Design Audit- Fjord

Des462-Design management-Design Audit

B y M o h a m e d Sh a h i d Fi ro z

Year Founded: 2001

Founders: Olof Schybergson, Mike Beeston and Mark Curis

What is Design Audit ?

It is a review of a certain business and all different elements used to interact with clients. It shows how the company differentiates itselfs and promotes itself to potential clients and project opportunities. It aids In creating a visual identity, examining both visual and physical aspects of the company.

Objective Demonstrate knowledge of how the management and allocation of appropriate resources will sustain a design practice. Communicate effectively both visually and verbally.

The objective os to asses the behaviour and presence of Fjord and looking to aspects like the organization itself, clients and design. This is to ensure if Fjord maintains the identity and the image being an Accenture venture.

Company Size: 1001-5000

Owned By: Accenture

Industry: Design consultancy, Service design, Marketing design, Business design, User insight, System design, Experience design, innovation, digital product, user experience, industrial design, product design, technology, and creative technology

Organizational Review Fjord was set up in London in 2001 by the founders Mark Curis, Mike Beeston and Olof Schybergson. It has more 1000 employees and with a growing team in Austin,Canberra,Chicago, Copenhagen, Dubai, Dublin, Berlin, Helsinki, Hongkong, Istanbul, Johannesburg, London, Los Angeles ,Madrid, Melbourne, Milan, New York, Paris, San Francisco, Sao Paulo, Seattle, Stockholm, Sydney, Toronto, Washington D.C 1 and Zurich. The fjord is a part of Accenture Interactive arm, and the acquisition will give design capabilities to complement the business strategy, marketing and analytics services offered.

The firm is solely focused on outcomes and constant growth always to deliver the best possible work outweighing its competitors. It aims to advance human experience through design and leads clients into the future and like to integrate new 2 tools and technology. It was a significant milestone for Fjord to become a part of Accenture Interactive as they share their vision for future where services adopt around individuals and design the heart of powerful business transformation. It helps them cover a broad spectrum of best of class skills including design, technology, marketing, and data. Its focus is common in dedicated to building great teams and cultivated talented individuals. When their interests aligned, they merged with the giant Accenture with an extensive client base.

The Firms global leadership team is a diverse and creative bunch, working to inspire clients and Fjordians all over the world as well as finding time for pursuits as varied as hiking or painting. The fjord is a global design company widespread in continents: Europe and Latin America, North America, Australia, Asia, and Africa.

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https://www.designweek.co.uk/issues/may-2013/accenture-buys-digital-consultancy-fjord/

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https://www.fjordnet.com/conversations/a-new-era-for-fjord/

BRAND Review It is a dual logo representing the company for multipurpose use. The Typographic representation of the firm is known more among people and is used more in the websites and other collaterals. The symbol is a very minimalistic connection of lines to form the letter F. The owning company has integrated their name as a brand logo for illustrating the change in ownership and to make it look like its flagship company.

The brand consists of bright colors which are contrasting its base color to add depth and value to their activities.

Since Accenture is a giant company that comprises many clients, brand promotion is mostly done being an Accenture company. It has a global position which could be used by the Fjord team to collaborate and work with existing customers of Accenture.

The fjord is a human-centered design company with understanding people from direct observation and research. They Refine problem and potential solutions from testing and tries to learn from early failures and are iterative. The team is prototype driven and collaborative to keep up with changes; companies need a culture that embraces evolution.

Their team members are active and take part in conferences and design summits worldwide. Fjord dedicates their time to social media platforms form their studios and workshops organized by them. They have 15K followers on Instagram which is every two days with activities happening in the studio, events they participate in and conferences they attend, etc. It is a very dynamic page which is well managed as it shows the significance that brings breakthrough connected products and services to life by redesigning people’s relationships with the world around them.

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https://www.fjordnet.com/about-us/our-values/

“ Design thinking is about creative problem- solving that brings different disciplines together to transforms insights into solutions that are desired by people and deliver values for business �

Values: Fjord constantly changes as every new person joining their team and every client; they work something unique. It evolves with the world, and amid continuous changes, the values remain constant. They are the core principles and behaviors that unify the diverse and global team 1 and enables us to work together.

