Build Design Research capabilities across Intuit.

Deep customer empathy is a core principle of Intuit’s design thinking philosophy. However, teams find it hard to make time for traditional customer engagement processes, such as usability testing and informational interviews. We had defined Intuit’s customer centric culture, and it was time to experiment on how to bring this culture to life. Our team set out to bring deep customer empathy into the day-to-day lives of employees.

Programming for a customer centric culture.

Embedding with teams uncovered that teams believe in customer empathy but felt pushed towards traditional usability methods. Teams needed programming that deepened their customer centric mindset, motivated them to build relationships with customers, and inspired them to take action on delivering delightful customer experiences. A series of experimental programs were created to foster a customer centric culture and highlight the underpinnings of emotional design. Engagements included persona workshops, Maker Studios, small business cocktail hours and dinners, influential customer networks, emotion evoking interactive art, emotional exploration via street art at the Steeler Convention, Small business living and working on campus, and cognitive rest workshops.

Customer centric culture thrives.

Dozens of experiments have lead to a variety of new best practices. Teams are now sharing stories and insights in more visual ways. Physical spaces are configured to better foster collaboration and elevate customer emotions. Customers are present on campus everyday of the week, and site wide customer engagements take place monthly. Most importantly, teams no longer feel burdened by the concept of empathy. Rather, empathy is present in their day-to-day conversations, spaces, and activities. It is a part of their DNA. 

Research innovation at Intuit stagnates.

Intuit invests in connecting with customers, and traditionally had done so through usability testing in usability labs. However, the labs felt very institutional, sterile, and lifeless. The spaces and tools were deterring employees usage, making research participants uncomfortable, and did not accurately represent Intuit’s design driven brand. I was brought in to lead a team in reimagining Intuit’s design research practice and spaces.

Labs are transformed into Intuit’s design innovation hub. 

Partnering with workplace and facilities, our team created 6 new spaces that brought to life our deep understanding of small businesses and reignited employee engagement with the customer research. New spaces included retail environments, living rooms, offices, interactive games, maker spaces, co-creation pods, meditation rooms, and even a “holodeck” that could transform into a variety of places such as a train station, park, or coffee shop. In tandem to the new physical spaces, the team launched a series of programs to foster empathic skillsets and a customer centric culture at Intuit. Leveraging new technology, small business trends, and the evolution of research practices and strategy the labs were transformed and rebranded as Intuit Studio.

Intuit Studio inspires employees and makes customers feel at home.

Research participants feel so comfortable in the new environments that they forget they are participating in a research study and share more openly and freely. Researchers feel the new Studio is easier to use, are proud of the state of the art technology, and find it more delightful for their teams to engage in research. Product teams use the spaces for workshops, product reviews, and code jams. Method clinics, maker workshops, and new technologies exhibits consistently cycle through the Studio attracting thousands of employees and external visitors a year. The new design has been so successful that Intuit Studio has scaled to 4 international locations and has been granted a larger space at the new Mountain View Headquarters Product Development Building (scheduled to open summer 2016) as a commitment to customer centric culture and deep empathy exploration. 

Reignite design community development and increase retention

Great changes took place at the beginning of fiscal year 2015. Many senior design leaders left Intuit, and the business units were restructured to create a flatter organization. While change is inevitable, the culmination of such impactful change left the design community feeling disassociated and unsure of its future. In pursuit of reigniting the design community, the Design Innovation and Growth team decided to host a Global Experience Design (XD) Forum to reunite and reenergize the XD community.

Creation of immersive learning opportunities fosters design community growth and makes belief systems tangible

The core planning team began by connecting with XD leadership and community to understand their emotions, concerns, and hopes. Leveraging community sentiment the team aligned Forum goals with Intuit strategy, and built partnerships with Brand and the Central Technology Organization to generate greater support for the XD community. Multiple iterations of engagement strategy and programming were piloted and tested. Interactive studio sessions were created, new brand guidelines were shaped, key Intuit talent was coached to share their vision and journey, and external speakers were brought in to inspire and reignite community sprit.

Designers reconnect with community and commit to leading a design driven organization

Participants left the XD Forum with a deeper understanding of Intuit’s strategy and their leadership role in creating a design driven culture. Fun, connective, and impactful programming enabled designers to feel supported by leadership, reconnected to their community, and committed to their future growth and development. With a world class NPS of 70 the forum was the springboard for the next wave of XD leadership at Intuit.

 Build design thinking into Intuit’s DNA.

