Building consumer brands
Over half a century of design.
Welcome
Founded in 1960, we are one of the world’s leading product design and development consultancies, operating globally from our campus in Warwick, UK. Since the early sixties we have helped a wide variety of companies design and develop market leading products that users still value every day, ranging from the Stanley knife to the Eurotunnel Shuttle.
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Today we focus on building long term relationships with large corporations in four market sectors: ‘Medical and Scientific’, ‘Consumer’, ‘Commercial and Industrial’, and ‘Transport’.
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Our History
In 1960 David Carter CBE RDI founded David Carter Associates (DCA) as "a multidisciplinary consultancy involved in designing products for mass production".
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Our Expertise
We add value by improving the success of product innovation. We do this through an intelligent approach to design, based on the transparent management of risk, informed decision making, true integration of disciplines and rigorous development processes. We believe that the outstanding commercial success of the products we help create is dependent ultimately on delivering exceptional value to our clients customers. We provide the right blend of strategic thinking and pragmatism to deliver our clients’ projects successfully.
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We balance the creativity and the technical discipline needed to achieve commercially successful product innovation. Every client is unique. To support our clients, we like to understand them, their place in the market and their ambitions thoroughly.
RB Scholl velvet smooth Electronic foot file Design research Industrial design Visual brand language Prototyping Packaging Production support
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Our Awards
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We have won over 35 international awards in the last five years.
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gold
winner 2015
Stanley Caplan User-Centered Product Design Award
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Our People
DCA is a collection of over 130 extraordinary individuals. Intelligent, creative and thorough, our people make the difference to our clients’ projects. They combine to create a vibrant fusion of disciplines including mechanical engineers, electronics and software engineers, industrial designers, usability and interaction experts, researchers, strategists, prototyping technicians and specialist project managers. Each person is an expert in their own field, but has the curiosity, understanding and flexibility to reach
across traditional inter-disciplinary boundaries. Our organisational structures and team culture encourage this synergistic blending and integration of specialist skills. Our clients benefit not only from each individual’s depth of knowledge and experience but also from a team whose combined strength exceeds the sum of its individual members’ expertise.
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Our connected disciplines
Since our foundation a multidisciplinary philosophy has been the cornerstone of our approach to product design and development. There are no departments at DCA. Our studios, laboratories and workshops have different disciplines working side by side. Over fifty years we have developed an expertise in connecting and integrating the right disciplines, at the right time, in the right way to achieve success for our clients.
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Mechanical Engineering
Interaction Design
Design Research & Planning
Software Engineering
Prototyping
Electronic Engineering
Human Factors & Usability
Industrial Design
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Tackling technical complexity
Over half the people at DCA are engineers. Mechanical, electronic and software. Great products don’t exist without great engineering. Seems obvious, but it is amazing how many consumer products are let down by poor engineering that lacks creativity, care and rigour. We specialise in products with a high level of technical complexity. This complexity may be due to very high volumes or simply a challenging specification.
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The integration of our engineering team throughout a project boosts both creativity and rigour. This ultimately achieves products with purpose and soul through beautiful aesthetics, elegant engineering and intuitive usability.
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The multi-billion selling SoloStar ® pen injector is one of the world’s best known drug delivery devices. DCA partnered Sanofi throughout the development of SoloStar®, applying our rigorous evidencebased approach to all aspects of the design. The result is a device that delivers leading performance in almost every respect. With superior levels of safety and comfort, the pen is sophisticated, yet simple to use.
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Since its launch in 2007, SoloStar® has been adapted for use across a range of therapies and can now be found in almost every market around the world.
Sanofi SoloStarÂŽ Disposable insulin pen injector
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Design planning Usability and HF Mechanical engineering Industrial design Colour, material and finish Instructional design Graphic design Prototyping Testing and evaluation Production support
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Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam FMCG research
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It's about people
Brands are built when they create products with soul and relevance. For this to happen we believe you should design everything for someone, not just something for everyone. We help achieve this by understanding the people we are creating products and services for. We explore their aspirations, lives and the influences which form their agendas and create their value hierarchy.
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Then, we craft relevant products that resonate by offering users an experience they value and enjoy. These user experiences create warmth and loyalty towards brands enabling them to flourish.
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Human Factors and Usability
We inform ideas and their implementation through a deep understanding of the relationship between people, products, and their environment. We integrate human factors and usability throughout the design process, adopting domain-specific regulations and guidance from ISO 62366. Emphasis is placed on moving beyond compliance to leverage the commercial benefits of more inclusive products and services that optimise system performance.
