Design thinking allows for out-of-the-box ideas, says Avenue Code's Holly Camponez

Design thinking is one of the best strategies for product innovation because of its problem-solving approach specific to design. In this interview with Media 7, Holly Camponez, Director of Creative Services at Avenue Code, shares a few insights into creating end-to-end development solutions with the right approach towards design. Read on to find out how to spearhead digital transformations with design thinking.

The biggest question a designer needs to answer is, "Who is it for?" followed by a deep understanding of the user’s needs.

MEDIA 7: As the Director of Avenue Code’s Creative Services division, could you please tell us a little bit about .Design?
HOLLY CAMPONEZ:
Happily! .Design originated when we identified a key opportunity to add value to our client portfolio. As agile practitioners since Avenue Code was founded in 2008, we recognized that the old model of outsourcing design to an agency and then bringing in developers after was broken. As we studied design thinking and began to introduce methodologies like Google’s Design Sprint to our delivery, we saw that we were able to make significant strides in time-to-market, usability, and adoption by end-users. That marked a turning point for us, and we invested in building out our in-house agency where designers are steeped in design thinking, live and breathe the Agile manifesto, and are equally comfortable collaborating with business stakeholders and development teams. The “dot” in .Design is a nod to the clean slate that design thinking encourages – getting outside of your assumptions and starting at zero as you cultivate empathy with your user. The dot at the end of a sentence says, “That’s it, the end, what comes next could be anything,” and we try to bring this spirit of humility and continuous learning to each client and project we take on.


M7: According to you, how important is storytelling in design thinking?
HC:
As much as I personally love and believe in storytelling, I believe it takes – or ought to take - a backseat in a true design thinking workshop, process, or engagement. There’s a pervasive tendency that all human beings have to want to make sense of things and fit them into a narrative too early on. Design thinking says that we’re here to listen first, and secondly to consciously pause before jumping right into a solution. We’re asked to do something wildly uncomfortable, which is to speculate, almost to play in the realm of, "How might we?" This is hands down the hardest thing to get a group of businesspeople to do; everyone wants to get to a solution as quickly as possible. It takes an intentional resistance to narrative and storytelling. I will of course add that once you’re into the actual work of ideating and building, storytelling is critical to creating something that resonates with users. That can’t be overstated.

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If you look at human psychology, you quickly realize that everything about it is hardwired against innovation.



M7: How does thinking like a designer help Avenue Code provide effective end-to-end development solutions for digital transformation for its clients?
HC:
The biggest question a designer needs to answer is, "Who is it for?" followed by a deep understanding of the user’s needs. When you bring that mindset to digital transformation, it ensures that the solutions you’re designing and building are going to meet users where they are and that they will be adopted. I was at a conference a few years ago where an executive at a major Fortune 50 company was asked to talk about his company’s digital transformation. He shared how they’d done everything "right," hired Agile coaches, introduced new digital touchpoints for consumers, and then somewhat shamefacedly admitted that they had seen practically no incremental ROI from all their investment because they hadn’t stopped to look at the data around what users actually wanted. I think design has a bad reputation for being subjective and "fluffy." The reality is that thinking like a designer requires you to start from real data, and to quickly test and gather data if it doesn’t exist. When you’re in tune with the reality your users live in, you tend to create more effective solutions, and transformation is executed with clear goals in mind.


M7: What makes design thinking one of the best approaches for product innovation?
HC:
If you look at human psychology, you quickly realize that everything about it is hardwired against innovation. Our brains want to make mental shortcuts as a way of coping with cognitive overload – which in our modern world is only increasing with the sheer quantity of information available. It’s a reasonable way to cope, but it also relies on a series of assumptions about the way things are. The problem with this is that it gives us pretty acute tunnel vision, which severely limits innovation by forcing us back to what’s known and familiar time after time. When we see a stick figure with two arms, two legs, and a head, our mental shortcut says, "That’s a human being." But what if it were a bear standing upright? Or a funny coat rack? Or a street light with arms for flowerpots? Design thinking gives us a practical set of ways to set aside our assumptions about what innovation looks like or what success means, which in turn creates space for out-of-the-box ideas.

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A good designer should be the voice of the user in product development.



M7: How do you analyze whether a design is good? What metrics do you monitor for this assessment?
HC:
I love this question, and it can be answered on both a micro and macro level. On the micro-level, it’s always interesting to me when my peers in other disciplines suggest that design quality is subjective, when in fact there are very clear metrics to determine whether the tangible outputs of design are good or poor quality. Even a quick Google search can reveal some of these metrics, but a great place to begin is the book The Universal Principles of Design by William Lidwell, Kritina Holden, and Jill Butler.

