Kyle Adams POV

Tag: digital-marketing

  • From Flip Phones to Fiction: Why Storytelling is the Most Powerful Tool We Have

    Image Source: Generated by CoPilot


    What if your Oura ring could predict your emotions before you even felt them? Or, what if you had a tattoo that was your biometric access to take public transit? Design Fiction is a concept that enables creators to make products that are future-forward. This is an opportunity to tap into your imagination, whether it’s envisioning a utopia or dystopia. Using design fiction, combined with visual storytelling, you create a catalyst for social and technological evolution that challenges the present world as we know it. Let’s first look at how design fiction is a proponent of change.


    Design Fiction as a Catalyst for Change

    Image Source: CNET


    Persuasion is most powerful when it’s grounded in a narrative context. You can have the most stunning visual, but beauty without a compelling narrative doesn’t convince policymakers or anyone in a position of power to execute real change. Richard Buday, the author of the article “The Reality of Design Fiction: How Storytelling Can Save The World,” references a proverb that supports the previous statement perfectly. “What is truer than the truth? A Story.” Buday goes on to offer several pop culture examples that capture the essence of how films, stories, and novels that employed this philosophy moved the needle forward. My favorite example is how Star Trek showed us flip phones in 1964, and three decades later, Motorola sold its first flip phone, the StarTac. After understanding design fiction and how it’s a catalyst when it’s rooted in storytelling to persuade people, you can use a framework to create story-driven design.


    Story-Driven Design: A Framework for Visual Coherence

    Image Source: Smashing Magazine


    More often than not, people think writers are the only creators who need to rely on a narrative to connect with an audience. This is false. Designers use storytelling to create meaningful user experiences that are memorable. Award-winning designer Chiara Aliotta has trademarked a five-step framework to enable designers to create visual coherence.


    1. Understand Your Protagonist And The Purpose Of The Product

    2. Define the Structure of Your Narrative

    3. The Beginning

    4. The Middle

    5. The End


    The second step of this framework supports the idea that combining Aristotle’s three-act concept with the “StoryBrand Structure” by Donald Miller, a philosophy that stories must be a chain of cause-and-effect moments, creates the most clear sense of continuity throughout any narrative.


    One of the best examples I can think of to reference that supports this is the first season of the Netflix Original, “Stranger Things.” This is a sci-fi series based on a series of supernatural events that happen in a small town in Indiana, following a group of young friends who discover one mystery after another involving the government and supernatural forces.


    The first season of Stranger Things is a perfect example of combining Aristotle’s three-act concept with the StoryBrand Structure because there are three clear acts with a cause-and-effect narrative.


    • Act I: One of the main characters, Will, disappears and initiates the first mystery (Setup)
    • Act II: The group of children meets Eleven, a child with psychic abilities who is a government experiment, and eventually discovers the “Upside Down.” (Confrontation)
    • Act III: The group of children confronts the Demogorgon (monster) and saves their friend Will, who went missing (Resolution).


    Despite the fact that this is fiction, you can still leverage the hero’s journey to anticipate change and design future experiences that are a reality.


    The Hero’s Journey as a Tool for Designing a New Reality

    Image Source: TedEd


    The hero’s journey is one of the most popular concepts that is not only a storytelling tactic but also used in design thinking and trend predicting. It’s a great tool for innovation in the design process because it grounds very abstract and complicated ideas into simpler stories that are relatable and puts the user in the spotlight.

    Leah Zaid, an award-winning futurist, authored an article, How to Use the Hero’s Journey as a Design-Thinking + Foresight Tool, that details a simplified version of how you can conceptualize the hero’s journey as a designer to better understand your customers and target audience.

    Learning about patterns in action to understand what a narrative arc, hero’s journey, and how to storyboard taught me how design fiction can be a catalyst for change. Once I knew more about the why behind this, I was able to shift my attention to story-driven design, specifically how to use it to turn speculation into a narration that’s compelling and emotionally relatable. Lastly, I reframed the hero’s journey and learned about its relationship with change and how to tap into it for user journeys to design future experiences that can become reality.

    All of this leads me to believe that in our world of uncertainty, maybe the most powerful design tool we have is knowing how to tell a good story.

  • Walk Before You Sprint: The Overlooked Phase That Makes or Breaks Your Design Sprint

    Image Source: Generated by Google Gemini


    Where it all Started


    Before you and your team begin a Design Sprint, you need to take the necessary measures to make sure everyone is ready. With Design Sprints, there’s no such thing as overpreparation. Connecting with your team and client to onboard each person, define who is doing what, review the “run-of-show,” double check you have all the materials you need, and create several team agreements that are honored through the Sprint will guarantee its overall success.

