This excerpt from an article by Vinay Patel, Digital Strategist at Boxman Studios, originally appeared at boxmanstudios.com. It is reprinted here with permission.
We love our clients. They allow us to design, develop, and deploy the kinds of things that make it exciting to come to work each day. And yet, even though we work hard to make our clients happy, we work harder to make our client’s clients happy.
Focusing on the end user’s experience is what we mean by “Customer Centric Design.” Yes, we have deadlines, budgets, and goals set by our clients, but what matters most to them is how their audience responds to what we create.
Five of the more critical things we keep in mind when solving client problems include:
1. Create An Efficient Footprint
Designing an experience that gets people’s attention is one thing. We routinely utilize vertical space to maximize a footprint. But just as important is how we think about traffic moving in and through an exhibit. That’s why we focus on points of engagement throughout an experience.
2. Be Iconic
Around Boxman Studios we call our creations ‘people magnets’ for a reason. The structures we build for our clients are almost always the central focal point of trade shows and festivals. But we don’t rest on our laurels. Each project we undertake is as unique as the different brands we work with. And the goal for each project always to elevate the brand experience so that people ask for it by name.
3. Maximize Your Footprint
A brand experience doesn’t start when you cross the threshold into one of our environments. It happens from across the trade show floor when people gravitate to the cool structure with the great branding. And it includes the “lobby” outside of the structure where people congregate before committing to entering. Custom furniture, bars, and interactive monitors are just a few of the ways we’ve made the end-user experience special for our clients. When we say we think outside the box, we mean it.
4. Create Zones of Interaction
Having an iconic, immersive experience that people talk about is great, but what about ROI? When we know what the goals are for a project, we start thinking about how to get your visitors to act favorably. Throughout the logical traffic patterns we create stations where engagement and interaction occur. Want to capture data? Want people to share an image in their social streams using a specific hashtag? Want to sell product? We build this type of functionality into every project.
5. Make a Connection
When you get right down to it, what matters most in the experiential marketing world is emotion. People want experiences. And they want to share them. That’s why beyond dazzling people with an awesome structure, we think about what matters most to them. It’s why we put them at the center of our design process from the outset.