On the macro level, the fundamental question is: Who decides whether design is good? Although nearly everyone would agree that the user is the final authority on that point, in theory, this can be a surprisingly controversial stance in practice when business stakeholders want their vision executed, quickly and inflexibly. Obviously, not every project or product is going to allow for an in-depth research and discovery phase, but every project and product should find ways to include real user validation early and often. A good designer should be the voice of the user in product development – which means, by the way, that if you’re simply adding design expertise to "pretty it up" after everything has been defined, you’re really missing out on the true value of good design.

Nine times out of ten when a designer starts to look for a new job, it’s because they don’t feel the user is being centered in decision making. And on the flip side, designers themselves often fall into the trap of believing themselves infallible about what users want. Egocentric designers who don’t know how to be wrong will not produce a good design. The first question we ask in our interviews, particularly for roles that include user research, "Tell me about a time you were wrong." If a designer can’t answer that question, odds are good that they’re not going to add much value to a project.


M7: What’s the best advice you have received?
HC:
My parents, happily married for nearly 40 years, once told me, "When you’re wrong, say you’re sorry fast and get back to having fun." I’ve found that when I’m able to accept and own up to my mistakes quickly and move on, I’m much more effective professionally, as well as better adjusted personally!

ABOUT AVENUE CODE

Avenue Code is the leading software consultancy for full-service digital evolution solutions. Since 2008, the firm has partnered with Fortune 100 companies and enterprise organizations in every vertical to accelerate innovation. Headquartered in San Francisco, Avenue Code has offices in New York, Brazil, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, and Portugal.

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ON24 Unveils its Next Generation Platform, Unleashing a New Era of AI-powered Intelligent Engagement

ON24 | January 24, 2024

Today, ON24 marks the next chapter of its innovation strategy with the launch of its next generation intelligent engagement platform. With AI-powered intelligence at the core, ON24 will now enable enterprises to continuously engage audiences through hyper-personalized experiences that deliver connected insights and drive cost-efficient revenue growth. “AI will fundamentally reshape sales and marketing and reimagine the customer experience. This means that sales and marketing teams must embrace AI to innovate and adapt, or risk being left behind,” says Sharat Sharan, co-founder, President and CEO. “With the launch of the ON24 Intelligent Engagement Platform, we are excited to leverage our unique foundation of first-party data to give our industry-leading customers an AI advantage, so that they can combine best-in-class experiences, personalization and content, to capture and act on connected data and insights at scale to drive revenue growth. And, we believe AI will continue to be a key differentiation for our own business and technology strategy moving forward, powering a new era of intelligent engagement.” Built on its foundation of first-party data, the ON24 Intelligent Engagement Platform combines best-in-class digital experiences, including the company’s flagship webinar, virtual event and content marketing products, with its new AI-powered Analytics and Content Engine (ACE) to provide an integrated go-to-market solution. The platform’s comprehensive set of capabilities will help sales and marketing teams to: Scale personalized experiences: Build best-in-class, branded experiences that reach their prospects and customers at scale and are hyper-personalized for individuals. Automate continuous engagement: Interact with prospects and customers 24/7 through AI-generated content and always-on nurtures. Deliver connected insights: Track audience engagement data across interactions and analyze engagement across key audience segments. Drive revenue growth: Enable data-driven actions across go-to-market teams to generate pipeline and build lifetime customer relationships. “Today’s launch of the ON24 Intelligent Engagement Platform brings our AI innovation together with more than a decade of market leadership, product development and first-party engagement data,” said Jayesh Sahasi, EVP of Product and CTO at ON24. “We believe this will unlock even greater value for our customers, providing AI-powered intelligence that keeps getting smarter, more personalized and more effective over time." ​​About ON24 ON24 is on a mission to help businesses bring their go-to-market strategy into the AI era and drive cost-effective revenue growth. Through its leading intelligent engagement platform, ON24 enables customers to combine best-in-class experiences with personalization and content, to capture and act on connected insights at scale. ON24 provides industry-leading companies, including 3 of the 5 largest global technology companies, 3 of the 5 top global asset management firms, 3 of the 5 largest global healthcare companies and 3 of the 5 largest global industrial companies, with a valuable source of first-party data to drive sales and marketing innovation, improve efficiency and increase business results. Headquartered in San Francisco, ON24 has offices globally in North America, EMEA and APAC. For more information, visit www.ON24.com.

