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Image of a person in the kitchen looking at her phone with a Smart Meter and Heating app overlaid

Digitally transforming the utilities industry

Jakob Neilsen

Aimée Wilcox

Leigh Wodke

Visual of the which test tool offered by Glue on the website, allowing clients to browse through a large list of research tools and process to fit their unique project need

Visual made of a screenshot of the 'Which test' page of the glue website, on a red background. This web page allows clients to effortlessly plan their insights and user research by finding the right process and test to run using Glue decade-long experience in this area.

Glue - Tools which test - Find the right research task

Navigate the product development process with tailored recommendations for tackling research.

Lou Montulli

Hastings Direct

Rupert Blackham

Rich Beaumont

Chris Danielsen

Aaron Jones

Billy Clarke

Maintaining a universal experience for your brand should be your number one goal as a business owner.

Design systems are great for digital products. As we commented in our recent post 

, we explored its benefits within a business. A design system helps maintain consistency across web design, app design, and even kiosk design. But what if design systems could be something greater, what if they could be used across the physical and the digital?

Within digital, a design system makes perfect sense. Within physical, would it not be fair to say we have style guides that do the job of a design system? Yes, and no, is our honest answer. A style guide is exactly that; a guide for the style of something. Whereas a design system is something entirely different from the get-go; its place is at the brand level.

An image showing different components from the Built design system. It shows logos, colour styles and iconography.

A design system is important to ensure constancy in the roll out of design across all platforms. It also speeds up design as it means that designers can reuse components.

Built - Design system components - Glue

At a physical and print level, a design system does the same job it does for digital. You have components, patterns, and systems for delivering an effective experience and communication. There are a few differences when tackling design systems for print and physical. Your output must be tactile. What’s the smell? How does light react with it? The list goes on…

We created a universal design system for 

. Internally, the design system was classed as a 

 guide. With multiple branch rollouts planned and branch-specific marketing, a design system is key to maintaining the consistency the brand required.

A design system should be the guiding principle and a well-defined process. But to create a truly brilliant design system, you have to craft it with the employee, user, and customer in mind. This input will guide you to a design system that works for today, and tomorrow.

At Glue, we create design systems for brands to thrive. Digital transformation is at the tips of every business leader’s tongue, but we should not forget about the physical. It has its place and its importance will never die down. It will just change and a rigorous design system will help your brand stay in front of that change.

Design systems across the physical and digital

Employees and customers choose to engage with your brand in an evermore varied way. We look into what a design system is and what it can do for your business.

In short, a design system is a collection of collatable components. A design system provides you guidance on user experience patterns and visual style. It creates consistency and reduces the time for your project pipeline. A design system allows your team to focus on core business objectives and not get busied with fictitious visual problems.

Visualisation of some key design components and guidelines designed by Glue for the Construction manager platform provided by Eque2 named Construction Cloud

Visualisation of a several blocks of design system UI rules and components designed by Glue design team for the construction manager platform provided by Eque2 named Construct Cloud. That was part of the re-design and user experience enhancements that Glue Design and Research teams provided to the platform.

Eque2 - Elevating core platform experiences - Construct Cloud Design system - Glue

The design system for Three's digital ticketing system

The design system for Three's digital ticketing system. Specifically, we see the treatment of typography, colours, and iconography.

Three - Digital Ticketing Device, Design System - Glue

Design systems are more than just what we see. It’s how design should be talked about within your business. A design system is for everyone within your brand; executive members, managers, doers and everyone in between. As we’re seeing in every product and service industry, design is becoming key for your business.

 have implemented their own design systems. These design systems are extremely interesting as they have been achieved at such a grand scale. The time and investment into creating a repeatable component-based system now allow them to tackle other more concerning problems. All businesses have similar woes; design systems help provide solutions for them.

Creating a design system takes time. It needs to touch upon every aspect of your business. Everyone is required to accept, adopt and adapt it. It’s a fluid beast that continuously evolves as your business grows. By developing a design system you will increase productivity and collaboration, and improve quality, consistency, and accessibility.

