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INTENTIONAL EXPERIENCES DRIVE EXCEPTIONAL OUTCOMES
The experience matters. What's good for your audience is good for your business. Establishing the experience first is instrumental for early validation and helps you deliver something more people want.
Get the necessary insights and drivers before you commit time and resources to design a product or service. The result? Higher engagement and a predictable experience at launch.
When you understand the experience early with your audience, you create a focused strategy that has higher quality requirements at the start of your project. This leads to meeting both your user's needs as well as your business needs.
Innovation is a constant in business. Doing it in the right way allows you to deliver ongoing value in tune with your audience's needs and desires. Today and in the future.
Defining a strong brand requires discovery to define the vision and design for the qualities you want associated with your organization. This means your brand promise becomes not only what you want it to be, but also what your audience thinks and feels about you over time.
The team provided professional advice and thought-provoking questions to shape the purpose and future direction of my goals. It was an absolute pleasure working with Akendi!
With ever growing information available to us, Content is now the product. Different media, big data and machine learning helps to interact in a way that makes sense to us. Understand how users think so you can match the way they want to find information. The need to design your Content so it enhances the Product and Service experience is higher than ever.
At some point, your product or service will be used by your customers, so why not involve them during design? When you engage people in the process early, you learn if the flow and interactions work as envisioned and deliver an intentional experience at launch. Successful organizations apply the right mix of business, customer and user input, this puts the focus squarely on the experience.
Service design connects the points of the experience. Since people experience your organization often through the service they receive, we need to design the service as an end-to-end experience. Here is where we tie brand, content, and product experiences together to make them work successfully in a connected, holistic way.
Akendi gave us greater insight into our users, their customer journeys and their behaviours, allowing us to better position ourselves to respond to their needs in a way that met their expectations.
Take a deeper dive into Experience Thinking with the published book, "Experience Thinking: Creating Connected Experiences" by Tedde van Gelderen, Founder of Akendi.
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Experience Thinking is our innovation framework that designs connected experiences across four quadrants: brand, content, product, and service. Unlike traditional approaches that treat these as separate silos, we design them together to create remarkable end-to-end experiences that drive engagement and predictable results at launch.
Tip: Evaluate whether your current approach creates connected or fragmented experiences across customer touchpoints.
Traditional UX often focuses on individual products or interfaces. Experience Thinking takes a holistic view, designing for the complete lifecycle from initial awareness through long-term advocacy. We start with the experience, not the technology, ensuring every touchpoint reinforces your value proposition.
Tip: Consider how your current UX efforts connect - or disconnect - across the entire customer journey.
By establishing the experience first, we validate ideas before committing resources to building. This approach de-risks investments and ensures you're creating something people actually want. It's about understanding the complete immersion - timing, interaction, intensity, coverage, meaning, and emotion.
Tip: Early validation through experience design costs far less than fixing problems after launch.
We recognize that experiences must serve both audiences. Our process identifies where user needs and business goals align, then designs solutions that create mutual value. If an experience doesn't meet both needs, it will ultimately fail regardless of aesthetic appeal or functionality.
Tip: Map where your user needs and business goals naturally align for the strongest foundation.
The four quadrants are Brand (how people perceive you), Content (information and functionality), Product (tangible interactions), and Service (end-to-end journey connections). Each quadrant influences the others, creating a multiplier effect when designed cohesively.
Tip: Audit your current efforts to identify which quadrants receive attention and which are neglected.
By validating experiences with real users throughout the process, we eliminate guesswork. Early prototypes, iterative testing, and continuous refinement based on user feedback ensure launches meet expectations rather than hoping the market responds positively.
Tip: Predictability comes from systematic validation, not perfect initial designs.
Early validation is instrumental in avoiding costly mistakes. We create experience concepts and test them with users before building anything substantial. This reveals whether ideas have merit, saving time and resources while improving final quality.
Tip: The cost of change increases exponentially as projects progress - validate early and often.
Our process follows four main phases: Innovation (discovering opportunities), Strategy (defining the experience), Design (creating solutions), and Build (implementing with quality). Each phase includes specific research, design, and testing activities that ensure experiences meet both user needs and business goals.
Tip: A structured process provides predictability while maintaining flexibility for unique challenges.
Innovation begins with opportunity discovery through environment immersion, idea scouting, and experience sketching. We explore what's possible, test feasibility, and develop experience roadmaps that guide strategic decisions. This phase transforms possibilities into viable experience concepts.
Tip: True innovation emerges from understanding unmet needs, not just applying new technologies.
Strategy translates innovation into actionable plans. We develop experience strategies, define user segments and personas, map experience journeys, and establish success metrics. This creates a clear vision of the intended experience before design begins.
Tip: Strong strategy prevents expensive pivots during design and development phases.
