Take a bigger leap forward – New Design Showcase 2022

For over thirty years tangerine has been making creative leaps to design innovative products, services and customer experiences that exceed expectations

Proponents of progress assert that the human condition has improved over the course of history and will continue to improve. This optimistic view of people over time, and how they interact with one another, and their environment has been challenged by many, seemingly untenable in the face of recent global events: wars, economic instability, one of the worst global pandemics in history, and the climate emergency, to name just a few.

However, it’s undeniable that progress plays an important role in industry, and it’s imperative that businesses keep moving forward to increase opportunities and stay competitive. It is also key to question whether innovation is used to uphold existing modes of business or disrupt and change them into something new and better.

For many businesses, this means advancing technologies, becoming greener, returning a profit and improving products and services to better serve customers. American Engineer and Philosopher Alfred A. Montapert famously said of Progress, “Do not confuse motion and progress. A rocking horse keeps moving but does not make any progress.” Many businesses find comfort in ‘motion’, in ‘doing things’, and in ‘taking actions’. But we believe real progress requires a creative leap.

What is a creative leap?

For tangerine, creative leaps are the process by which we help ambitious companies to innovate in ways that bring fundamental, positive change. “Every business has its distinct strengths, ambitions and challenges, so the type of leap and the outcome is different for each company we partner with,” says Chief Creative Officer, Matt Round. “We consult in a highly collaborative way, working with our clients to better understand their business, and then create tailored processes to solve it. Always designing with the client and for their customers, not for us.”

Creative leaps demand a multifaceted approach, and process tempers the risk. It’s never based on blind faith or adrenaline-fuelled risk taking. It’s about insight, intuition, and decades of experience. We thoroughly research the different dimensions of a problem across user insight, market intelligence, trends, and sources of inspiration, setting the scope for areas of opportunity that are aligned to strategic goals, positioning, and product and service roadmaps. Creative leaps come in all shapes and sizes.

 

For pioneering South Korean robotics manufacturer Rainbow Robotics, it was about a deeply collaborative research and design partnership over three years to create a human-centric cobot that operates seamlessly alongside people in working environments. And for Australian Spacetalk, we’ve been helping them to develop smart watches for young children that keep them in touch with their parents, but off the open internet. Tangerine’s design of the product, UI and app needed to be fun, family orientated, offering engaging content and secure features. Common to both outcomes was working closely to create innovative solutions that are user experience focused by design. Both businesses have taken a creative leap towards being design-led organisations offering high quality, innovative products and services. Such is Spacetalk’s commitment to design being at the heart of its strategy that it recently appointed tangerine Chairman Martin Darbyshire as its Chief Design Officer.

At tangerine, we’re motivated to enhance customer experience, whether it’s designing a family of state-of the 3D printers to boarding a high speed train in China to reach the mountains of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. Every experience we create gives customers a reason to fall in love with the brand.

Our service design team, spearheaded by Chief Growth Officer Geraint Edwards, is helping clients at the front-end of innovation and customer experience strategy through insight research, opportunity identification and the design and planning of end-to-end experiences. A stone’s throw from the new Sphinx airport in Cairo, he led a project to create the new visitor experience at the Grand Egyptian Museum – a vast site housing the largest collection of treasures from a single civilisation. For tangerine, the vision was Revival. GEM will attract visitors from all corners of the world for whom a visit needs to live up to the key user modes of Relive, Refresh, Relax and Re-engage.

We built a tangible user experience blueprint and design manual which included a range of memorable signature moments that are authentic, connected and ownable. “Service design and product innovation are crucial tools to craft holistic user experiences that encompass every interaction a business has with their customers. Through these tools we’re helping our clients to take bigger leaps forward and deliver fundamental, positive change”, says Edwards.

SOURCE: Article featured in the New Design Showcase 2022