Blind Labs Capabilities Prepared for You on 02.25.14

Yes, You!

Strategy, design and development of innovative digital products and content for brands, entertainment companies and startups.

The creativity and agility of a motion design firm with the strategy and technology of a web consultancy.

Why Blind Labs?

You are a startup in need of world class design but don’t want to hire a creative agency without startup or tech experience.

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Regan Alt

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scratch-it

Scratch-it provides scratch-off gamesto savvy consumersin a fun and engaging way helping be entertained and save money.

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You need a multi-channel campaign that is driven by your strategy. You need a partner who can create video, email and social all synced to your KPIs.

Here are a few of the problems we solve:

You are tasked to design mobile apps for video, second screen, fan networks and video platforms, but your team is busy focusing on your core business.

Needs

Users

!Brand

Why Blind Labs?

CORE Strategy: We start by using our CORE Strategy process, putting everyone in a room to understand your customers, your goals and gain a deep understanding of your brand.

How we solve them: !

SKOOL OS

CORE

UX Driven Design: Based on the CORE strategy brief we quickly define the user experience and the visual design separately. We immedielty create prototypes and start validating the user experience.

Right Partners: We don’t always build your platform, but when we do, we pick the right partner for the job. Inhouse, Ecommerce, CMS, Mobile, Drupal, Wordpress, you name it. Our network is deep and powerful.

Our Approach

This Is The Age Of The Customer.”

We have begun a 20-year business cycle in which the most successful enterprises will reinvent themselves to systematically understand and serve increasingly powerful customers.”

Forrester Research Competitive Strategy In The Age Of The Customer David M. Cooperstein, October 10, 2013

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What approach do we take in The Age of The Customer?

Customer Centric = User Centric

Our Approach

Everything from what media channels and content types you use, to design and technology is driven by the results of this first step. Without it you are moving forward in the dark.

A customer centric approach!

1. Start with defining your customer and their needs2. Prioritize their needs and how you are meeting them3. Define your brand in context to your new understanding

Answer:

Define

Define

Prioritize

The Brand

The Customer

Their Needs

What happens next?

• Define Customer • Prioritize Needs • Define Brand • Define KPIs • CORE Brief

• User Stories • Sitemap • Wireframes • Scripts • Application Arch

• Database Layer • Application Layer • Security

• Stylescape • Identity System • Visual Boards • UI Design • Video Production

• Style Guide • Editorial Plan • Copywriting • Imagery • Videography • Animation • Editing

!SKOOL OS

CORE

UX Design

Visual Design

Doing It

Content*

Front End

Back End

Testing QA / Launch

• Front End HTML • Javascript and CSS • Prototyping

• User Testing • AB Testing • Adjustments

• QA • Soft Launch • Load testing • Stabilization • Launch

• Define Customer • Prioritize Needs • Define Brand • Define KPIs • CORE Brief

Define Customer

What is CORE

Prioritize Needs

Define Brands

Design Strategy & Facilitation

Define KPI’s

CORE Brief

!SKOOL OS

CORE

Our Approach

Strategy User Experience

We conduct worksessions with all key stakeholders in the room to ensure fast alignment. All documented in a brief that includes, user profiles, prioritized user needs, brand attributes, competitors and 3 conceptual directions.

Content

Based on the user profiles and customer needs we create user stories that are then translated into wireframes of the user experience. These are rapidly prototyped in order to test and gain insights and validation from users.

Visual Design

After presenting 3 directions and getting approval on one we then proceed to create high fidelity designs for key screens in the experience. Taking into consideration the brand narrative and best practices.

Content is one of the most important parts of the experience. Whether it is video content, images or text we take great care to ensure that it is driven by your strategic goals and adheres to the highest levels of quality.

Front End

The most important thing in creating a world class front end experience is to make sure the team has a clear Styleguide built in HTML. As a code “repository”. We call it a Front End Style Kit. This ensures that even if the functionality changes the design is consistent.