We have developed our battel-tested framework for creating design systems for our clients. It allows them to quickly and effectively create new pages whilst maintaining a consistent experience. Doing business is difficult at the best of times. A design system reduces friction and allows you to focus on the core objectives. Their success is down to the agility enabled down through the business from the top.

At Glue, we help businesses bridge the gap between design and development. We create design systems and seamlessly integrate them into your DNA, getting buy-in at every level of your organisation. Speak to us to implement a design system that drives impetus for your brand.

As the saying goes "A good workman never blames his tools."

And yet, over the last decade or so, there has been a huge emphasis placed on developing tools and workflows with great usability and experience. Therefore, the real message is that a good workman can’t perform at peak efficiency with shoddy tools. It’s fair to say, good tools don’t necessarily mean you will work at peak efficiency. On the other hand, bad tools will guarantee you’ll never get there. Bad tools take longer to work with and typically teach bad habits to get around their deficiencies.

As business leaders and brand advocates, we should seek to improve the experience and build solutions that empower our employees. Our workspaces are full of tools that enable our employees to get their jobs done. Everything from the internal infrastructure to the devices and communication solutions that are approved that employees have access to. Apps, software, and e-learning tools right through to the user experience and design elements also impact how employees perform on a daily basis. Technology is the central nervous system of your brand and most concepts and themes related to the future of your business are not possible without technology.

Some brands are taking it even further and utilising technology for continuous growth. Implementation of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and automation alleviates the pains employees face daily. It’s easy to understand why technology is becoming such a big part of the employee experience. The time invested in developing tools and workflows drastically increases their ability to communicate and collaborate, whilst decreasing the amount of time it takes to get their job done. The by-product is engaged, happy, and productive employees.

The world needs more pioneers of change to tackle the deep-seated problems all around us. As a business, you must boldly explore the furthest reaches of your brand’s core competencies and comfort levels. The digital revolution through the use of technology – when implemented – has the ability to transform a business into an agile and innovative ecosystem. If a brand can connect all of its areas of intelligence it will become a business fit for the future. You should strive to operate away from the constraints of today.

To sum it up, brands must make uncertainty, change, and unpredictability their friend. As business leaders, you must explore the future potential of the present moment for your brand. By doing this, you can establish ways to focus on cost reduction and improve efficiencies in your business as a whole. To fully understand the impact you must whittle out the casualties of your decisions. Using a thorough, circular process that interconnects each and every touchpoint means you will create a wholesome experience for your employees.

Design is the key. Design thinking is about bringing intention to the act of creation. By utilising a solid framework, methodology, and process, your brand increases its chances of creating the desired effect on those who you create for. By simply shifting your perspective from defensive questioning to authoritative positioning, you greatly change the chances of the outcome. Design accelerates growth, change, and propagates innovation by looking at ways to grow new products, or modify existing ones and update past products to meet the ever-changing market needs.

At Glue, we look at your business from every angle, immersing ourselves in your employees, customers, products, and services. We harmoniously bring your physical and digital worlds together. The physical side of your brand gains digital impetus, whilst the digital becomes augmented within the physical. This competitive advantage will enable your brand to move forward into exciting new territories.

Build a disruptive brand for the future through your employee experience.

Experience is hugely important for your business. Many brands over the last decade have poured their heart and soul into perfecting their user and customer experiences. Much focus has been on mitigating those times your experience is poor and equally, delighting you when it's great with products, services, and automated communication. When it comes to these two experiences, brands really try: hooray for customers. However, there seems to be one lacking experience pushed forward by brands; that is, the employee experience.

Simply put, the employee experience is what happens when an employee interacts with your brand. From becoming employed, their accomplishments, and interactions with your customers, right through to when they move on. That’s how we loosely describe an employee experience. Until recent times, many business leaders have allowed the focus on employee experience to slip. It’s understandable, building and running a business is ferocious work that takes immense time and effort. However, with the advancements in digital and technology as a whole, there are new ways to deliver exemplary employee experiences. The key is knowing how.