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Chubb FX range A fire extinguisher handle set Usability & HF Mechanical engineering Industrial design Prototyping Testing & evaluation Production support
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3M Versaflo M-Series Headtops Range of faceshields, hard hats and helmets with integrated respiratory protection Design planning Design research Usability and HF Mechanical engineering Industrial design Prototyping Testing and evaluation Production support
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RB Mortein (SBP) peaceful nights Electronic Insect Protector Usability & HF Industrial design Visual brand language Packaging Prototyping Production support
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GSK Aquafresh Kids Kids toothbrush Design planning Design research Usability and HF Industrial design Visual brand language Colour, material and finish Prototyping Production support
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GSK Aquafresh milk teether Teether for soothing and cleaning Design research Usability and HF Industrial design Visual brand language Colour, material and finish Prototyping Production support
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Where brand meets product
We believe you should design meaning at every touchpoint. In order for brands to build relationships with users, they need to create holistic experiences. These experiences should reflect their needs and desires, be emotionally meaningful and add value to their lives.
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Through aesthetics, kinaesthetics and acoustics, we help the most enlightened brand owners harness and control all the senses to create products that integrate and amplify multi-sensorial brand experiences.
AB InBev Stella Artois glassware Glassware Design planning Design research Usability & HF Industrial design Visual brand language Graphic design Prototyping Production support
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RB Clearasil Perfectawash No touch face wash dispenser Design planning Usability and HF Industrial design Visual brand language Colour, material & finish Packaging Prototyping Production support
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RB Scholl Gel Active Range of insoles Usability and HF Industrial design Colour, material and finish Prototyping Production support
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Use sensory brand design to create multi-sensory experiences. Brands are failing to exploit the power of multi-sensory experiences to connect with audiences and help them onto the path of purchase. DCA Design's Peter Kay sets out how to achieve valuable 'sensory equity' Most brand owners today recognise the benefit of defining and applying a consistent approach to the aesthetic design of their products and packaging. The most enlightened brand owners also see the value of defining a considered multi-sensory experience for their products.
Published on 19 th Febuary 2015 48
We have all come to expect a satisfying clunk to the car door, a pleasing 'ker-lick' to the stereo control, and it is no longer only Volkswagen winning loyalty (and a considerable premium) with a few judiciously placed panels of soft touch material. The feel, sound
and even smell of a car's interior experience has defined automotive marques since long before they called themselves 'brands'. This distinctive sensory footprint now has currency not just in cars, but in everything: from hotels to whiskies; airlines to perfumes and even the world of FMCG. Imagine ketchup without the 'slap', Bisto without the 'Aaahh'. Yet, although we live in 'sensory times', many brands fail to exploit the power of a multi-sensory experience to engage audiences, and progress customers along the path to purchase. So if you don't already have a sensory equity like Alka Seltzer's 'plink, plink, fizz' or Schweppes' 'Schhhh', where do you start? Using the senses. First, the basics: we have five senses but do not use them equally.