    Let’s delve into a few of the steps I mentioned above to better understand the role each of these play in the preparation phase of the Sprint and how you and your teammates can contribute to each these tasks to get on the same page before beginning the Sprint itself!


    A Goal Without a Plan is a Wish


    If you want to achieve a certain outcome, you need to have an idea as to what your specific “challenge” is, and understand what and who it is going to take to solve it. With the Sprint process, you and your team use guard rails that serve as ground rules over the course of four days. Each day has several mini workshop sessions and the day itself has a theme, or an even better way to think about it is each day is broken out by one of the steps of the Design Thinking process. See the picture below to better understand what I am talking about.

    Image Source: Mindful Marks


    Why a Craftsman Needs to Sharpen Their Tools


    Before you, your team, and client begin the first day of the Sprint, make sure you have all the supplies all of you will need for the next four to five days. If you are running the sprint virtually and everyone is remote, you can rely on tools like Miro for digital whiteboarding, otter.ai to transcribe notes from each day of the workshop, and Zoom to host the meetings virtually and record all of them. If you are doing the workshop in-person instead, you’ll need to have lots of office supplies to whiteboard and brainstorm in-person including but not limited to stickie notes, sharpies/markers, masking tape, and time (to name a few).

    Image Source: AJ & Smart


    Roles & Responsibilities: Everyone Has One


    I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase teamwork, makes the dream work. As cliché as it may be, this is especially true when you’re working with a group to facilitate a sprint. Everyone’s role and the responsibilities that come with it need to be decided ahead of time for the Sprint to run smoothly. As explained in the Sprint Handbook: a step-by-step guide to planning and running innovation sprints, each of these roles play a unique and critical part in the success of a Sprint. See below for just a few!

    • Notetaker:  Captures essential information during interviews and discussions.
    • Lead Facilitator: Guides the overall direction and maintains focus of the sprint.
    • Sprint Host: Ensures a comfortable and productive environment for everyone.
    • Prototyper: Translates ideas into tangible prototypes.
    • Interviewer: Conducts user interviews to gain insights.


    Image Source: Workshopper


    There’s No “I” in Team: How to Compromise


    The most impactful concept I learned in this stage of Design Sprints is the importance of creating Team Agreements. During the mini workshop we conducted this week as a team, this was one of the three exercises we had to complete together. Doing this collaboratively, enabled each one of us to learn more about what each person in the group enjoys about teamwork, what they find challenging, and then create several agreements that we can all use to bring clarity, focus and good vibes for the next 6 weeks of work we will do together. Here’s a few of the agreements we made.


    Team Agreements

    1). Be on time to our weekly Friday meetings starting at 1 p.m. ET and let the group know by Wednesday if you can’t make it due to an extenuating circumstance.

    2). Keep phone on silent and/or do not disturb during our team meetings.

    3). Dedicate the first five minutes of the team meeting to “catching-up.”

    It’s not possible to over prepare for a Sprint Workshop. Preparing for a sprint Workshop is just like walking to warm up before running a race. Walking before running is often overlooked and an afterthought, but without it you’re ten times more likely to cramp up or maybe even pull a muscle. Metaphorically speaking, the same goes for preparing for a Sprint. Without all these layers of preparation you, your team, and client aren’t going to have a successful sprint. After preparation is complete, it’s time to move into the first phase of the sprint. Map + Sketch.

    Sources

    Belle Hastings, P. (n.d.). The Sprint Handbook: a step-by-step guide to planning and running innovation sprints.

    Knapp, J., Zeratsky, J., & Kowitz, B. (2016). Sprint: How to solve big problems and test new ideas in just five days. Bantam Press.

  • The Infinite Iterative Loop

    Image Source: Generated by Google Gemini


    When it comes to problem-solving, regardless of the issue, you must think creatively to come up with a solution. Usually, your first step is to get a grasp of the situation. After that, you move on to creating a hypothesis. Once you’ve created a hypothesis, you start generating ideas. Next, you develop a demo of what you are trying to produce, and lastly, you release a version out into the world for a set audience to test and utilize.

    These steps I just listed are the core components of Design Thinking, a type of problem-solving that focuses on human-first design using an iterative process. To better understand Design Thinking, we are going to look at its origins, examine the guiding principles of the sprint process, and uncover what types of problems sprints are great at solving.


    Where it all Started


    The roots of Design Thinking go back to the 1960s. What started as a novel concept grew into a widely embraced strategy that could not stop accelerating. Design Thinking became mainstream and solidified as an approach to innovation in the late 20th century. Several people and institutions played a role in its mass adoption. David Kelley, the founder of IDEO, a global design company, is credited for shaping and promoting the version of Design Thinking that millions of people use today.

