylescape named “Integrated Awareness”, pictured below. We began designing with that style to demonstrate a few sample executions, or designs that would evoke the brand pillars developed earlier on. It was important to test these styles with our client and representatives from the audience.

Audiences felt as though we had “hit the nail on the head”. Our designs had powerfully evoked the emotional weight behind the ideas that had been developed in preparation for the new “system of systems” platform.

THE RESOLUTION

Final Product + Results and Impact

After developing the look-and-feel of the brand, everything that our team had learned from research, workshopping, and client feedback finally started to take shape into final deliverables.

As soon as we settled on an art direction, I built a style guide to codify the design princples that underlied our solution. I gathered together a collection of fonts, colors, imagery, and more to drive any execution going forward. This guide would eventually form the basis for a Design System effort that I would lead in the future, helping our team gain a head-start towards the creation of a fully-governed set of User Interface principles.

Other members of the team pitched in to develop multiple user journeys within a website promoting the program. These journeys, once realized, provide each audience a custom route to tools, information, login links, and other important resources.

Our team’s hard work resulted in the development of multiple brand executions. The strategic branding that we had created would be applied across a video, website, style guide and design system.

REFLECTIONS

In my opinion, this project presented the type of challenge that I would call a “branding behemoth”. The sheer breadth of information that we needed to understand, analyze, and synthesize to create a relevant brand was, at first, incredibly intimidating. In addition to tackling the large scope of the project, the message created needed to be important enough to matter to a deep culture of strategic cyber battlespace management.

Ultimately, our team was able to rise to the challenge and conquer difficulties together. I believe that the work we’ve done here will significantly change the day-to-day lives of many servicemen and women, and our team was proud give it the justice its due.

As a Senior UX Designer, I’m always looking for an edge; an approach that will take a team’s work from acceptable to exceptional. I was excited to to have played a role not just as a visual designer on this project, but also as a strategic player. My biggest contribution to this project was in the facilitation of workshops that moved our team forward, continually keeping us converging towards impactful art direction and brand messaging principles.

Learnings and Takeaways

1. Thinking strategically for any design effort requires a well-considered approach.

2. Systematic methods and exercises are essential for a team to utilize its full collaborative potential.

3. In contrast, branding by trend or intuition can create irrelevant positioning. In this case, a brand without impact.

4. Good ideas emerge within a team, don’t go it alone!