The power of brand language in connected customer experiences
Decades of connected visual touch points | credit: https://www.cnn.com/style/article/porsche-70th-anniversary/index.html

The power of brand language in connected customer experiences

A brand language is a brand’s DNA. It defines how users see, feel, touch and experience the design of its products - both digital and physical. And when you have a consistent brand language, it really significantly impacts your image.

Take Porsche or BMW. You remove the logo and you squint an eye, and in a flash, you think “Hey, I recognize that car, the grill looks like a BMW, or the shoulder line of the side of the car and the iconic headlights, that looks like a Porsche”.?

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The first purely electrically powered Porsche had to be immediately recognisable for its Porsche design DNA showing the importance of consistent brand language

https://timcalkins.com/2015/07/how-porsche-builds-its-brand/


I spend a lot of my time evangelising brand values and brand language.

Sometimes it’s at the macro level, when ideating products or entirely new categories that align with brand values. Other times it’s at the detailed end, where we’re tweaking dimensions to ensure quality of form, or creating a digital subscription model to go alongside . Always, it’s about ensuring that our brand language is deliberately and consistently integrated across the value chain.

Having a consistent and effective visual brand language (VBL) means leveraging a set of values or equities you want to be known for - providing tangible ways for users to emotionally connect with your products.? For some - the first, most critical connection is made in the initial fraction of a second when the consumer takes that first glance at the car.?

But in our case, when there is a level of expectation in the market already - if we get that moment wrong, the results can be irreparable.

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I posted this infographic a few months ago to illustrate the causal relationship between expectations and reality in product design, and how it can seriously diminish, or improve brand perception.?


Speaking without words

A well defined VBL or aesthetic vocabulary allows you to spell out the elements that will bring together your family of products - making it much more likely you are recognized, and achieve brand loyalty.

“Each element is like a jigsaw piece in the brand language puzzle. And the puzzle manifests the brand’s unique story and values.”

At Hitachi Cooling and Heating we are starting to better articulate the brand language we want to be known for. By spelling out distinct elements, eg. ‘the wave’, ‘harmony surface’ and ‘harmony line’, and weaving these into the Hitachi air conditioning product ranges, we’re better able to align our tangible products with our intangible values, like progression, air, movement, and flow.?

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Iconic by design: The Iconic Wave shape exists on every unit within the product family, upon the surface its user most often interacts with?

The Wave represents progressivity: the undulating shape helps the technology seamlessly blend into the environment, while evoking a feeling of comfort. These elements are anchored to our overarching design philosophy which guides how we take care of air quality in all the environments that you live in, play in, work in. They are the subconscious parts of our aesthetic - those that speak to you without words.

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Form follows function, and brand values. The wave design of the Hitachi Advanced Colour wired controller touchpad is a teaser to the future of our brand language.

Beyond the 'wave' design of the touchpad, we consider every detail that people see, touch, and feel. A satisfying user experience includes consideration of the icons chosen, the fonts, and the architecture of information. The purpose of our design philosophy therefore - is to better integrate with a more human experience through our technologies which seeks to define simplicity, intuitiveness, comfort without being intrusive.


The extension of brand language into digital experiences

With the future of IoT, software and hardware are coming together to create new connected experiences. In this new world, designers need to push past purely visual brand language to consider the entire experience more than ever before.?

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Creating a bridge between material and digital sciences will give life and new meaning to design, establishing new depth in the field. I think this will embed into design attributes, similar to aesthetics or usability, around consistent quality of experience.?

Characteristics of authenticity and realism, ergonomics and immersion will all be key to communicating brand language, through design and engineering, in the connected product space. For example, if a VR experience leaves the user dizzy and disoriented, that will be a distraction to the memorable narrative a brand is trying to communicate. If you buy a smart cooling device with embedded AR and geo-locating technology… you’d be disappointed to get an old school, 300-page long instruction manual to get you started on installing it.?

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Emerging digital technologies – think virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) and mixed reality (MR) –? engage consumers in new ways. Take this example from IKEA which proves that brand language must bend, sync, and interact with the user in new ways to create a visceral digital experience and value exchange:

Anticipating and responding to users’ needs seamlessly. IKEA AR Concept Kitchen.

Gone are the days when we exhaust the portfolio with endless material selection and “high mix, low volume”, long tail customization business models to sustain product life cycles. With the minimalist lifestyles of Industry 4.0 and the sharing economy - connected products require higher investments but promise longer and more transparent utility values. They are evolving consumer behaviors with every digital feature innovation.?


A new language that really resonates

When designing IoT products, user research is as critical as ever. We need to dig deep into users’ needs in order to find out where lies a problem truly worth solving, and what is the real end user value of the solution.

And the research area has significantly matured with the integration of big data. There is far less interpretation around customer segments, personas, and on and offline behaviors these days, and a lot more certainty. The future of IoT is both qualitative and quantitative: a hybrid mix of physical and digital.?

In the case of our airCloud Home app, smart fencing technology and GPS tracking knows when you leave the house and uses this information to automatically shut down or start up your air conditioning again, depending on when you're in the area.?

Using data and user feedback, we can map this experience to better understand what people think, feel, do and sense during their journey through indoor spaces. This can inform how we integrate brand language - like timing, alerts, and app dashboard interactivity - to optimize efficiency and enhance human comfort and health in our living spaces.

Brand language is critical in shaping a distinctive experience that’s memorable for all the right reasons.?

By unpacking the user journey and leveraging algorithmic solutions operating in the cloud, we can map out how users interact with the brand in its entirety, and use this to arrive at deeper, and more immersive new dimensions of brand language.

Hugo Martin

Director of Product Design.

2 年

Brilliant article Lawrence C., Thanks for sharing.

Hank Marcy

Global Product Development and Engineering Leader

2 年

A very nice synopsis of a topic that some companies get right and others ignore to their peril. I am glad to know that the Hitachi air conditioning brand is in such capable and thoughtful hands. Keep up the outstanding work!

Tim Morton

Creative leadership across disciplines, businesses and categories. Innovation, User Experience, Industrial Design, Brand Design , Education, Human (ity) Centered, Design Thinking

2 年

Very well written Lawrence !

Mohit Sharma

Global Design Leader | Interested in Innovation, Customer Experience and Building Great Products | Harvard Business School | NIFT

2 年

Absolutely spot on Lawrence! Customers don't look at the brand in the 'silos' of website, support or product, it is the holistic end-to-end experience across all these touch points that needs to be consistent. Sometimes it is difficult to measure the impact of this in short term, but it definitely pays off in the long run!!

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