At an IxDA event in the Bloomberg building (which has a koi pond inside), two guys from IDEO did a presentation about interaction and business design. They considered “how interaction and business designers approach problems, how the relationship between the two disciplines has changed, and how collaboration can lead to rich user experiences and business solutions.”
This was intriguing. On IDEO’s website, they explain that their “business design specialists take a user-centered approach to understanding our customers’ business. We consider the capabilities of our clients and the needs of their customers to prototype new business scenarios. As we iterate towards a solution, we assess the implications of our design. Our goal is to deliver appropriate and actionable strategies… ”
What does this mean? It means that IDEO has expanded into business strategy consulting, usually provided by the likes of McKinsey, because there is a demand for something more than just traditional design or traditional business strategy – companies want a hybrid. Having been involved in the development and launch of so many new products and services from a design perspective, IDEO saw an opportunity to also consult on the business implications of the design, branding, and user-experience decisions. With everything changing rapidly as industries converge and social media transforms how you manage PR and your brand, companies need help figuring out the repercussions of potential actions to help guide their business to success, not just making things look aesthetically pleasing. An example of this is IDEO’s work with the Adobe Creative Suite, where they worked on “creating sustainable packaging for a design-savvy clientele.” Essentially, they helped Adobe make business decisions in combination with packaging design decisions. Learn more here.
Morpho’s approach to web development outsourcing is similar. Just writing code isn’t enough. Included in the cost of our developers, we provide a US-based account manager and South American-based supervisors, who are web developers / business consultants that continuously monitor progress and seek out opportunities for improvement. They are proactive – anticipating and addressing issues before they become actual problems, and they fill in the gaps that they identify in clients’ existing processes with our best practices.
We guide web development not just to completion by writing code, but to success by helping our clients maximize their outsourcing operations, which results in saving money, increasing productivity, and ultimately increasing the quality of their web-based products and services.