Our clients want to set higher user experience goals for their knowledge work products, ask new questions about design possibilities, and explore innovative answers.
Our collaborative research, strategy, and design services have helped clients to clarify and achieve their central initiatives:
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Summarized case studies for selected Flashbulb Interaction projects:
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Client: Ecommerce Firm |
Client Challenge
New management at a leading global ecommerce firm wanted to dramatically improve the user experience of their many suppliers, eliminating a variety of repeated complaints. Existing systems were in need of functional evolution, and the client was in the early phases of a green field rethinking of their overall service design for these crucial business relationships.
To build understanding of supplier users and generate new possibilities for user experience, the client turned to Flashbulb Interaction for outside facilitation of research, strategy, and design activities.
Flashbulb Interaction Services
Analyzed a backlog of user comments and survey data, supplemented with internal client interviews.
Proposed new processes to meet emergent design goals.
Conducted remote research sessions to gather requirements and user performance data with early conceptual prototypes.
Facilitated ongoing rounds of ideation and prioritization workshops for different threads of the supplier experience.
Developed a vision for instructive experiences across the client's suite of existing applications, illustrating a new tier of connective functionality.
Mapped a new service design that simplified the scope of user interactions while enhancing connection with sales progress.
Value Delivered
The client received a range of targeted deliverables for agile development, from pragmatic documentation for the evolution of individual functions to more emotive storytelling of new supplier experiences.
Flashbulb Interaction’s design contributions gave tangible direction for the team to roadmap iterative implementation of design improvements, while new processes have provided direct means of connecting with the real-world voices of their suppliers.
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Client: Global Technology Firm |
Client Challenge
A large corporate legal department found repeated barriers to information sharing, with department by department solutions blocking meaningful exchange. A top down initiative to build new, connective tools remained at an vision statement level of detail, without a meaningful story to propel it forward within the organization.
To expand their point of view on where their IT services could provide value over the next three to five years, the client turned to a UX team -- which included Flashbulb Interaction services -- for research, strategy, and design activities.
Flashbulb Interaction Services
Conducted field research on legal work practices across disconnected units in a large corporate legal department.
Analyzed data sets from a variety of sources to create a common model of current issues and opportunities.
Contributed to a new system vision that encompassed a broad range of legal work with a clear framework for targeted improvements.
Dove into a tactical area within new strategic framework, interviewing specific staff about deeply entrenched processes that were based around out-of-date, difficult software.
Reported findings at tiered levels of detail, ensuring that users’ needs would be considered when the client replaced their legacy applications.
Value Delivered
The client received a design vision with a set of defined areas for better supporting or actively transforming legal information management. Building upon this vision, they also received detailed research within a specific process area, providing concrete requirements for a new solution.
Flashbulb Interaction’s contributions defined key functionality and design criteria for software package evaluations and custom application development, reframing how new and evolved systems could make a positive impact on legal collaboration and workflows.
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Client: Design Firm Subcontract /
Global IT Consultancy |
Client Challenge
A large consulting workforce was facing a disconnected and confusing network of knowledge work tools and business process applications. Individual consultants were having difficulty locating internal expertise, which promoted inefficiencies and reduced the quality of their service outcomes.
In order to explore and define a broad, systemic vision for a centralized employee touchpoint, the client turned to a team of consultants -- which included Flashbulb Interaction -- for outside facilitation of research, strategy, and design activities.
Flashbulb Interaction Services
Conducted onsite interviews across diverse employee roles to inform strategic ideation for globally distributed business processes.
Evaluated current systems to identify user experience issues and map opportunities for high value improvements.
Researched the state of the art in productivity application design for mobile platforms.
Co-lead design discussions to synthesize design tenets and to drive consensus around a new user experience strategy.
Worked with management to iteratively synthesize a compelling vision for enterprise 2.0 system value.
Illustrated a conceptual design narrative for a core set of collaborative knowledge work scenarios.
Value Delivered
The client received a system vision documented as “day in the life” vignettes for different organizational roles, providing an overlay of more detailed information when needed.
This deliverable convinced the CEO that funding the next phase of product development for this massive project was a high value investment. The system proposal has moved forward into detailed definition and design.
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Client: Engineering Firm |
Client Challenge
Managers of an extensive research and design program were facing frustrating inefficiencies when they were called upon to report performance indicators across diverse data sets. The client decided that a highly tailored analytics tool would provide valuable automation and a more complete picture of their firm’s collective efforts.
In order to better understand and explore what the experience of interacting with integrated metrics might be like, the client team turned to Flashbulb Interaction for outside facilitation of research, strategy, and design activities.
Flashbulb Interaction Services
Conducted interviews of management stakeholders to gather differing perspectives on current breakdowns and opportunities in targeted work activities.
Assembled trend and inspiration research on the state of the art for visualizing performance metrics.
Mapped strategic design opportunities for management decision making.
Lead inclusive, cross-functional workshops to drive requirements choices for central user experience challenges.
Generated a framework of design tenets to productively focus application ideation.
Designed a tailored application concept for a highly visual analysis tool with integrated communication workflows.
Outlined a design roadmap for phased roll out of product functionalities.
Value Delivered
The client received distilled research findings, visualization of management team decisions, and design specifications. The final application proposal bridged divergent needs, increased program visibility, and promoted sense making across previously uncorrelated pools of business information.
Flashbulb Interaction’s contributions allowed the broader client team to better understand the project they were planning to undertake, setting the stage for next steps of technical exploration and iterative development.
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Client: B2B Ecommerce Firm |
Client Challenge
Customers turn to this industry leading web application as a routine part of their work practices. While the website was contemporary and effective in many respects, a focused category of pervasive problems was causing users to call customer support again and again.