Intuit believes design thinking is the key driver of innovation. Investing in this belief, Intuit has trained a community of employees, the Innovation Catalysts, to serve as expert coaches in helping teams bring design thinking into their day-to-day activities. Innovation Catalysts build and maintain the culture that fosters engagement and encourages innovation – a culture where emotionally engaging products that people love can be created.

Coach teams on strategic development, problem solving, and innovation.

As an Innovation Catalyst, I have coached 100’s of cross-functional teams on design thinking, empathic practices, lean experimentation, and innovation. Working closely with teams, I unpack ambiguous problems spaces, design and facilitate workshops and research, and provide long-term coaching for managers and project leads. Interactive workshops include: unpacking problem spaces, lean start-up, rapid experimentation, human centered research and design, and community motivation.

 Intuit is a Design Driven Company.

In 2014, Brad Smith, Intuit’s CEO, declared Intuit a design driven company as a result of the work of Innovation Catalysts. Work with catalysts has lead to multiple patents, new products, deep customer empathy and insights, faster and more meaningful decision-making, and tons of rapid experimentation.

 Introducing the secret sauce of delightful experiences.

Intuit’s central design team had defined the ingredients that make up delightful experiences, the Delight Pyramid. The Delight Pyramid was introduced through a lecture at a company wide meeting. However, employees were confused by the concept.

 Provide experiential learning to bring delight to life.

Leading a cross-disciplinary team, we explored ways to inspire employees and help them feel delight on a visceral level. Through multiple rounds of prototyping and iteration Awesome Land, an interactive gallery of product vignettes, each dedicated to a different product experience, was created. Groups of employees experienced the vignettes, unpacked their emotions and explored how these experiences relate to the products they work on.

Emotion is part of the product design process. 

Awesome Land has been launched on 3 Intuit campuses, enabling 100s of employees to viscerally experience the emotions of their targeted customer segments. The Delight Pyramid metrics are now an Intuit wide service used during prototyping and product reviews to ensure that all Intuit products are reliably and consistently delivering delight. 

Building a billion dollar business 

Mars Inc. wanted to build its indulgence chocolate business to one billion dollars in five years. Left Blue Sky was tapped to design platforms that would identify meaningful benefit areas, enhance consumers’ chocolate experiences, and result in profitable growth within the indulgence chocolate category. 

Understanding the chocolate experience

Left Blue Sky began by identifying whitespace to enhance consumers’ chocolate experience via analysis of competitive sets and food trends. Ethnographies and shop-a-longs with chocolate passionistas explored the meaning of chocolate indulgence moments and mapped participants’ sensorial experiences. The perspectives shared led to understanding the fundamental attitudinal and value differences between milk and dark chocolate consumers. Insights were used to kick-start ideation on ten brand platforms and one hundred and eighty product concepts. Product concepts, visuals, copy, and packaging were refined using four waves of consumer feedback from focus group testing. 

Developing new platforms and products 

Based on a deep understanding of indulgent chocolate experiences, Mars and Left Blue Sky defined a new premium chocolate category and designed four new brands and twelve new products to feed a 3-5 year incubation pipeline. 

Creating a mega-brand to unify a growing product line

Tabula Digita is an educational gaming company rooted in the pedagogical belief that optimal learning occurs during collaborative, interactive, and engaging experiences. Having experienced significant success with its agship product, DimensionM, Tabula Digita was looking to create a mega-brand to serve as an overarching portal for its growing product line. The vision was for the mega-brand, DimensionU, to become the world’s largest community of student learners in immersive virtual worlds from schools, learning centers, and homes around the United States.

Exploring the educational gaming experience 

Tabula Digita partnered with Karr Lucar Consultants to understand the educational gaming experience for students, parents, and teachers. We spent time with 4th - 8th grade students and unpacked the meanings of education, entertainment, social networking, and gaming. Ethnography participants opened their homes to us, played games with us, and completed collages to illustrate their understanding of education and entertainment. Phone interviews with teachers captured their hopes for the future of education and perspectives on the changing role of technology in education. Focus groups with moms and students explored current and potential communications patterns, subscription models, reward programs, and perspectives on DimensionU branding strategy. 

Building a universe for educational communities

The Karr Lucar team found DimensionU lives right at the crossroads of education and entertainment; a powerful position to occupy because it benets from teacher and mom advocacy and kid passion. Leveraging this insight we developed a mega-brand strategy and portal that combined true educational credentials with real entertainment credibility. Launched in August 2010, DimensionU is a universe of multi-player games where students can practice core K-12 subjects including math, literacy, science, and history. 