Controlling sensory interactions can create engaging brand experiences at every point in the user journey. David McCandless, in his book Information is Beautiful, cites research from Danish author Tor Nemetranders and describes the balance of the senses as 'sensory bandwidth' or 'processing power'. The majority of this bandwidth is taken up by vision. Sight occupies 10 times the bandwidth of touch, which in turn uses 10 times that of hearing and smell. Yet throughout a user's journey, all five senses are 'on' all the time; although at different stages, we are stimulated to give different senses more or less priority. Analysing the priority given at different sensory touch points in the consumer journey reveals opportunities for optimisation according to different balances of sensory dominance. Cultural codes. The power of visual appearance at the first moment of truth is well understood. Here semiotics help us use cultural codes and cues to read subtle messages through form, using the silhouette, surface transitions, colour and key features of the object to convey power, speed, elegance, femininity and so on. Budweiser's 'bow tie' can shows the power of using shape to differentiate the beer can from the standard form of almost all other cans. It does so in a way that links to the brand's previously under-utilised 'bow tie' icon, helping to re-establish it as a distinctive and relevant equity for the brand. This link is not just to the graphic icon, but its shape encourages us to follow the brand's call to action and 'grab some Buds'. As we move to the second moment of truth, our sensory priorities shift as more of our other senses come into play. Touch, sound, smell and even taste become more engaged as we pick up and begin to interact with objects. This is when the sensorial
'brand in the hand' truly comes in to its own. By carefully choosing materials, finishes and textures we can control our tactile responses, creating rich and meaningful interactions with the products in our daily lives. The inclusion of the soft touch material moulded into the sides of the Veet EasyWax device not only provides a functional benefit through better grip, but becomes a literal touchpoint through our finger tips, suggesting long-lasting smooth skin - the product's core benefit. This added sensorial feature also increases the luxury qualities of the product, enabling it to establish a premium proposition. Kinaesthetics. Messages delivered through all five senses can be harnessed to design the sensory experience of the brand. To these we would add a sixth property, kinaesthetics - the cognitive and physical reactions to movement that provide a dynamic way to explore sensory experience through products in use. Think of the effortlessly smooth and controlled glide of a 'soft close' kitchen drawer or the snappy response of the Motorola Razr when you pop it open. During the development of the new Lynx/ Axe body spray, a key challenge was to deliver a smooth, high-quality feel every time the pack was used, and to do so consistently throughout the product's life. To engineer this sensorial experience, we worked in close partnership with the packaging development team at Unilever's Deodorants Global Design Centre in Leeds. By exploring the feel of the opening and closing experience that we wanted to deliver, based upon a concept by Seymourpowell, we were able to define the exact kinaesthetic profile of this experience using tunable mock-ups. These rigs enabled us to measure the ideal sensory properties and test them in our lab, for example the release torque within the form factor, so that finally we could deliver this experience consistently and efficiently through high-volume, low cost components. 49
Use sensory brand design to create multi-sensory experiences.
So, how do we go about designing a multi-sensory brand experience? There are four steps you need to take: define it, create it, test it and apply it. First, define what sensory messages your brand wants to convey, and decide which senses to stimulate at what point in the user journey. Next, bring the sensory experience to life by creating prototype experiences; then test them with consumers, and finally apply it through a controlled production process to ensure that the experience can be consistently reproduced. Simultaneous focus In our experience, successfully realising sensory design requires a simultaneous focus on big ideas that bring the brand concept to life, and tiny details that make a difference to a product's sensory interactions and create relevant sensory experiences. We also consider other categories where these codes may be relevant, and look at what cues we can borrow. For example, to deliver a luxury experience in a mass-market personal care brand, we might borrow sensory cues from cosmetics or fine fragrance packaging. Article by Peter Kay Head of FMCG Originally published in Marketing Week
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And it doesn't start and end with packaging. Relevant sensory experiences include everything from the wobble of the shelfÂhanger to the click of the 'Order Now' button. Every brand touchpoint conveys a sensory message, whether digital or physical. The question is how to prioritise, then what to control, coordinate, and leave to chance. Adopting a multi-sensory approach to brand design opens up a wealth of opportunities to influence the way people experience your products and packaging everyday. Controlling these sensory interactions can deliver an engaging and stimulating brand experience at every point in the user journey and create valuable equities for your brand along the way.
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Unilever Axe / Lynx Deodorant body spray Usability and HF Mechanical engineering Packaging Prototyping Testing and evaluation Production support
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How does your brand look?
Think of your product range as a family. Each product a different family member with both an individual character and a common visual DNA. Many brand owners now understand the power of 3D design for their products and packaging, and have defined their brand’s 3D visual brand language (VBL). This is sometimes referred to as a brand’s visual DNA. A 3D VBL defines a set of flexible guidelines and principles for the 3D expression of your brand.
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This helps bring both a consistent look and feel to a range of products, as well as differentiating them from their competitors, by conveying key messages about a brand’s values in a way which is immediately recognisable.
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RB Veet easywax Electrical roll on wax applicator Industrial design Visual brand language Colour, material & finish Packaging Prototyping Production support
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RB Veet spawax Wax warming device Usability & HF Industrial design Visual brand language Prototyping Production support
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GSK Sensodyne mouthwash Bottle and dosing cap Design research Usability and HF Industrial design Visual brand language Packaging Prototyping Production support
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gold
winner 2015
GSK Toothbrush Sensodyne toothbrush Design research Industrial design Visual brand language Colour, material and finish Prototyping Production support
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Crafting the experience
In an increasingly connected world, new challenges have emerged in crafting and delivering compelling user experiences. Our multidisciplinary approach delivers user experiences seamlessly across physical and digital platforms that are simple, intuitive and a delight to use. Our team combines interaction, graphic and industrial designers, researchers, mechanical, electronic and software engineers to develop
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co-ordinated product experiences. From the finish of a moulding to extending physical products with digital touchpoints or developing interactions for embedded hardware, our integrated approach creates future facing concepts and develop these through to production.