Technology should drive change and by doing so, your brand will gain valuable digital impetus. Through this you can engage, inspire and empower your employees, creating a place where people want to work. The war for talent is fierce. More and more, business owners are realising that it’s in their own interest to help employees achieve their goals. By making work-life better you reduce employee turnover, retaining knowledge within your business whilst improving their quality of life. It’s just one simple ingredient for happy employees.

It’s important for us to remember that there is more to these changes than just technology. Having the technology in place it doesn’t necessarily mean that they will be implemented tomorrow. Changes brought on by technology are inevitable and they will keep coming, but a lot more must happen aside from simply bouncing ideas. We aren’t going to wake up tomorrow and all of a sudden be living in a whole new world; these things take time.

At Glue, we believe in The Promised Land, which is a true one-brand experience. As a concept, it is the singular brightest star in the sky. It guides you and everyone in your business to a brighter future. It’s the epitome of what you want to deliver to the world. From your employees, right through to your customers, and back again, everything becomes consistent. Employee experience is just the first step that radiates through the rest of your brand to your customers. It carries great importance and is invaluable to get right.

Great employees make businesses future-proof

Over the last few years, we have seen a steady decline in department stores throughout the UK. At the same time, many brands have reinvented their approach to traditional bricks-and-mortar.

Here’s what’s been happening and what we’ve been doing for our partners.

, both respectively in city centres. BUILT/ completely redesigned their format for builders and 

launched their first branch drive-thru experience

 – something we had a very large hand in designing with them.

These businesses share the push for efficiency, developing formats that display their entire range in much smaller spaces. All of these stores offer an improved customer experience and we will see more and more brands following suit over the coming year.

Brands around the world are pushing their digital content into their stores. 

McDonald's created industry-leading kiosks

 where customers can order their meals in a matter of minutes without ever having to queue at the till. JD Sports stores are 

enhanced with digital displays and kiosks

Five years had passed since three had launched their groundbreaking store format and their digital ticket experience had started to feel tired. We partnered with Scoop Retail to deliver a new digital ticket tool for three. Our focus was creating a rich experience where users can discover pricing content that is clear, visible, and dynamic. A perfect blend of customer experience and physical-digital integration.

The future of bricks-and-mortar will utilise technology to craft remarkable brand experiences. Cashierless, no check-out line experience as seen with 

 pushes the boundaries of machine learning and computer vision, creating a convenient and seamless shopping experience for customers.

Mobile apps will enhance the physical search and browsing experience within stores through augmented reality and mixed reality. Mobile payments will become even more important: brands that have this at the heart of their mobile strategy will deliver exemplary customer experiences.

If customers believe that bricks-and-mortar offers greater convenience and efficiency, they’ll shop there and become loyal fans for years to come. These three points are only a few of the many possible ways to enhance your physical experience. Speak with us to find out how we can support your brand in making the leap to enhanced brick-and-mortar experiences.

We’re in exciting times where the convergence of the physical and digital is finally happening. Technologies old and new are coming together; your brand now has the potential to deliver memorable interactions through evermore varied experiences.

So where should you be focussing your efforts in order to deliver killer experiences for your brand?

Your human resources department (HR) plays a vital part in ensuring the well-being of your employees. However, here at Glue, we believe that the employee experience doesn’t just stop there. In fact, it’s only the tip of the iceberg. Your employees – in most cases – will be one of the very first touch-points for your customers and probably the last. Inform, engage, and inspire your customers through your employees for a strong brand foundation. Your products and services will only ever be as great as the experience your employees deliver. By working hard to get this right, you can build out and create a strong, disruptive brand for the future.

Digital user experience (UX) has become key in any brand over the last decade. We’ve seen the explosion across LinkedIn where every other brand is hiring UX teams like mad. This is great, as a lot of businesses could do with the input. Yet, on the other hand, physical UX has been completely forgotten about. It may be a familiar story hearing your customers ordering products for collection just to be let down in store (read 

 to solve this): but it doesn’t have to be your brand’s reality. Treat your digital and physical UX equally. From a critical and creative point of view, they are one and the same. It’s only when you deliver these experiences should they differ accordingly.

