Ixmod's expertise lies in people. In watching, observing and understanding them. We specialise in reading the hooks, anchors and other mental devices people use in their day to day lives to navigate and communicate in and about this world. Sometimes the final solution is as simple as print collaterals for branding, at other times it may involve months of working with legacy data, people and technology to establish new processes and methodologies.What always stays with us is the core of our belief system. That design is primarily about people.

No two projects are ever the same. Though Ixmod has a range of services mapped out, often it is the definition of the problem which identifies the right solution. We utilise different design delivery systems through which we implement change or raise your brand's bottomline.

Ixmod works closely with the custodians of your brand through:

• Training Workshops
• Research and Observation
• Brand Development
• Usability Design
• Integrated Marketing

The role of Design

Regardless of whether you outsurce your design services or have an inhouse team develop your solutions, design plays a prominent role in your business. The convergence of so many factors points to an emerging picture, the future lies in smart marketing and good design. Technology has enabled communication to such a degree that you require deep insight to make yourself heard in todays chaotic marketplace. The battles fought by design two decades earlier has completely changed. New markets have brought in new rules.
Consider this...

• Constantly evolving media delivery systems that change our lives at a tremendous pace.
• Consumers that make decisions based on community powered peer review.
• Lower barriers to entry with potentially twice the competition compared to a decade ago.
• Well defined performance metrics and the technology and tools to measure them.
• Freedom to publish. Everyone is a publisher with an audience, anyone can broadcast.

Role Reversals: The Business Executive and The Designer

A product brochure or handout used to be a specialist job once. A designer with a background in computer graphics software was required. Today any brand manager in a hurry can dash off a reasonable brochure in under 10 minutes, what with all the templates your word processor dishes out. The role of design is quickly changing. During the sixties, Peter Gorb had said that to effectively interface with business, designers had to learn the language of business. The requirements for a modern day designer has transcended this in the same way that modern day businesses require a brand manager to understand the softer sensory aspects of the brand (once the domain of the designer). Design has now seamlessly blended with your everyday business requirements as well as objectives.

How Ixmod can help consolidate your design assets

Ixmod has been actively involved in the enigma that is design over the past decade. Design is difficult to quantify since a large part of creativity is art. The crux lies in tying in creative freeform concepts to tangible business objectives. Our active involvement with internal design teams within large organisations has allowed us an insight into the typical troubles that ail design wings. Ixmod works closely with the management to understand the overall business drivers and integrates design as a necessary component within the overall plan. By striving to integrate design into the plan from the begining rather than utilise it midway as a tool, we actually help you use design as a strategic differentiator or as a smart entry barrier against me-too products. Our heuristic system based on best practices in design, allows us to create a seamless design pipeline integrating processes, staffing, technology, infrastructure and training to create a design team that responds at the speed of business, literally.

Applications: Design Management

• If you have an inhouse design team, and require streamlining for your operations.
• If you would like to set up an inhouse design team.
• If you utilise a lot of design services such as product collateral and websites and require consolidation.
• If you require to track brand and design changes across geographies

HUMAN FACTORS RESEARCH VS MARKET RESEARCH

In the business world, the word research has developed a sort of impenetrable objectivity that makes it difficult to imagine what the other types of market research there may be. Which is why subtle factors like human factors data, product interface, visual language definition, navigation and way finding design is always overlooked in the broader spectrum of market research.
The problem is that trying to objectively record information which is entirely subjective brings with it, it's own problems. The recursive loop of a user/consumer interacting with the target object/environment and commenting on it objectively often nullifies actual data. There's an old saying "Don't ask the barber if you need a haircut". It applies very strongly to usability and human factors research through rigorous market research.
While the softer issues that emerge from design research do not contain tabular data, they do contain insights. Some profound enough to change businesses.

The way around: Applied Observation

We research through observation. Our team of usability researchers first create a clearly defined set of objectives which we then categorise into differing modalities. On ground or discreet observation of subjects allows us to glean data which is sorted and presented with clear information on the seriousness of the issue as well as the impact points. Depending on the type of project we apply heuristic processes based on known best practices in the field.

Research and Observation: Tools

Based on the problem we use specific tools including field studies, lab observation and focus groups. Owing to the subtleity of the captured data, we do not use computational models, prefering to conduct our data sorts manually.