Promoting science education via online gaming

Recognizing the growing need for increased science education in the United States, Tabula Digita and Monsanto partnered to develop a science-centric online video game, League of Scientists. League of Scientists was designed to help students “get excited about science” while teaching basic academic concepts. Before launching the game, Tabula Digita wanted to understand how effectively League of Scientists excited kids, and taught key science concepts.  

Usability testing and contextual exploration 

Karr Lucar Consultants and Tabula Digita provided 3rd - 5th grade students, moms, and teachers with access to League of Scientists. Participants played the game at home and also during focus groups. Using focus groups and phone interviews, perspectives were gathered on the meaning of science in the United States, the overall game experience, tools within the game, the competitive online gaming context, and the understanding of structural and key science concepts. 

Optimizing game play while enhancing science learning 

Kids enjoy science because it is a lens through which they see the world around them. It answers intriguing questions, rewarding curiosity with satisfyingly concrete answers. This insight led to our recommendation that the game’s learning component be as overtly present as the “fun.” It is not only expected and desired, but gives the game integrity, maturity, and authenticity. We also acknowledged the needs differential between 3rd and 5th graders and recommended usability improvements focused on creating support and reinforcement for 3rd graders while maintaining the challenge and excitement for 5th graders. League of Scientists launched midyear 2010. 

ECT needs to expand its learning environments 

Steinhardt’s Education Communication and Technology (ECT) program was experiencing growth and curricular change. Faculty and students wanted to see this change represented in their physical and virtual learning environments. A spring 2010 course offering was structured to generate the architecture and design for environments that would foster atelier learning. 

Engaging in participatory action research gives voice to all stakeholders

Using participatory approaches we engaged students, faculty, and industry partners in a collaborative design process. My team led five design groups in conducting needs analysis and developing concept documents, user narratives, wireframes, workflow, and prototypes. Theoretically rooted in studio-based learning, community psychology, and experiential learning, spaces where purposed to cultivate intergenerational and collaborative learning. 

Prototypes serve as foundation for massive future growth

By May 2010 we had developed the first wave of physical and virtual atelier environments. These prototypes served as a springboard for the Fall 2010 phase of development, which expands the ECT program to an entire building centered on media technology

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Gillette wanted a global understanding of what the brand meant to males ages 15 - 24. We conducted domestic and international ethnographies, focus groups, shop-a-longs, and blogs exploring Gillette, competitor, and hot brand perceptions, targets’ developmental stage, and grooming rituals. Findings and recommendations were presented at an international summit and included deep insight videos. 

Johnson & Johnson was looking for brand positioning for Listerine Agent Cool Blue. Using ethnographic techniques, we gained understanding on oral care rituals of kids and tweens. Insights were used to design positionings, which were tested in focus groups with youth and parents. Perspectives gathered were leveraged in the development of an online interactive environment for kids. 

Kidzbop had experienced a drop in sales for their most recent CD. We conducted focus groups with boys and girls, ages 7 - 13, and their parents to explore brand perception, product and version differentiation, and the role of music in the lives of youth.

Lego was thinking about possible new product lines and also wanted feedback on current advertising efforts. Focus groups with Lego enthusiasts uncovered perspectives on brand positioning, television advertisements, and new product line themes.  

Bubbaloo wanted to revamp its brand positioning. We developed branding platforms and conducted focus groups exploring brand equity and positionings with youth ages 8 -13 in Mexico City.

Topps was looking to expand its product offerings while growing baseball card sales. We designed a board game that used Topps baseball cards as the main gaming component. Usability testing was conducted via focus groups with boys, ages 7-12. 

Pepsi was exploring brand and product development for healthy snacks and beverages. We created brand positioning leveraging youth trends in skater culture. 

Miracle Grow wanted to educate 6th - 8th graders about gardening for Earth Day. We designed programming platforms and tested the concepts in focus groups with youth and their parents. 

CIBA Vision wants to master contact lens for teens

CIBA Vision commissioned the Geppetto Group to design a workshop that would help attendees of their yearly International Executive Conference better understand the teens who wear CIBA lens. 

Understanding what it means to be a teen

Focused on the intersection of developmental psychology and current cultural trends, timely and timeless trends of identity development in teen adolescence were identified. Secondary research was used to illustrate universal themes of adolescent development and parallel current global trends.

Executives walk in teens’ shoes

The workshop challenged CIBA Vision executives to step outside themselves and view the world through the eyes of a teenager. From this vantage point, product development and brand strategy were questioned and explored. 