In order to set a course for targeted improvements that would streamline updates across the site, the client team turned to Flashbulb Interaction for outside facilitation of research, strategy, and design activities.
Flashbulb Interaction Services
Analyzed customer feedback and interviewed internal customer reps to extensively catalog front line issues.
Evaluated current state of client’s application design to identify user experience bottlenecks and map opportunities for high value improvements.
Assembled trend and inspiration research to fuel both strategic ideation and detailed design of reusable interface components.
Synthesized inputs from a broad range of internal stakeholders to create tools for strategic decision making.
Lead management workshops to gather priorities and preferences around key user experience proposals.
Documented the central story of the additive strategy in a compelling visual narrative.
Lead a series of inclusive, cross-functional workshops to generate a specialized design pattern language and clear content guidelines.
Value Delivered
The client received a highly visual presentation of the additive strategy story, as well as comprehensive documentation of a new design pattern language to be used in ongoing, tactical system development.
Flashbulb Interaction’s outputs have allowed the client to iteratively roll out individual design solutions within a larger strategic frame, removing obstacles to customer efficacy by enhancing focused aspects of the application's design.
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Client: Engineering Firm |
Client Challenge
On the road to developing a mission-critical internal application, the client had accomplished some major technical integrations, as well as robust definition of desired business processes.
In order to envision how engineers might collaboratively interact within the new onscreen tool, the client team turned to Flashbulb Interaction for outside facilitation of research, strategy, and design activities.
Flashbulb Interaction Services
Developed draft design ideas and a framework of brainstorming topics to spark productive conversation.
Lead an inclusive, cross-functional workshop to capture user goals and discuss potential mediation of work practices.
Created application design tenets that captured desired changes in knowledge work behaviors and stakeholders’ expectations for user experience.
Generated divergent design concepts for the new tool’s interaction model and facilitated the selection of an agreed upon direction.
Envisioned key interactions within the selected top-level design approach, rapidly illustrating onscreen flows for core knowledge work activities.
Evaluated implemented system with client team, following through on development outcomes.
Value Delivered
The client received a single go to document that distilled team decisions and agreed upon design specifications. The final application proposal enhanced situational awareness within core work processes, highlighting opportunities for cooperative discussion and collaborative, cost saving action.
Flashbulb Interaction’s contributions allowed the team to move forward with implementation of the new software’s user interface. The application’s overall interaction model has proven to be expandable in desirable directions, allowing for support of a broader range of work practices over time.
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Client: Industrial Design Firm
Subcontract / Aerospace Firm |
Client Challenge
An established aerospace firm was experiencing new market pressures from emerging competitors that put a clear focus on pilots’ user experience. The client wanted to change their product design direction to address current market conditions, while at the same time building upon their traditional brand attributes.
In order to explore innovative design proposals that could differentiate their avionics system in a disrupted marketplace, the client turned to a team of consultants -- which included Flashbulb Interaction subcontracting -- for outside facilitation of research, strategy, and design activities.
Flashbulb Interaction Services
Conducted insight-driven field research of jet pilots.
Assembled trend and inspiration research, from an interaction design perspective, as part of a larger sense making effort around market changes.
Redesigned key cockpit interactions.
Mapped the strategic positionings of two divergent design visions for the new cockpit computing system.
Presented new strategic design proposals to client leadership team.
Evaluated detailed industrial design development, applying established human factors guidelines and contemporary research findings.
Supported two usability studies as part of the phased development of the new cockpit system.
Value Delivered
The client received a comprehensive presentation that summarized our research, the selected product strategy, and two competing design visions for the new avionics system. They also received a broader information collection of secondary deliverables that traced decisions made in iterative workshops.
The outcomes of this consulting engagement lead to approved funding for the next phase of the new avionics development program. Key elements of our conceptual design proposals, including an innovative cockpit interaction that addresses central user experience issues, moved forward into detailed engineering and certification processes.
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Client: B2B Ecommerce Firm |
Client Challenge
At the beginning of a major web application overhaul, the client team had identified feature areas where innovative developments could add value in customers’ workflows. Their consensus, however, was based on a bullet point level of detail, without an accompanying design strategy.
In order to solidify buy-in for major redesign efforts internally and to develop multiple, competing design concepts for functional improvement, the client team turned to Flashbulb Interaction for outside facilitation of research, strategy, and design activities.
Flashbulb Interaction Services
Evaluated existing web application features to understand current user experience issues and map opportunities for high value improvements.
Interviewed internal stakeholders to create customer oriented framework of key topics for inclusive, cross-functional brainstorming.
Conducted a series of highly participatory workshops to generate functionality ideas for targeted user experience challenges.
Analyzed brainstorming outputs for key themes that could feed strategy definition.
Lead a strategic process that generated divergent conceptual directions for user experience and new technology development.
Advised on research methods for gathering usefulness and usability data for new product concepts.
Value Delivered
The client received several deliverables throughout the collaborative process, each highlighting cumulative learnings and presenting focused options for decision making. The work stream culminated in a distilled design strategy document, as well as a larger catalog of brainstormed ideas.
Flashbulb Interaction’s outputs were carried forward into iterative releases by the client’s internal design team. The larger backlog of down selected design ideas has since been folded into prioritization for ongoing Agile development.
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Ready to discuss your application design challenges?
Whether you are envisioning a new product or iteratively advancing an existing offering, contact us
to find out how Flashbulb Interaction can help your team to better conceptualize and deliver
your next application design.
Call 206.280.3135 or email our studio
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