Develop Customer Ecosystems

In today’s world, the customer is the center of design. We create and develop branding, products, and services to enhance, optimize, and connect customers. The issue is that design leadership may sometimes hyper-focus in one area and forget the rest. This is a traditional way of thinking, that branding is the key or that the physical aesthetics is what will make a company succeed. From my experience, this is never the case. There is a need to think about multiple customer touchpoints, to understand and innovate how a customer interacts with the brand, service, or product. Therefore, we need to think about, what we at Moi Studio like to call, the “Customer Ecosystem”.

For those of you, like me, who like a reminder of what an ecosystem is, here is the Merriam-Webster definition: an ecosystem is the complex of a community of organisms and its environment functioning as an ecological unit. Creating an ecosystem is where things run astray, specifically because of hyper focusing on one aspect of the ecosystem and forgetting about the whole. I have seen companies completely focus on the industrial design of a product but forget about branding or vice-versa. A Customer Ecosystem is the combination of all the touchpoints and interactions a customer can have. This means, looking through the customer journey and understanding how branding, industrial design, service design, etc.. affect the customer. Rather than just one individually.

Strength in numbers. Thinking about the customer experience as a system allows us to see all the different areas that a company needs to improve and develop. An ecosystem functions together as a unit while many experiences today are separate and deliver good but weaker individual experiences. At Moi Studio, we always start by looking at the Customer Ecosystem and strategically finding opportunities to combine and create connections. This means strategically connecting experiences together rather than separately. When we start connecting areas like interface design to branding and industrial design, we create what we call an Experience Web which is very powerful and impactful to customers.

So, don’t forget, that you should look at the whole picture. Create and understand your Customer Ecosystem before you focus on the details. Remember that combined experiences will lead to more awareness and connection to your brand and company overall. It will create a happy tribe of customers looking for more. Happy customers, happy life! If you have questions, feel free to reach out to us.

Also, if you want to learn more about how Experience Webs can interconnect your company’s branding, products, and services.