The evolving cultural meaning of well-being 

The Institute for International Researcher asked the Geppetto Group to present at its 2008 Change is Good Conference. Focusing on cultural and marketing trends, our proprietary study aimed to move beyond traditional conceptions of health and wellness, which tend to focus only on the mind/body dichotomy, and towards a more holistic understanding.

Reframing health and wellness for the twenty-first century

Focused on children ages 6 - 12 and their families, ethnographic techniques and in-home visits were undertaken to explore the physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual dimensions of youth life. Insights were deepened through phone interviews with teachers, quantitative data from a study of 500 moms, and cultural and academic literature.

Raising marketers awareness 

Presentation and workshop materials were designed to raise awareness and encourage conference attendees to question how their brands impact the spheres of health and wellness for youth. 

Fostering communities for social change

The Resistance Among Youth Project (RAY) is an intergenerational group of students and professionals exploring constructs of masculinity. Rooted in the belief that humans are naturally empathetic beings, RAY focuses on the intersection of race, gender, sexuality, and class as informed by masculine norms. RAY wanted to foster communities to fight stereotypical masculine norms and expand their dialogue to youth and international communities. 

Discovering youths’ experience with masculine constructs 

Using mixed methods research RAY unpacked conventions of masculinity, masculinity’s impact on youth development, and the ways in which youth resist masculine constructs within a global context. Working with a diverse group of boys and girls, grades 6 - 12, we conducted a longitudinal, four wave, qualitative study in New York City. Interviews with youth explored the ways in which their social, ethnic, and academic identities, and their peer and family relationships are shaped by gender stereotypes. Through analysis and coding of popular media and qualitative data we came to understand that the majority of youth, regardless of sexual orientation, are engaged in daily acts of resistance to masculine stereotypes. 

Creating safe spaces 

Embracing these findings, RAY wanted to expose the ways in which young people resist stereotypes and also foster resistance among youth from diverse cultural, economic, and social backgrounds. RAY developed a blog, website, and international summit (expected spring 2012) as safe spaces that encourage exploration of the self, resistance to disassociation, validation of observations, and community development.  

Increasing student ridership

The Rochester Genesee Regional Transportation Authority (RGRTA) wanted to increase university student ridership on its buses. The chemical engineering department at University of Rochester wanted to make their Solar Hybrid Electric Buses (SHEB) more attractive to university students. Working collaboratively with cultural anthropology students, our interdisciplinary group set out to increase student ridership on RGRTA and design SHEB’s interior to best meet the needs of university students.  

Exploring students’ transportation experiences

Using ethnographic methods, bus riders, RGRTA employees and university students engaged in dialogue that unpacked the meanings of transportation, privacy, sociality, convenience, and sustainability, as well as explored perspectives on RGRTA, SHEB, cars, buses, and public transportation.

Building a better bus system for university students 

The symbolism and meaning surrounding transportation systems were used to frame the RGRTA and SHEB value systems; moving focus away from beliefs of individuality and convenience and towards concepts of community and sustainability. A revamped marketing plan was designed to get students off university property and out exploring the city and suburbs of Rochester. Initiatives to better accommodate student needs led to the creation of new bus lines, special student pricing, and promotional events and trips. Strategic design guidelines for SHEB interiors addressed student needs for privacy and sociality and were used in the next phase of prototyping. 

Programming for the oppressed  

Within the City of Rochester 43.1% of households are run by single females and 25.9% of the population live below the poverty level (U.S. Census Bureau, 2000). The majority of youth utilizing Rochester’s Department of Recreation (DOR) centers belong to this oppressed population. Feeling that programming was lacking, The DOR partnered with University of Rochester anthropology students to assess the quality of programming offered through the rec-centers.

Participant observation uncovers limitations 

University students conducted participant observation and action research with Rochester’s thirteen rec-centers. Interviews and group discussions with staff, alumni, volunteers, and participants explored their rec-center experiences and perspectives on areas for change. Reviewing academic literature and archival work provided a contextual understanding that unpacked the symbolism and meaning of childcare belief systems in Rochester and the United States. Over the course of six months we came to understand that the rec-centers provided limited opportunity for participants to experience people, activities, and environments not marked by impoverished conditions. 

Building community and breaking barriers

An action plan was designed to get participants out of their daily environments and foster an integrated community of university and rec-center participants. University students and faculty visited rec-centers to lead academic and art workshops for participants and their families. Rec-center youth were invited into the university environment to participate in cultural events and academic coaching. Ongoing programming between the university and the DOR continues to break spatial and power barriers of oppression.