Our Approach

Front End Back End

The most important thing in creating a world class Front End experience is to make sure the team has a clear Front End Style Kit early in the process; a kit built in HTML that functions as a code 'repository'." This ensures that even if the functionality changes the design is consistent.

QA / Launch

Deciding on the right application architecture for your platform can’t be left to chance. To ensure you are putting in place the right solution you need experienced technologists to help you define how to structure your application infrastructure.

Testing

User testing is often avoided because of cost. The truth is that it’s more expensive to build something that you did not validate with real users than it is to spend the time and money to set up and conduct user testing. It’s a mistake made by many, understood by few.

The art of launching is a combination of planning, experience, finnesse and ensuring that you have thought of every scenario. Our QA process is based on scripts that map to our CORE strategy and user stories, ensuring fluid and smooth execution of QA and the Launch!

Capabilities

Capabilities

Strategy Design

UX Strategy

Brand Strategy

Product Definition

Content Strategy

Social Media Innovation

Development

Rapid Product Prototyping

Video & Emerging Platforms

Mobile & Tablet

Social Media Content

!!

Content Management Systems

Video Delivery Platforms

Ecommerce Platforms

Mobile Applications

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Case Studies

Scratch-itChallenge Scratch-it is an engagment tool for online marketers that's improving their existing results by a multiple of 10x. They took the experience of scratch cards which have been around for over 40 years and created a patent pending tool for building and distributing a digital version.Our challenge was how do to build an Adtech startup from the ground up and avoid common mistakes such as overbuilding, not knowing customers and shiny object syndrome. Designing the product, the sales process, the marketing materials and everything needed to get “Hi Fidelity” traction at the same time.

Solution We helped build Scratch-it using the Skool’s CORE framework. Starting with defining the customers, defining needs and prioritizing customers. Finally we define the CORE brand and designing a modular identity system we call a “Startup Design Kit”; all of the elements needed for developers to build fast in an iterative fashion.

Results Scratch-it was able to raise a 100k round of angel investment, was accepted to the Portland State Business Incubator and is gaining fast traction with the top 150 ecommerce retailers. !Scratch-it.com

®

Scratch-it Email

Scratch-it Landing Page

Sales Brochure

Scratch-it Mobile

Stickers

We are excited to be working with Blind Labs. Their leadership, creativity and deep experience in digital product development has helped us gain traction and funding. More importantly avoid some of the pitfalls of developing a product like ours.”

Robert Haydock CEO, Scratch-it

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Edible School Yard

Challenge How do you create a movement? More importantly how do you help a non-profit team define, prioritize and build this movement online. What we are calling for is a revolution in public education – the Delicious Revolution. When the hearts and minds of our children are captured by a school lunch curriculum, enriched with experience in the garden, sustainability will become the lens through which they see the world.— Alice Waters

Solution With Jose Caballer leading the strategy and user experience approach a team was assembled that included producers, information architects, digital strategists, Green Dragon Office and Stauffer Development in Los Angeles. To gain quick concensus we conducted several CORE strategy workshops in San Francisco. Followed by user experience design, visual design and Agile driven development.

Results As a result we where able to build a world class community for Edible School Yard that has been effective in growing from one location in Berkeley CA to 3106 locations nationwide, 2950 Garden Classrooms, 547 Academic Classrooms and 426 Kitchen Classrooms. To-date Stauffer still provides Edible Schoolyard development support and continues to expand the platform. !EdibleSchoolYard.org

Our sincere thanks for making Edibleschoolyard.org the incredible site it is. Without your guidance and expertise we surely would not be in this happy place. We feel fortunate to have worked with such a high caliber team - you sure know how to pick them!”

Emilie Gioia Director of Programs at The Edible Schoolyard

Kyle Cornforth Director, The Edible Schoolyard

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Challenge How do you help the Myspace team present the redesign to their News Corp stakeholders and shareholders before the website was complete? How do you make flat design files come to life and feel integrated into a user’s real life experience? !