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Colour, Material and Finish
The most subtle difference in a texture can alter the entire value of a product and in turn how a brand is perceived. The ability to specify and control the colour, material and finish of a product is critical to controlling the overall brand experience. Through an understanding of design trends and semiotics our design and research teams help develop an understanding of how different
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colours, materials and finishes (CMF) will be perceived by your users. We recommend the right CMF strategy to communicate your product qualities, but most importantly how CMF strategy can be implemented and controlled through production and use.
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Mamas and Papas Mylo 3 in 1 travel system Design planning Design research Usability and HF Mechanical engineering Industrial design Visual brand language Prototyping Production support
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RB Scholl Pedi Perfect Wet & Dry Waterproof and rechargeable electronic foot file Design research Industrial design Visual brand language Colour, material and finish Packaging Prototyping Production support
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RB Air Wick essential mist Fine mist fragrance device Design research Industrial design Colour, material and finish Usability and HF Packaging Prototyping
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Lifefuels Smart nutrition bottle Connected beverage maker Design research Industrial design Colour, material and finish Usability and HF Packaging Prototyping
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Prototyping and Evaluation
Prototyping is at the heart of our business. Since our foundation we have always had extensive workshop and prototyping facilities in the centre of our studios. This enables us to explore, test and iterate concepts at increasing levels of resolution throughout a project and is a fundamental part of our product development and risk management processes.
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Virgin Virgin azuma trains Interior design Design planning Mechanical engineering Industrial design Prototyping Production support
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Singapore Airlines First class interiors Seat concept designs Design research Usability & HF Mechanical engineering Industrial design Visual brand language
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B/E Aerospace Premium business class seating Usability & HF Mechanical engineering Industrial design Interior design Prototyping Testing & evaluation
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Dandi Living Dandibed Compact studio bed Mechanical engineering Industrial design Prototyping Electronic engineering
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Our role in your brand’s innovation
What next? Planning how to grow your brand through innovation is complex. Where should you innovate and how? We specialise in product innovation. It is often considered the most difficult and high risk area in which to innovate. But it has the potential of great ROI. Whether you are creating a new range of products or developing an artefact enabled service offering, we can help you deliver innovation. Over the last five decades we have successfully helped consumer brand owners deliver hundreds of innovative products. Our multidisciplinary team achieve this through a balance of creativity and an understanding of how to control risk. We provide a unique
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combination of knowledge in brand, people, design, and technology, combined with an understanding of the appropriate type and level of innovation that is right for your brand, your capabilities and the market timing. With this knowledge and a culture of iterative prototyping and testing, we can help you nurture new ideas through to robust, successful products.
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Connecting your physical product in a digital world. As some of the most innovative digital brands launch physical products, how can more traditional, physical brands get connected, add value and stay relevant? On a recent visit to a friend’s house, I was proudly introduced to his new ‘virtual assistant’ called Alexa. Alexa is the personification of the artificial intelligence behind Amazon’s smart speaker Echo. Alexa has a growing number of daily tasks she can help you with, for example telling you about the traffic on the way to work, or more importantly for Amazon, helping create a shopping list online. On this occasion, I was interested to understand what kind of personality Alexa had, so I posed the question “Alexa, do you like Apple?” She responded without hesitation “companies that begin with ‘A’ are awesome”. I was taken aback at the witty, unexpected response and began to wonder if Alexa was someone at the other end of a phone or I had significantly underestimated her artificial intelligence. Article by Nick Mival Director Originally published in Marketing Week
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The launch of Google Home this autumn sees the battle for the smart-home personal assistant market hotting up. It also clearly demonstrates the desire of these once digital brands to gain a dominant physical presence right
at the centre of our homes. With these digital super brands getting physical with us, how should more traditional, physical brands and manufacturers design their connected products? Why connect? We all want to create a stronger relationship with our consumers. An excellent foundation for this relationship is an ecosystem that offers value based on a continuous two-way dialogue of data. As both Amazon and Google have established, a connected physical device can play a key role in this ecosystem. However, its centrality, prominence and physical permanence also makes it one of the more difficult parts of the system to implement. Code can easily be updated, physical components are less flexible. In the vast majority of cases, a connected device will take the place of a non-connected device in an existing system. As such, it is important to understand how the connected device could add value and change things for the better. To do this we start by establishing the purpose and the performance of the system that the device inhabits. This then forms a baseline benchmark to assess the proposed changes against. The metrics used to assess the performance of the system will change depending on the application; however, they will normally include descriptions such as eff ectiveness, efficiency, safety,