Design brings strategy to life through interaction architecture, visual frameworks, prototyping, and iterative refinement. We create tangible representations of the experience, test with users, and refine based on feedback until the design delivers intended outcomes.
Tip: Design is more than aesthetics - it's about creating functional beauty that serves purpose.
Build phase focuses on maintaining design integrity through detailed specifications, design patterns, and ongoing support. We work closely with development teams, conducting design reviews and user testing to ensure the built experience matches the designed intent.
Tip: The best designs fail if poorly implemented - plan for active design governance during build.
Research and testing aren't separate phases but continuous activities. From ethnographic research in innovation to usability testing in build, we maintain user focus throughout. This ensures decisions are evidence-based rather than assumption-driven.
Tip: Continuous research prevents expensive surprises and keeps projects user-centered.
While we follow a proven framework, we adapt methods to each project's unique context. The process scales from rapid sprints to multi-year transformations, always maintaining focus on delivering connected experiences that create value.
Tip: Look for processes that provide structure without rigidity - every project has unique needs.
Brand experience encompasses core values, differentiation, brand promise, and emotional connections. We use discovery workshops, stakeholder interviews, and customer research to understand current perceptions and define desired brand attributes that resonate authentically.
Tip: Brand experience is about emotional connection, not just visual identity.
We map every touchpoint where customers encounter your brand, identifying gaps between promise and delivery. Through experience audits and customer journey mapping, we ensure each interaction reinforces rather than undermines your brand values.
Tip: Broken brand promises at any touchpoint damage trust across all channels.
Brand provides the foundation that influences content voice, product personality, and service character. We develop brand experience principles that guide decisions across all quadrants, creating consistency that builds recognition and trust.
Tip: Strong brands make every other experience element more effective through coherent reinforcement.
We employ multiple research methods including perception mapping, competitive analysis, stakeholder interviews, and customer surveys. This reveals both current brand associations and opportunities for differentiation in your market.
Tip: Understanding perception gaps between internal beliefs and external reality is crucial for brand strategy.
Brand measurement goes beyond awareness to include emotional connection, preference, and advocacy. We establish baseline metrics and track changes in perception, behavior, and business outcomes tied to brand experience improvements.
Tip: Effective brand measurement connects emotional metrics to business results.
Strategy development includes defining brand essence, mapping competitive positioning, identifying key differentiators, and creating experience principles. This strategic foundation guides all subsequent design decisions across touchpoints.
Tip: Brand strategy should be aspirational yet achievable based on organizational capabilities.
Brands must evolve while maintaining core identity. We create evolution roadmaps that identify which elements to preserve, which to refresh, and how to manage transitions without losing existing equity or confusing loyal customers.
Tip: Successful brand evolution feels natural to customers rather than jarring.
Content is increasingly the product itself. We design content experiences that make information findable, understandable, and actionable across channels. This includes structure, voice, governance, and delivery systems that serve user needs efficiently.
Tip: Great content experiences feel effortless to users but require significant strategic planning.
We begin by understanding user mental models through card sorting and task analysis. Then we design information architectures, content models, and governance frameworks that ensure content remains relevant, accurate, and useful over time.
Tip: Content strategy must address creation, management, and retirement - not just initial publication.
Different audiences need different content experiences. We create adaptive content strategies that serve varied needs without creating confusion. This might include personalization, progressive disclosure, or channel-specific content approaches.
Tip: Avoid creating separate content silos - design flexible systems that adapt to user needs.
If users can't find content, it doesn't exist for them. We design search experiences, navigation systems, and content relationships that match how users think about and look for information, not how organizations structure themselves.
Tip: Test findability with real users - internal logic rarely matches external mental models.
Omnichannel content requires careful orchestration. We design content systems that maintain consistency while optimizing for each channel's unique characteristics. This ensures coherent experiences whether users engage via web, mobile, voice, or print.
Tip: Design content for reuse across channels rather than recreating for each platform.
Sustainable content experiences require clear governance. We establish roles, workflows, quality standards, and review cycles that keep content fresh and relevant. This includes planning for content updates, archival, and eventual retirement.
Tip: Content without governance quickly becomes a liability rather than an asset.
We track both usage metrics (findability, engagement, task completion) and quality metrics (accuracy, relevance, helpfulness). This data drives continuous improvement and demonstrates content ROI to stakeholders.
Tip: Connect content metrics to user outcomes, not just page views or downloads.
Product experience focuses on tangible interactions - the actual use of your digital or physical products. We design these interactions to be intuitive, efficient, and delightful, ensuring products not only work well but create positive emotional connections.
Tip: Product experience extends beyond usability to include the entire relationship with the product.
We start with user research to understand contexts, tasks, and goals. Through iterative prototyping and testing, we refine interactions until they feel natural. This includes information architecture, interaction patterns, visual design, and micro-interactions that delight.
