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DESIGN BUREAU
Notes from the Bureau
Philips Imagination Canvas at Mercy Hospital
Planning for the Future
something brand new, but this project took it in reverse.
More than your average design firm, Atlanta’s Thrive can turn “ding-dong” into “cha-ching”
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“[At Blue Cross/Blue Shield], we hung out in a lot of cubicles. We e’ve all been there: you’re so had employees open up their fears consumed by little projects about the organization.”—JONATHAN with finite timelines that you
can’t possibly consider what comes next. The big picture? Forget it; there are deadlines to meet. Atlanta-based design and consulting firm Thrive understands your dilemma. It works with businesses that have, by necessity or otherwise, had to focus more and more on short-term results. “Innovation often requires longerterm thinking,” Thrive principal Jonathan Dalton says. “I think in many ways the design industry has stepped into that void.”
Thrive combined its expertise in industrial design and entrepreneurial strategy in drastically different projects for Home Depot and Blue Cross / Blue Shield. The home-improvement chain asked Thrive to help jumpstart sales of its doorbells and chimes. “They had like 20-odd different engines and different noises,” Dalton says. “They thought they could throw technology at it. We took a step back.” Thrive reduced the line to one engine and three sounds. They then researched popular American architectural styles and decided on a few basics—arts and crafts, Victorian, Spanish colonial, and modern—for the choice of cover. Designers are often tapped to create
open up their fears about the organization.” The findings, paired with ethnographic research, was synthesized into six basic employee personas to help BC/BS management adjust the software and implementation accordingly.
Thrive eschews traditional top-down managerial culture in favor of mentorship and autonomy, with a staff possessing diverse DALTON, PRINCIPAL, THRIVE educational and professional backgrounds. “We have an architect who wanted to become an industrial designer. We have For Blue Cross/Blue Shield, the chalformer corporate people who wanted to lenge was a painful transition to a new IT work more in design,” Dalton says. “I think system. “People had been using the same that breeds a lot of cross-fertilization and tool every day from nine to five for 15 a rich diversity of viewpoints that we can years,” Dalton explains. Thrive worked to bring to bear on a problem.” Sounds like bridge the rift between upper management, the type of innovative people you’d want on who instituted the change, and employees board to solve your next conundrum. a who had to deal with it. “We hung out in a lot of cubicles,” Dalton says. “We had them By brian libby
Above: Four employee personas from the Blue Cross/Blue Shield IT system software