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RKS Digital President and Co-Founder Armando Peña discusses how to navigate software product development decisions. In this session, he discusses whether to Buy or Build. Making the right choice can have long-term implications.
Our CEO recently wrote down some thoughts on embracing diversity in design... "As a minority, you need to find a way to take the differences that you have and turn them into assets. As it turns out, these assets are often incredibly valuable because they create a different lens, a different level of empathy, and insight into the human mind and heart than other people might have." Read our blog to learn more!
Lance Hussey, RKS Creative Director, speaks about the beginning of his decades-long career in design and as Creative Director of RKS. Incredibly, Lance stumbled upon design, almost by accident, simply following his interests.
RKS worked with #nonprofit #Beatthestreets NYC to establish a #brand #identity with the dual role of attracting inner-city kids to join the organization and inviting #donors to support the nonprofit. With their team, we worked to #reposition and #enhance their brand assets by creating a new #logo, #graphics, #colors and #messaging. These brand #guidelines were leveraged to develop and implement #marketing #campaigns, #apparel, and #event #promotions. Being a nonprofit, Beat The Streets NY wanted to ensure that they developed a brand that could connect with donors, children, and athletes to enable the organization to continue on their #mission.
Human-centered design principles drive our smallest decisions. As a result, products we design and engineer with our clients make a profound impact in the daily lives of their users. They do this by being fully engaged with their physical and emotional needs. The can opener we designed with our client Zyliss reimagined a classic product with a profoundly human-centered update: a lock. By locking to the can once opened, the can opener stays positioned on the can, which reduces the need for reattaching and heavy pressure. In making this one simple change, we reduced the time it took to open cans by half, and created a feasible option for arthritic users.
Every month or so we offer our thoughts on the state of design and innovation to our community through "the designer", and regular-ish newsletter. This month we look at inflatable sails, 3D manufacturing, digital presence, one of our favorite movies and more.
One of the key ways we drive innovation in our projects is through the collaborative process. The RKS team is entirely cross-disciplinary, with designers, engineering, researchers, interacting on every project. Because all of our team works to some degree on all we bring an innovative and cross-pollinating lens to everything we do. The collaborative process is not just about innovation however, it's also about risk management. Fostering and sustaining collaboration is important to make sure we focus on the right consumers and users, the right designs, and the right engineering choices. By keeping an open and collaborative environment we make sure what is researched can be designed, what is designed can be built, and what can be built can achieve success.
Broadly speaking, Psycho-Aesthetics is a collaborative tool that we use to empathize with our target users, and create alignments with stakeholders across organizations. The P/A Map is a visual tool used by our team to understand how current offerings meet user's emotional and physical needs. In also allows us to see where we should be looking for valuable innovations. In a sense, this tool allows us to find product market fit. As a designers we are not just creators, but strategists. We work with clients to understand the needs very broadly, and then work to converge on the right solutions that will elevate brands, create emotional connections and be relevant to the market for years to come.
RKS #researched and #incubated a solution to the student debt crises. The result was #LoanGifting and #LoanBenefits. Student debt has taken the form of an epidemic affecting two-thirds of college graduates in the US. Education is the future, but these enormous educational costs are holding students back from reaching their bright futures. RKS has designed hundreds of products for companies big and small. The team was drawn to do an independent project, something different, something to make a difference… something for the world. The RKS team looked for problems hiding in the world around us. Student debt stood out. They sought out to offer a solution to the 40 million graduates suffering from debt and the distress that comes with it. Graduates worldwide are buried with stress and discouraged by the piles of debt on their shoulders. Starting an adult life is extremely daunting with the added burden debt provides. Graduates are trapped as they are limited by the daunting decades of payments ahead. #education #students #future #studentdebtcrisis #debtrelief #innovation #startup
What is Psycho-Aesthetics? It's one the first things we are asked by clients, students, and pretty much everyone we meet. At its core, Psycho-Aesthetics is an advanced human-centered design methodology developed and used by RKS. In the first of this new video series "RKS on RKS", Ravi Sawhney will discuss what Psycho-Aesthetics is. Going forward we'll be answering more questions and shedding some light on our team and processes.