    This new movement sought to redefine the design process, including how interdisciplinary creatives collaborated, the emphasis on empathy, and shifted focus on iterative problem-solving. After Design Thinking had proven its value through popularization and widespread usage, companies and individuals at the cutting edge of technology and innovation created the “Sprint.”


    This Time it’s a Sprint, not a Marathon


    One of the biggest byproducts of Design Thinking is the Sprint, a method that solves problems quickly and validates ideas in a compressed timeline of five days instead of several months. A Sprint is comprised of four guiding principles.

    • Working Together Alone: Sketch, ideate, and create on your own, then come back together.
    • Tangible Things Over Discussion: Focus on discerning, deciding, and getting ideas into the world as tests.
    • Getting Started Over Being Right: Embrace ambiguity. Become risk-tolerant.
    • Don’t Rely on Creativity: Leverage time-based exercises that use frameworks to ideate and create.


    When at a Crossroad, Which Path to Take


    When it comes to developing innovation and solving problems, many companies struggle with deciding when to run a Sprint or if it’s even worth doing so from a timing and resources perspective. The best thing to do, is remind yourself that running a Sprint allows you and your team to test ideas and learn quickly while minimizing the risk.

    Here are a few examples of when it’s best to run a Sprint!

    1. When starting a new project.
    2. When seeking to improve an existing product or process.
    3. When seeking user validation.
    4. When fostering collaboration and team alignment.


    Design Thinking and the facilitation of a Sprint are iterative processes that are infinite, just like a loop. Even after you launch your product to market, even if you solved the original problem that was defined, it’s more likely than not you’ll have a new problem to solve or a specific thing your users want to see improved. Starting the Design Thinking and Sprint process all over again.


    Sources

    Belle Hastings, P. (n.d.). The Sprint Handbook: a step-by-step guide to planning and running innovation sprints.

    Knapp, J., Zeratsky, J., & Kowitz, B. (2016). Sprint: How to solve big problems and test new ideas in just five days. Bantam Press.

  • New Haven Pickleball’s Brand Promise: More Than Just a Game

    Image Source: Photograph taken by Steve Walter

    At its core, all brands are a promise. Usually, the first thing that people picture when they hear the word “brand” is a logo, colors and some type of slogan. Gathering all these components together to tell people a story and effectively communicate whatever good or service you are selling is how you succeed in creating a successful brand that changes someone’s life. Taking this visual design course taught me to think about branding holistically from the perspective of a designer. Specifically, how every little decision whether it’s using a chunky serif font to evoke an assertive tone, choosing a balanced trio of colors, or creating a certain style of illustration on product packaging to target an audience; all these decisions add up to the total sum of what makes a brand memorable.  

    The culmination of these design skills I learned over the last seven weeks is on display in the new brand guidelines I designed for New Haven Pickleball. This is a community to connect with local, fellow pickle-ballers. No matter if you are brand new to this brilliant game or prepping for the day it is in the Olympics, you are welcome! I discovered this community in the summer of 2024 and almost one year later, have met many incredible people that I play Pickleball with regularly. Creating brand guidelines for New Haven Pickleball was a fun, yet challenging process since the brand had no foundation to work off besides a name and a few social media pages. I’m going to take you through an aspect of the brand guidelines that is one of the most vital components to making this brand what it is.

    Verbal Brand

    Regardless of the company or organization, the anatomy of all brands has a verbal brand component. For New Haven Pickleball, all it had was name. When you really think about it, a verbal brand is so much more than a name, it’s your company’s slogan, personality, tone of voice, and style of language.

    After reading a chapter on branding from the book “Graphic Design For Everyone” by Cath Caldwell, I understood what all of these parts of a verbal brand meant. After thinking, research, and some trial and error, I decided to change the name of this company to NHV PB, created the slogan “Community > Competition”, and established its values are inclusivity, positivity, learning and passion.

    These decisions about NHV PB’s verbal brand set the tone moving forward for the copy I used on marketing collateral including an event poster, brochure about the spring league, and a home page design comp for a website mockup.

    The slogan, “Community > Competition” might be the most important aspect of NHV PB’s verbal brand. This company is mainly a community. The “good” it sells is the sense of belongingness, camaraderie, and the opportunity to consistency play pickleball. Using this phrase as a slogan that appears on print collateral, merchandise, and digital properties echoes inclusivity as a brand value and welcomes players at all levels while still validating the legitimacy and opportunity to progress and get better at pickleball.

