Our approach

Pivot’s “Informed Design Philosophy” involves people throughout the design process. Based on User Centered Design principles, we consider the needs, wants and limitations of a product or service from a customer’s perspective at every stage of the design process. We’ve learned from CEOs and sales reps, street youth and hospital workers. In every case, we’ve injected these insights into our understanding phase to design better designs. 

The process flows through our Five Phases: Understanding, Explore, Create, Deliver, Measure & Evolve. These principles represent a proven methodology capable of delivering product and services experiences for customers and business.

During the ideation, creation and development processes, we rely deeply on what we’ve learned and heard from the people who use your product or service. We manage their input with specific techniques geared to distill their varied experiences into creative insights. Lastly, our approach to design is iterative and multi-disciplinary, which means that our designers must consider:

• Audience: the people who will be using the materials, i.e, age, geographical location, ethnicity, gender, education, etc.

• Purpose:  the objectives of the project design

• Context: the social, cultural and commercial circumstances that have given rise to the need for design solutions.

Here is an overview of the Five Phase process we take to help you find your voice.

We first want to UNDERSTAND how your services or products are perceived both inside your organization and among your customers.

• Understand immediate and long-term strategy and objectives
• Review business functions and brand experience
• Define customer needs, wants and expectations
• Audit existing materials, technology and human touch points
• Analyze competitive landscape
• Identify user groups, experiences and usage scenarios
• Conduct stakeholder interviews, surveys and review
• Carry out field research

We regard informed design as a journey that begins with an open-ended EXPLORATION of new and relevant ways for you to connect with your audience.

• Landscape review
• Review information and insights from first phase
• Explore customer relationships, user groups and functionality
• Map customer experiences
• Incubate and share positioning ideas
• Build a voice and brand message definition document
• Visualize concepts with  design sketches
• Pivot Design Session/Charette
• Development moodboards for feeling, style, inspiration

Once we have an appreciation of your business and a sense of where you want to go, we apply our design skills to CREATE prototypes and messages that carry your voice and your enthusiasm.

• Review organization and customer insight
• Concept development
• Visual design
• Presentation
• Iterative testing and validation of assumptions
• Create mock-ups and prototypes
• Approval

Armed with our informed design concept, we DELIVER the final design by developing communication materials, digital platforms and the other elements of the program.

• Produce print and digital materials with partners
• Implement communications plan/strategy
• Deliver and test applications
• Project management and quality control

How well do your products and services perform? We want to monitor their success with you. As responsible designers, our job doesn’t end when we deliver the goods. We want to be your design partner over the long haul, MEASURING performance and recommending adjustments that move you into the future as it evolves.

• Observe feedback
• Recommend updates to address changing user behaviours
• Audit design and brand governance
• Implement design/brand changes