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General AI

New SysAid Copilot counters ineffective chatbot deployments with next-gen, generative AI-powered IT Service Management

SysAid | January 12, 2024

SysAid, a leading provider of IT and Enterprise Service Management solutions, proudly announces the commencement of an exciting new chapter with the commercial release of SysAid Copilot, designed to liberate organizations by putting AI to work, for them and their people. At the core of SysAid Copilot is the AI Chatbot for End Users delivering always-on, 24/7 service. This conversational self-service experience uses generative AI to help employees work through issues by delivering answers, utilizing the organization's data, from knowledge base articles through ticket resolution history – as well as verified external data sources, links, and documents. Combating ineffective virtual agent deployment According to Gartner, "Staffing an IT service desk is difficult and a considerable expense. Long phone queues and abandoned calls are not uncommon. Yet, many I&O leaders have experienced issues with the implementation and adoption of virtual support agents, which are aimed at alleviating some of these challenges." One of the main factors attributed to these issues is that initial deployments of chatbots were ineffective[1]. With no code zero setup required, SysAid Copilot comes with a feature set designed to counter the potential pitfalls arising from sub-optimal deployment of traditional virtual support agents. The AI Usage Dashboard clearly reflects the value provided to both admins and end users through usage of SysAid Copilot features. For example, adoption of the AI Chatbot for End Users and Assistive AI features for admins. It also offers insights into AI-contained issues, indicating the rate at which problems were automatically resolved by SysAid Copilot using the organization's data and averting the need for ticket creation. In parallel, admins maintain ultimate control over the quality of responses with the ability to monitor, edit, and fine-tune answers provided by the AI Chatbot enabled by a Monitor and Fine-Tune feature. AI Author enables the provision of consistently professional service by rephrasing replies, elaborating on answers, and breaking down information into simple steps with responses that are comprehensible and accessible for employees. This also exempts admins from the need to grapple with wording and grammar. Embedded into the channels that employees already use, SysAid Copilot facilitates quick adoption within the organization. For example, employees get service in a single click from the AI Chatbot (one-click ticket creation) or automatically via the AI Emailbot, delivering an immediate response even before an admin sees the ticket. Increasing productivity SysAid Copilot leverages cutting-edge generative AI technology, elevating admins to play a strategic role in the organization and improving IT productivity by over 20%. "The release of SysAid Copilot is a momentous milestone in our quest to lead organizations on a transformative journey toward AI-driven organizational processes and excellence," said Avi Kedmi, SysAid CEO. "Tapping into specialized data accumulated from thousands of customers and millions of users, SysAid Copilot enables employees to enjoy a fully conversational experience, freeing up admins to focus on more strategic work and become the catalyst for organizational productivity. SysAid Copilot orchestrates service management across the organization, embodying our commitment to infusing intelligence and ease into the workday, reshaping the landscape of service management. And this is only the beginning, as our dynamic roadmap promises a steady stream of groundbreaking features and capabilities ahead, ensuring the success of our customers." The General Availability of SysAid Copilot follows a 5-month design partner and beta program in which a diverse and engaged group of active customers played a pivotal role in refining and enhancing the product. The dedication and enthusiasm of the beta partners have been instrumental in shaping the product and ensuring that it is finely tuned to address the unique needs of SysAid's customer community, not only meeting but exceeding their expectations. Enhancing CSAT scores and slashing MTTR SysAid Copilot includes AI Intelligent Categorization automatically categorizing tickets submitted via the AI Chatbot for End Users and routes to the right people while making suggestions for more appropriate categories for tickets that come in through other channels, reducing human error in ticket categorizations by ~40%. In parallel, AI Case Summarization provides admins with a real-time summarization of the ticket content and employee sentiment (AI Emotion) so admins can understand the context, history, and end-user sentiment at a glance. "SysAid Copilot has helped our organization a great deal in providing support quicker. Since our department is oftentimes understaffed, wait times are higher than normal, and with SysAid Copilot we've witnessed those wait times plummeting," said Nathan Gleed, IT at the City of St George. "One of the most amazing aspects of this new technology is its continual learning, consistently improving performance and generating more accurate and sophisticated output." About SysAid SysAid is on a mission to liberate organizations by putting AI to work for them and their people. We orchestrate service management across organizations with generative AI that taps into specialized data accumulated from thousands of customers and millions of users. With zero setup requirements, our conversational AI manages employees' requests, assists with queries, and accelerates the resolution of issues. With intelligence and ease infused into the workday, productivity thrives so that employees can focus on what they're meant to do, and organizations are free to fulfill their purpose. With over 5,000 customers, SysAid partners with organizations ranging from small businesses to Fortune 500 enterprises across 140 countries. For more information, please visit www.sysaid.com

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Avenue Code

Avenue Code is the leading software consultancy for full-service digital evolution solutions (http://www.avenuecode.com). Since 2008, the firm has partnered with Fortune 100 companies and enterprise organizations in every vertical to accelerate innovation. Headquartered in San Francisco, Avenue Code...

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