Solution We created “Living User Stories” to showcase the new experience in context. Using a mix of real life users, actors and scripted questions shot in a reality / documentary style we where able to capture the full narrative and present the features and functionality in a high fidelity enviorment. This was in addition to helping define the design direction for the application working in close collaboration with the Myspace user experience team. !

Results The result was gaining approval and consensus on the direction that the application would take. It allowed for the News Corp shareholders to get a preview of the expereince and understand the direction that was proposed. This style of doing user stories really showcased the power of video in the creation of an online business. It proved the power of video as a tool to tell your applications story.

Myspace Product Videos

Jose not only assembled an amazing team for us, he was collaborative in the co-direction of the work, understood our strategy and went beyond what we asked for. After our core project was done even gave us the resources directly. Most importantly it was super fun to work together.”

Mike Macadaan UX, Design Partner at Science Inc (Formerly VP of User Experience at Myspace) 

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Bios

Chris Do is the founder and executive creative director of Blind, Inc., a digital design design studio with an emphasis on storytelling and image making.

Prior to forming Blind in 1995, Chris worked briefly as an Art Director at Seattle Ad Agency, Cole & Weber, and as a designer at punk rock music label Epitaph Records. While at Cole & Weber he gained valuable insight, experiencing first hand the challenges of being an agency Creative. It wasn’t until he formed Blind that he was able to fully utilize his Art Center training to combine his passion for design, typography, illustration and animation. !Soon, he was working on feature film titles such as Eraser, Celtic Pride and The Island of Dr. Moreau, as well as a variety of commercials and broadcast identities.

Since then, Chris’ work has been nationally and internationally recognized by publications such as: Communication Arts, I.D., AIGA, Art Director’s Club, Type Director’s Club, The One Show, Broadcast Design Association, LA Weekly, New York Film Festival, Telly, Print, How, Res Fest, Ion Film Festival, British D&AD,and Mtv’s VMA. He has lectured at a number of institutions including: California Institute of the Arts, LA Art Institute, Siggraph, Otis College of Design, Motion Graphics LA, Cal State Los Angeles and San Diego City College.

After more than a decade at the helm, he continues to direct and manage, growing the company into a successful production/post-production company, and oversees Blinds creative and strategic vision. In addition to running the company, Chris is an adjunct instructor at the Art Center College of Design and Otis College of Design, where he is helping to shape future generations of artists and designers.

Chris Do Executive Creative Director

Jose is the Digital Strategy Director at Blind Labs. He helps oversee our digital practice and ensures that our designers, developers, project managers and partners collaborate, execute and thrive at Blind. He is the product of a mother who was a teacher and a father who was a preacher mixed in with a graphic design education at Art Center College of Design. !He took a front row seat in the .COM boom working at Razorfish, one of the first digital agencies where he went from designer to Design Director of the Los Angeles office by the age of 28. In 2001, he left Razorfish to start The Groop - a boutique digital agency that allowed him to work with Al Gore, Jamie Oliver, Thomas Keller of The French Laundry, Alice Waters of Chez Panisse/The Edible School Yard Project, corporate clients such as Disney, News Corp’s Myspace and over 30 start-ups including Causecast and Savings.com. !Today, Jose combines his 16 years of experience as a web designer and his passion for teaching to share the gospel of Web Design on his popular weekly show This Week in Web Design on YouTube. He has also helped train hundreds of freelancers, agencies and companies at fun and dynamic workshops, LIVE webinars and online videos at The Skool. !Specialties: User Experience, Online Product Development, Visual Systems Design, Identity Development, Social Media, Web Video, Mobile, Tablet !

Jose Caballer Digital Strategy Director !

7 Reasons why Blind Labs is the right partner:

1. Award winning strategically driven creative 2. World class tech and project management 3. Collaborative culture and process 4. Deep network of tech partners 5. Integrated production capabilities 6. The process and space to explore new territory 7. We are fun to work with!

Thank You! !

For more information about Blind Labs and to see more case studies contact: !Jose A. Caballer Director of Digital Strategy !310.384.1999 Jose@blind.com !!

Thefutureis@blind.com