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inclusiveness, satisfaction, and fl exibility. If the introduction of a connected device is not expected to impact these performance metrics, the value of the product can be quickly called into question. It’s also important to track them all in parallel to ensure the optimisation of some doesn’t negatively affect others. How to connect At DCA, we have developed a ‘layer cake’ to clarify the options for how to connect products and devices (see below). We have found it a powerful tool in establishing and validating the specification of a new connected device proposition before diving into the development work. Each layer can be considered as analogous to a step in the process of verbal communication. The choices made in each layer will be driven primarily by the device’s functionality and the environment in which it will operate. These decisions will determine the device’s complexity and hence its size, cost, power consumption and development timescale. The top layer is the Application layer. Here, the high-level decision on what you want to say must be made – what information should the device transmit, maybe orientation or temperature? In some cases, it will be acceptable and desirable to use existing apps to send, receive and process the data. In others, bespoke applications will be favoured. In the next layer, Interoperability, the decision to make is which language to speak – such as English, French, WeMo or SmartThings – or which ecosystem to buy into. There are many languages to choose from, each with their own characteristics and strengths, including those created and supported by technology giants such as Apple (HomeKit), Samsung (SmartThings) and Google (Weave). There is also an opportunity to develop bespoke languages,as Honeywell has done with its EvoHome system. Moving further down our ‘layer cake’ in the Data Transfer layer, a protocol must be decided upon
(akin to deciding what words to use and which sounds to make). Bluetooth and Wi-Fi are the most widely known, but other alternatives, such as Z-wave or ZigBee, offer an interesting alternative if bandwidth requirements are low as the cost of such systems may be much lower (though additional infrastructure, such as a hub, may be required). Finally, at the base of our diagram (the Physical layer), the way of making sounds – for instance with a mouth or a loudspeaker – is analogous to the decision between wired and radio communication. For simplicity, the diagram (left) focuses on radio communication, as this typically off ers the greatest convenience for installation, but there may be cases where a wired connection is preferred (for example because of concerns over stability, security or interference). The experience Lastly and defi nitely not least, for consumers to engage with your connected product the multisensory experience must be right. As Alexa answered my mischievous question, she ‘turned’ and looked at me via the intensity and direction of a blue ring of light. Her tone and response was warm and playful. I was creating a relationship which I enjoyed. If you’re designing a lawnmower that helps you understand your garden or a hairbrush that tells you about your scalp, make sure you have the right multidiscipline team of researchers, designers, and engineers (mechanical, hardware and software) who understand both physical products and digital systems. Then you can craft and deliver a relevant experience that criss-crosses seamlessly between the physical and the digital worlds. Physical product brands and manufacturers have never before had the opportunity of building such a close and continuous relationship with their customers. New ecosystems of services can be built through an open and continuous dialogue of data. If you haven’t already, it is probably time to take the opportunity. 97
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DCA Fuse Smart consumer unit concept Industrial design Interaction design
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DCA Optic Augmented reality cycling helmet concept Industrial design Interaction design
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DCA Odini Smart security camera concept Industrial design
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DCA Nest Airport stowage bed concept Industrial design
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DCA Blink Nesting bike lights concept Industrial design
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DCA Mersiv Immersive language learning concept Industrial design
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DCA Coastal Emergency beacon and buoyancy aid concept Industrial design
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DCA Korus Wireless modular microphone concept Industrial design
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Our Location
We work globally from our campus of offices, studios and workshops in the historic town of Warwick, UK. We are located in the heart of the UK with easy road, rail and air transport links. From Birmingham International Airport Travel time 25 minutes From London Heathrow Airport Travel time 1 hour 30 minutes
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Warwick London
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Helping clients achieve success through great product design.
Contact
DCA Design International 19 Church Street Warwick UK CV34 4AB T +44 (0) 1926 499461 www.dca-design.com
Nick Mival Director nick.mival@dca-design.com Peter Kay Head of FMCG peter.kay@dca-design.com