Tip: The best product experiences feel inevitable, as if they couldn't work any other way.
Innovation should solve real problems, not create new ones. We explore creative solutions while maintaining usability through familiar patterns where appropriate and introducing new concepts gradually with clear affordances and feedback.
Tip: Users need to feel smart, not confused - innovation should empower, not frustrate.
Scalability requires systematic thinking. We create design systems with reusable components, clear patterns, and governance structures. This ensures consistency as products grow while maintaining flexibility for unique needs.
Tip: Invest in design system foundations early to avoid technical and design debt later.
Testing encompasses usability, desirability, and feasibility. We test early concepts with paper prototypes, refine through interactive mockups, and validate with functional prototypes. Each stage reveals different insights that improve the final experience.
Tip: Test with real users in realistic contexts - lab conditions miss important environmental factors.
Users expect seamless experiences across devices. We design adaptive experiences that respect platform conventions while maintaining consistency in core interactions and brand expression. This creates familiarity without forcing identical interfaces.
Tip: Design for user journeys that span devices, not isolated platform experiences.
Launch is just the beginning. We establish metrics, gather user feedback, analyze usage patterns, and identify optimization opportunities. Small, continuous improvements often yield better results than massive redesigns.
Tip: Build learning loops into your product experience to enable data-driven evolution.
Service experience is the glue binding brand, content, and product into coherent journeys. We design end-to-end experiences that connect touchpoints seamlessly, ensuring customers never feel lost or abandoned between interactions.
Tip: Service failures often occur at handoff points - pay special attention to transitions.
We map current state journeys, identify pain points and opportunities, then design future state experiences. This includes front-stage customer interactions and backstage processes that enable consistent service delivery across all channels.
Tip: Great service experiences require both customer-facing excellence and operational efficiency.
Customers expect consistent service regardless of channel. We design service blueprints that define standards, handoffs, and information flows across channels, ensuring smooth transitions as customers move between touchpoints.
Tip: Channel transitions should feel intentional and supportive, not like starting over.
Service research combines journey mapping, mystery shopping, stakeholder interviews, and operational analysis. We examine both customer experiences and employee processes to identify improvement opportunities throughout the service ecosystem.
Tip: Employee experience directly impacts customer experience - don't neglect internal perspectives.
Perfect service is impossible, but graceful recovery builds loyalty. We design service recovery processes that empower employees, communicate clearly with customers, and turn potential negatives into relationship-building opportunities.
Tip: How you handle problems often matters more than preventing them entirely.
We establish service metrics across efficiency (speed, accuracy) and experience (satisfaction, effort, emotion). Regular measurement identifies trends and opportunities, driving continuous improvement in service delivery.
Tip: Balance operational metrics with experience metrics for holistic service assessment.
Personalization at scale requires smart systems and empowered employees. We design frameworks that enable appropriate personalization without overwhelming complexity, using data and automation to support human judgment.
Tip: Effective personalization feels human even when technology-enabled.
Integration requires intentional orchestration. We create experience principles that span quadrants, design governance structures that ensure alignment, and establish review processes that maintain coherence as experiences evolve.
Tip: Regular cross-functional reviews prevent quadrants from drifting into silos.
We establish metrics for each quadrant plus overall experience health indicators. This includes leading indicators (behavior changes) and lagging indicators (business outcomes), providing a complete picture of experience performance.
Tip: Single metrics can mislead - use balanced scorecards that reflect experience complexity.
ROI emerges through multiple channels: increased conversion, reduced support costs, improved retention, and word-of-mouth growth. We establish baselines, track improvements, and connect experience enhancements to business value.
Tip: Document both hard ROI (revenue, cost) and soft ROI (satisfaction, advocacy) for complete pictures.
Experiences must evolve with changing user needs and business contexts. We create evolution frameworks that identify when updates are needed, how to implement changes without disruption, and ways to scale successful patterns.
Tip: Plan for evolution from the start - static experiences quickly become outdated.
Capability building combines training, mentoring, and practical application. We transfer knowledge through collaborative projects, develop internal champions, and establish processes that embed experience thinking into organizational DNA.
Tip: Sustainable success requires internal capability, not perpetual external dependence.
Experience excellence requires alignment across departments. We facilitate this through shared vision workshops, collaborative planning sessions, and governance structures that break down silos while respecting functional expertise.
Tip: Executive sponsorship and cross-functional collaboration are prerequisites for experience transformation.
AI enhances our ability to analyze patterns, personalize experiences, and automate routine tasks. However, human creativity, empathy, and strategic thinking remain irreplaceable. We use AI as a tool to amplify human capabilities in creating meaningful experiences.
Tip: AI should enhance human-centered design, not replace the human understanding at its core.
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