Fjordians are GENEROUS BOLD COLLABORATIVE EMPATHETIC VISIONARY IMPACTFUL

DESIGN Review The Fjord team works on customer web service utility that evolves daily which creates UX design. They consider people a lot essential as people make it for the people. So the cases are well studied and designed with multiple iterations and early failures with maximum output to understand the concept better and reduces uncertainties in designs. Their designs combine the latest technology advancements in robotics, user experience, and data science when working with medical industries.2 Basically Fjord is known for its specialized UX designs and creating exceptional experiences. High quality outcomes and their unique client services.

Reviewing many of their designs and projects the customer experience design is a part of Fjord and plays a major role in creating better experiences that transform businesses and markets by creating strong relation between customers and the company. Focusing on the problem to come up with a very simplified solution is what their team strives to be doing. There is a space for innovationa nd Fjord works on it effectively to innovate, or reintroduce ideas for convience and the ease of the users.

Their strengths and main focus are

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Artificial intelligence Virtual reality augmented reality voice recognition

https://www.fjordnet.com/about-us/what-we-do/

2

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https://www.accenture.comAccenture-Fjord-ServiceDesign.pdf

Client Review The fjord is associated with many big companies like Unilever, Maersk Oil, Pizza Hut, Philips, Adidas and much more. The database of clients from Accenture is also benefiting them. Their projects associated with Unilever was to envision for their employees globally which is personalized and well executed. As Unilever found opportunity to simplify the way employees found information to reduce human agents time to use them in more productive areas. Collaborations with Accenture Interactive R&D team and their vision to get a Human experience, simple 1 interaction, meaningful impact on Unilever. This is a more recorded and systematic way of communicating within organizations.

Successful projects they can be proud of from VR is Let the DayLight In for visualizing benefits of daylight in their homes on a digital platform. A team of designers, developers and cloud architects from Fjord and Accenture designed and implemented a service that uses Virtual Reality to give customers a real representation of how daylight could enrich and improve their homes.

This helped them overcome problems of actually doing the renovation without a drawing and even eliminating the cost of 3D renderings of your house for the purpose.

Awards Fjord received various awards for many of its design products or service, some of the awards are: The D&AD Awards: are one of the most senior and respected honors that anyone working within the creative, art, design and advertising communities can receive.

The “Pencil� awards: a pinnacle of creative achievement, share quite a few values 2 with Fjord, as they represent a celebration of excellence, brilliance, inspiration and transcendence.

Red dot: Fjord’s connected products team worked with Auris Health to design the Monarch Platform, a revolutionary flexible endoscopic technology that promises to fight lung cancer by enabling physicians to diagnose hard-to-reach, small peripheral nodules earlier and with greater precision than ever before.

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https://www.fjordnet.com/workdetail/unilever-reimagining-the-employee-experience/

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https://www.fjordnet.com/conversations/dandad-awards/

Swot Analysis Strength The brand is well experienced in the field with over 18 years of experience and have a reliable team.Client Loyalty and ready for iterations. Fjord has won multiple awards for excellence and innovation.

Technological advancements and development.

Weakness Many people are unaware of the brand logo, idea and identity is not something familiar. The website lacks information and content.

Confusing layout to search their project.

opportunity Expand to more regions like India and China where there are more happenings in innovation and technology. Also in the MiddleEast, as there is significant growth in various sectors. Retaining clientele of the parent company and create more networking for Fjord.

Threats Other Firms are starting to innovate and offer similar services and operating within the same regions like Frog, IDEO. Financial instability and recession

Recommendations Fjord lacks information about it. Hence they could add a timeline in their website to show their journey. The Accenture took over the company, but they were well known in London even before they were sold. It makes it more authentic for people to read organizations history.

The information on their website cannot be searched and are very constrained. The visual representation of designs are less, and process design is more. By also having a demo for plans they have made will benefit them to create an understanding of what services they provide.

Fjord should take into consideration invest in the brand campaign and marketing the brand itself. It should tell the story behind the merging of the companies.

By having marketing campaigns, they could bring more creatives aware of what they are, and the purpose of their User experienced human-centric design. Choosing people with the right skills for the company would be a great start because having someone that won’t add value to the company will eventually lead in a loss.