Applications: Design Research

It helps to remember that we do not offer pre-designed research solutions, rather we suggest a route based on study. Here are a few different ways we have helped clients in the past.

• Website / Web Application Usability Research: User friendliness and compliance
• Advertising Concept testing / Online research and Focus Groups:
• Product ergonomics and usability research
• Retail Shop floor: Usable Navigation and Wayfinding
• Visual Merchandising: Display Grouping for Visual Perception

Speak to us about how we can apply our design research skills to provide insight into potential problem areas.

Content is King, when it isn't hell.

The strange thing about content is that it grows when you don't want it to, you create content in the act of manipulating and even erasing it. Content really is king. The question has never been about the dearth of content, it has always been about maintaining quality and managing it effectively for sustained delivery.

The case of the disappearing content

There was once this client who asked us to generate content for his entertainment related brand. Apparently they weren't generating enough to showcase on their media vehicles. Out of sheer curiosity we mapped out the flow of content within the organisation to find that there actually was an overflow of content. Turns out that each department was churning out it's own versions and saving them as word processor files. No one knew that there was so much usable content because there was no way for them to have an overview of their data.

Promoting the creation of content within organisations

A constantly evolving system that generates content regarding your brand, product or organisation is a trait well worth promoting. Management can intelligently steer data churned out by the organisation into meaningful accesible chunks acting as repositories of brand or organisational knowledge. Organisations with a varied brand portfolio running scores of different promos a year need to collate all the brand data into a meaningful database to analyse and forecast trends. As digital media delivery formats slowly overtake linear formats, meaningful, in-context content can make all the difference between a brand that is percieved as well rooted versus one that is shallow.

Managing Content: The Architecture of Information

Ixmod helps identify issues related to content management within your organisation and develops tools to categorise data which can be quickly accessed. We have helped organisations capture, sort, collate, translate, present and archive content through automated content management systems. Our information architecture processes ensure that categorisation models reflect the internal vocabulary of the organisation rather than through random logic. Based on the nature of your organisation and it's internal hiearchy we propose tools such as forums, blogs, shoutboxes, wikis or podcasts to encourage internal content development, adding to the overall knowledge base of your organisation.

Applications: Content Management

• When you want a hub of mini-sites based on the theme of your brand.
• When you need to effectively capture internally generated content.
• When you need to serve brand material across media channels without loosing integrity.
• When you need to spot patterns in your brand collateral over a period of time.
• When you need to capture best practices or develop a knowledge database.

The Two Minute Website

What does it take to set up a website these days? Even if you ignore the hundreds of free site building tools online, your word processor itself is capable of outputting browser readable HTML. Website building has become so ubiquitous a task, that literally anyone can build a site these days. Even web applications that were once the domain of software firms has now been simplified enough that a web designer could cobble together a content management system or an intranet.

When a wrong choice puts a spanner in the works

Arbitary web solutions are often not in line with your organisations existing legacy systems or IT policies. A short termed view towards building web solutions could potentially cause conflict and cost a lot more in rectification later on. Scalability is a huge factor in today's rapidly evolving technology market. The wrong decisions can literally leave you out on a limb.
Web standards compliance is another huge factor, and it's relevance is even clearer in web 2.0. The invisible robots, spiders and scripts that tag and identify your website, (thereby making it accesible to people ) thrive on complant code. So do browsers. Clean well marked code, keeping in line with W3C standards degrades gracefully on older browsers.

Ixmod: A Web Savvy Partner

Ixmod comes from a line of dotcom veterans. Having seen the previous era of web technology and the differences that new technologies and processes like AJAX, Ruby on Rails and OpenLazlo are making to web technologies Ixmod helps organisations make the right technological decisions. Our background in application development and usability engineering allows us a keen sense of understanding your requirements and matching it to the right use of logic and software.

Applications: Web Technology

• When you want a website powered by a content management system.
• When you require a clean, human-readable U.I for your existing software.
• When you need to set up an intranet or extranet.

Ixmod started as a communications design studio and while our expertise may have diversified, designing is still our primary breadwinner. Our design team is predictably well versed on a wide variety of media platforms spanning the web, print, film and retail formats.