Six ways to improve your customer experience

, we explained how customer experience unites both your brand and customer around a single vision. This is crucial to ensuring you deliver a personalised experience every time they interact with you. By looking at brands such as Netflix and Spotify, we can see how deep personalisation works; user segments deliver individual experiences through the use of data. Understanding your customer's experiences and how they relate to each other is important. By getting this right, you can bet your shiny pennies on customer experiences that deliver for every one of your customers.

You can shape your overall brand experience by working from the inside out. This is how you build valuable brand equity. It’s important to get this right as it’s what you’ll be known for. In a previous post, 

Branding: it’s All About the Experience

, we talked about branding that focuses on time and effort. This is just one of the many brand experiences your business can be known for – past its snazzy logo, cool tone of voice, and overall mission, of course.

The key takeaway is understanding your brand needs to deliver consistent experiences across both physical and digital arenas. Past that, you need to make these experiences immersive, engaging, and truly memorable. Be vigilant and train your employees to deliver memorable experiences, just like you do for your user and customer experiences. By doing this, without a doubt, your brand experience will cut through the proliferation of choice and not falter.

In short, customer experience unites a brand and customer around a single vision. It’s a commercially effective investment that improves their experience with your brand, resulting in loyal fans for years to come.

Here are six key ways to improve your customer experience strategy:

At the very basic end of the spectrum, brands can personalise their emails to show the customer’s name. This is great. What’s even better is when a business personalises content to its wants and needs.

Brands such as Amazon, AO, and Netflix understand the importance of personalisation. Netflix for example analyse your viewing history and provide you with recommended content. They do this by finding customers with similar interests, discovering the differences, and offering up those results.

A consistent brand that delivers a great customer experience, is a brand that is trusted by customers. Your brand needs to be trusted before a customer commits to a relationship with you. The more you understand about a customer, the greater opportunity for them to understand your brand.

Some brands stand for something more than just profit. Others act in the best interest of their customers, showing empathy at a human level. They’ll do what they’ll say they’ll do by keeping customers informed. This makes brands look competent and extremely likable.

To delight your customers and blow their expectations out of the water, you’ll need to start at the beginning and go on to the end: then repeat. Researching your customer’s expectations gives you insight into how to manage them. Reviewing those expectations provides strategies to exceed them.

To create customer loyalty you’ll need to satisfy and delight them. It’s fair to say customer expectations are a constant moving target, but if you effectively plan for this shift, you’ll be exceeding them every time.

No matter how great a brand relates to their customers, if they don’t plan for failure, they’ll fail hard. From a sincere apology to exceeding their expectations, the little and big gestures go a long way. Whatever the outcome a brand decides, it needs to be executed with a sense of urgency.

A well-designed customer experience positions brands to effectively communicate with the right amount of empathy. It also makes sure each and every interaction thereafter builds trust, even if a crisis happens.

Reducing customer friction as they interact with you means they experience instant gratification with your brand. Customers that accomplish their objective show greater loyalty. Decreased time and effort means your brand has a cut-through competitive advantage, adding value to your overall brand experience.

The key to time and effort in customer experience boils down to reducing efforts that add no value. Secondly, make every interaction with your brand as minimally effective as possible. Your core aim is to ensure your customers invested time is (at the very least) pleasurable.

Brands need to invest time in their customers to understand them. By taking ownership of their experience, you make them your priority, providing sincere emotional intelligence that responds to their situation. You should aim to see more than just their perspective.

Employees play a crucial role in facilitating exceptional customer experience for any brand: body language, tone of voice, appearance, and enthusiasm, to name only a few, are some key ingredients.

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Insights

Digitally transforming the utilities industry

How to Choose the Right Usability Tool

Cookies: Acceptance vs CRO

Duty to Your Consumers

Design systems across the physical and digital

What is a design system?

Digital tools within the workplace

Great employees make businesses future-proof

Bricks-and-mortar (the future of)

Why experience should shape your brand

Six ways to improve your customer experience