    I look forward to learning more about visual design and the opportunity to potentially work with the league manager who created New Haven Pickleball to implement some of these brand guidelines.


    Sources

    Caldwell, C., & Skene, R. (2019). Graphic design for everyone: Understand the building blocks so you can do it yourself. Dorling Kindersley Limited.

  • The Anatomy of Brand DNA

    The Anatomy of Brand DNA

    Staring at a blank canvas is overwhelming. Usually, we have an idea but taking a concept and turning it into reality to “get started” is where we have the most difficulty.

    This week, I learned about the different components of understanding your brand and why spending countless hours planning and researching will save you agita in the long run during the design phase.  Two concepts stood out to me the most and I want to emphasize why I think each of them is equally important in the world of branding.


    Brand Expression

    When it comes down to creating a brand plan there are four main stages in this process. Understanding the difference between creating your verbal brand and visual brand is paramount.

    When defining your verbal brand, you need to answer questions like:

    • What’s your brand’s summary line descriptor?
    • If you would describe your brand like a person with personality traits, how would you describe your brand?
    • If your brand were a person, how would it speak?

    Going through this consideration set with the New Haven Pickleball League, a small organization I am re-branding, I was able to establish the fact its tone of voice is chatty and informative, its values are inclusivity, positivity, an always learning mindset and passion, and its summary line is “Community over Competition.”

    Completing this exercise gets you one step closer to defining who your brand is and what audiences you want to connect with. After this, you can start to address the other side of the coin, visuals.


    Brand Essence

    Creating a visual language to convey the identity of your organization is a meticulous process. Collecting colors, images, and typefaces to make a mood board helped me organize my thoughts and start to think through what is central to the branding of the New Haven Pickleball League and figure out what’s that common thread that holds it all together.

    Selecting visuals that connect to your verbal brand and convey the words you chose that represent your brand is how you move forward in the design process to the fourth and final stage, development.

    Adaptable Aesthetics was at the top of mind while I was creating several versions of my logo. I used a combined mark with typography that conveys motion and unity (two constants in the world of Pickleball for all players). I also prioritized simplicity for my logo to work well in any context (business cards, water bottles, backpacks, apparel, etc.).

    Learning about the juxtaposition of a brand’s expression (verbal Language and positioning) and essence (visual language) has taught me how to use brand and design terminology, conduct research, and design brand components.

    An important distinction I took away from everything I’ve read and created this past week is that a logo is not a brand. It’s a unique design or symbol that represents an organization. A brand distills the nature of the experiences that consumers have when they come in contact with your business.

    I’m looking forward to delving deeper into typography over the next week and learning how it influences branding and visual design.

  • Why Social Media is The Best Trailer for Writers

    Image Source: Generated by Google Gemini

    If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? This metaphor can also be applied to releasing a long-form article on your blog.

    All great writers build a reputation on social media to connect with their audience and promote their work. Social media is part of the marketing mix and a necessary level of the funnel to get your customer (reader) to land on your website and read your article.

    Here are three social media post mock-ups teasing my upcoming article, “Social Media’s Obsession With Caffeine: The Reality of Consumption & Its Effects.”


    Instagram


    As attention spans shrink and more people are interested in entertaining and educational content that will stop them in their scroll, it’s vital to have eye-catching visuals for your Instagram post.

    In addition to using a futuristic dramatic visual that’s almost dystopian in some ways, I focused on making my caption short and pithy to motivate my followers to engage with the content.

    I encouraged them to read the article through the link in my bio since you can not hyperlink websites in Instagram captions.

    Now, I want to show you how I will promote this content through X.


    X

    For this post on X, I kept the tone very conversational by asking my followers a relatable question to start the post. After I posed the question, I transitioned to making a bold claim that poses a statement I know people will have different opinions on.

    The end of this post has several emojis to add some emotion and keep it casual. I used a pointing down finger emoji to act as a clear CTA. My followers can click that to read the article or click on the asset, the header image pre-populating my article.


    LinkedIn


    When I went to create this post for LinkedIn, I knew the tone of my copy would have to be slightly more serious. I wanted to focus on educational content that adds value while creating a hook that is a personal and relatable experience many of us have gone through.

    This hook is intriguing. Most people have had this thought. And if they haven’t, they are immediately curious to figure out what I’m talking about.

    Quantifying your opinions and research is popular on LinkedIn. When you have a number attached to your post, it validates you as a thought leader and trusted source.

    Social media posts are one of the most effective tools in the marketing mix to lead readers to long-form articles.

    I hope this encouraged you to read my long-form article, and I look forward to hearing your thoughts about it!