Author Archive
Burbank, CA Not the typical real estate company. In 2005 Brian Ochese and John David set out to pioneer the digital marketing for the residential real estate market by combining traditional selling techniques with new ones. Digital marketing. They provide the highest levels of customer service and combine it with cutting edge internet marketing. Their in-house production and marketing company brings their MLS listings alive with high definition movie presentations. Each property gets its own custom marketing plan. Check out their firm…
Berks County, PA – December, 2017 The Carole and Ray Neag Medical Center opened at Caron Treatment Centers in South Heidelberg Township.
Caron Treatment Centers opens $15M facility
Philadelphia, PA – Nazareth Academy High School is a private, Roman Catholic high school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is located in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia. Architectural Concepts designed a music and arts center for the prestigious campus.
Learn more about Nazareth Academy…
Exton, PA – Otto’s grew its operation once again by opening a BMW dealership on Rt. 30 (Lancaster Pike) in Exton, PA. It wasn’t long, however, before a dramatic increase in MINI sales and service made it clear that more space was needed. Architectural Concepts proposed an innovative sustainable design concept for Ottos and BMW.
What are the differences between people who are trained with hard vs. soft skills? Generally speaking, there are automated scripted, or programmed tasks that are routine and can be moved to machines. We know. But, life and the problems that exist today, (the ones we’re solving now) are more complex. Aren’t they?
“They still involve interaction, and skills that humans possess to make moral and empathetic design decisions that have even larger impacts on the quality of products and services.” – Matt Mondzelewski
Artificial Intelligence (AI) vs. Intelligent Augmentation (IA)
Having the ability to apply intelligence effectively, or harness it’s power to solve problems does not come from artificial intelligence. Applied artificial intelligence is the result of a deep understanding of the human condition, and the defined principles to which they’re applied. In the social media world, very small fuzzy insights may seem small, but can drive the meaning for which platforms base their entire existence. Snapchat for example, understood the social media clash between what defines a truly authentic moment. They compete directly for market share with Instagram who is implementing post deletion features as well. Their definitions rely on the understanding that posting photos, new snippets, and posting personal interactions (that are often times staged and filtered) gives its viewers a false sense of the authentic lives people lead every day.Scott Hartley, author of The Fuzzy and the Techie explains that social issues today deal with topics that are diverse. Hartley explains,
“Sectors, for example: government, legislation, engineering, DARPA, are clearly defining the needs that exist today and pioneering new methods and perspectives that take on problem sets. These sector leaders construct lean composite teams to solve them.” – Scott Hartley
This allows the problems to be surrounded by team members with both high tech, (STEM) backgrounds to work side by side with arts and humanities training. This combination allows business processes to evolve and iteratively achieve higher-value in product development cycles. Watch Hartley’s CSPAN interview.
In 2015, Mind’s Eye Concepts was hired to set the standards for usability across all 26 global e-commerce stores.
Mind’s Eye Concepts implemented a user centered design approach and process improvement to their e-business organization. This involved creating the quality user testing (QUT) program within VWR’s e-business. In addition to this, requirements for engineers were run through a user story practice to ultimately define what problems their development work would solve for the end-users. This was a significant change to the requirements gathering process that was in most ways, trying to keep up with feature launches from other sites.
The problems that arise from this practice occur when the UX team strays away from their own customer’s needs, and loosely defines them based on what works for other sites. User testing and market and customer research isn’t always a necessary step for improvements, news, or when curating new content to publish. However, when features in an e-commerce distribution network as big as VWR is running, and with consistent B2B customers to compete for, being able to secure their business relies on two things.
(1) Building appropriate solutions for them.
(2) Making sure it works for them.
User testing and solution definition are vital to pleasing customers with solutions they want. On the flip side, it can also save organizations potentially millions of dollars engineering solutions they never wanted in the first place. Here’s an example of investing in mobile application development and why testing early and often with customers is so important.
Program tasks involved defining specific life science, and many other professional services personas, designing tasks for them to perform, validating, and reporting the results. This information was essential to design decision making, and requirements for major features in their ecosystem, such as search, and search results. Mind’s Eye Concepts was asked to collaborate with the search steering committee teams around the globe, to define and study the users needs. This eventually led to the re-design of the logic and presentation of search results on VWR’s global e-commerce platforms.
Mind’s Eye Concepts performed business consulting leadership for 30+ improvements to the e-business platforms. Including key admin controls for specific global experiences based on culture, laws, and their support of features. A ratings and reviews feature designed by Minds Eye Concepts, launched in the UK, and France. QUT also played a major role in early stages of the new customer procurement and account profile process.
Since then, e-commerce revenue has sky-rocketed, and VWR positioned themselves for acquisition late in 2017, with e-commerce and distribution capabilities as their biggest assets offered in the merge. Building the program within the organization took years to develop, and eventually Mind’s Eye Concept’s role was passed to colleagues on the UX team.
After the introduction, training, and publishing the UX process improvements for our colleagues, we designed and built requirements to track and store the information gleaned from tests with quality assurance. This ensured the process could be used to measure even more solutions in the future.
