Conservative Party

The challenge

Platform Group (Architecture & Digital Design Studio) had pre-designed interaction software applications covering interactive storyboards for touchscreen participation and audience casting post-it notes, interactive audience prioritization - all hosted on a native CMS. My task was to embrace this state-of-the-art technology to enhance collaboration and transform the way Diageo shares insights, interacts and generates new opportunities with their customers, distributors and agency partners within their new Collaboration Centre. How can this experience, using the depths of Diageo’s content, be leveraged with available technology and human interaction to take customers on a journey that exceeds the typical PowerPoint board presentation; with clients looking forward to returning? 

Success measures

• Diageo Host team feel empowered to use the software and continue to move away from PowerPoint 

• The experience must provide useful data and analytics 

• The customer experience is interactive, fun and inclusive
  

Research

From conducted interviews with the Diageo team and analysis of previous presentation interactions, revealed the following insights:

1) What does useful data mean in the context of a TEC?
In the context of the TEC, data can be collected from interactions within any given presentation. However, when researching with the Diageo team, the success of the interaction within the TEC would be proving ‘To what extent has the TEC improved the relationship growth with the client, and how can you use data to quantify this?’

2) Setting the mission ahead of arrival, the success of the journey rides on the host.
"One important key to success is self-confidence. An important key to self-confidence is preparation." - Arthur Ashe 
Based on customer feedback analysis, Diageo clients (guests) don’t set goals ahead of meeting, with reasons such as; lack of time, not enough data or unknown ways of solving current challenges. Diageo sales representatives (Hosts) must prepare a goal through empathy and preparation with the client, ahead of arrival, to create a meaningful experience. This gives the host a deep confidence in the guests' needs whilst being in a space with technology and interactions that are new for them, remembering that the usual format would be a PowerPoint Presentation.

3) Being prepared on the fly, if you’ve got it, flaunt or cast it!
By going through the content with the Diageo Host users and querying Host and Guest frequent conversation topics unearthed the following insights:

‘How’s the forecast looking for Tanqueray over the next few years’
This example question represents a thematic synthesis of questions between the Diageo host and customer within past presentations. In an instance the Host would need to communicate the narrative of trends and stories for a particular brand. This insight enabled us to theme brand content into pre-built interactive storyboards.

‘What was that 6 Nations Ad again?’
This representative question reflects smaller nuances in conversation, however, supporting insight 2, the Host’s confidence is key to the success of the interaction at the TEC. Enabling them to be agile in their responses to customer questions they will need to quickly search and cast content.

4) Inclusive interaction design within physical space is a must, considering social dynamics and hybrid guests

To understand the TEC customer group scenarios, we as a team (Diageo + Platform) role played the variety of customers in an average interaction. What we found with this research was a real need to leverage group social dynamics; communication, empathy, social awareness, group dynamics and social influence. Considerations from customers online who won’t pick up on nuances of body languages and space energy to customers with language or social impairments may not be able to ‘jump in’ to activities. This research was vital to take into the approach, as it serves all above research points to provide successful interaction rates through inclusion.

Approach

Using research points above:

• Workshops

• Persona creation with jobs to be done, roles, responsibilities and risk mitigation

• Circular interaction design process to meet quantitative data measure

• Customer journey map

• Scenario sketches

• Wireframes (Low & High Fi)

• Working with the development and engineering team to take models, wireframes and scenarios into build
  

Applications and uses

HOST APP:
Individual apps designed for interaction between Diageo Hosts and Guests to use within the TEC, names inspired by Diageo’s liquid based language:

• Hot or not: Using the Diageo product content, I created a touch board template concept for the team to create, enabling host and guests to playfully move insights into ‘Hot’ or ‘Not’ buckets. 

• Trends: From deep analysis of Diageo content, cross referenced with the experience process and customer journey map, I created touch board interactive template concepts for the Diageo team to use within the CMS to cast within the TEC 

• Distilling ideas: The touch board software had been built to cluster themes by a touch interaction - very clever! I utilised this interactive to distill the ideas throughout the day into usable thematics. 

• Action plan: Using the themes from the distilling session, the action plan takes themes into ownership, assigning guests and hosts with ways to take the insights outside of the room. Making the experience useful and strategic for ongoing growth opportunities.

• Content Library: A searchable content library, supporting any casting need from the Diageo Host.

CMS:

• Designed with clear guidance on creating content for interactive app templates for the experience

• Ability to resize content to fit specs of screens around TEC 

• Upload library of all content that would appear in the Host App library

• Data download of all submissions through the experience 

GUEST APP:

• Designed to submit post its within the event purpose throughout the experience

• Designed to provide feedback at any point of the experience

Solution

Vision led via thorough research and methodologies referenced, I designed a hybrid Collaboration Centre Experience that worked, I was so happy to hear the experience enabled Diageo to meet their success measures! I repurposed existing technology to provide a meaningful experience. On reflection it would have been great to have spent more time finessing the UI, however, I know this can always be enhanced as the experience grows.