Kaleidoscope Innovation an Infosys company
Kaleidoscope Innovation an Infosys company

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Gaining Meaningful Experiences through Real World Exposure

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Gaining Meaningful Experiences through Real World Exposure

As every new semester approaches, we are excited and eager for the new round of Co-Ops to join the Kaleidoscope organization.  Attracting some of the brightest minds from Universities all over the globe; Kaleidoscope welcomes Designers, Engineers, Human Factor Engineers, Researchers and Sales and Marketing professionals to our headquarters in Cincinnati Ohio. Through our robust and collaborative program, Kaleidoscope Co-Ops are able to strengthen and grow their professional and personal skill-sets prior to graduation through real world applications and scenarios. The impact is felt immediately through their hard work, determination, unique perspective and overall drive to support Kaleidoscope’s Mission to “Improve the Human Experience through Meaningful Innovation”. Having the exposure to several dynamic and challenging programs during their rotation, they have the opportunity to solve problems within many of the different stages of the development process. Allowing them to wear many different hats and be creative in their solutions.   

We have been really impressed with the Co-Ops that have come through our program over the years. They are confident, diligent, socially skilled and talented problem solvers. If you have interest in joining Kaleidoscope, please stay connected through our Website, LinkedIn channel and Careers Page.  

When deciding on your next rotation, we have sound advice from Kaleidoscope’s Co-Op Leaders as well as former Co-Ops: 

    • Seek guidance from not only academic advisors, but also industry professionals. 
    • Pursue what you want with confidence.  
    • Don’t be afraid to not know the answer, but be ready to go find it.  
    • Don’t miss out on the meaningful professional and personal bonds you can build in the workplace. 
    • Your enthusiasm and drive are some of your biggest assets. 
    • Don’t hesitate. 

Authors

Matt Suits

Matt Suits
Business Development Manager
msuits@kascope.com

Pulkit Verma
Senior Design Engineer & Filmmaker

Why Using an End-to-End Product Development Firm Can Benefit Your Business (Even If You Only Need One Service)

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Why Using an End-to-End Product Development Firm Can Benefit Your Business (Even If You Only Need One Service)

Even if you are just looking to outsource one particular service (such as human factors, industrial design, engineering, software development, etc.) for your project, working with a full-service product development firm for said service can provide immense benefits to your business and project. Here are a few key reasons why:

1. Holistic Understanding of the User-Centered Design Process

Employees at an end-to-end product development firm have gained additional perspectives into the user-centered design process from team members in other functional areas. This often informs their own processes for product development, and enables them to keep key considerations from other departments in mind as they themselves iterate on your project. This is especially true when the firm is a small- to medium-sized business because there is more likely to be intermingling of employees, rather than siloed departments of functional service areas.

end-to-end product development firm

2. Prioritization of Cross-Functional Collaboration

When a business chooses to work with a full-service product development firm, the individuals they are hiring for their project are integrated with people in different functional service areas on a day-to-day basis. Their colleagues and internal team members for other projects span different roles in the product development process. Because of this, they are used to working and collaborating with people who have different viewpoints than themselves. Working with people who understand different stakeholder values can make for a more pleasant overall experience and can produce better results for the user and client.

end-to-end product development firm

3. Greater Efficiency for Clients

When clients approach a firm that is strictly a design firm, for instance, and later decide they require engineering support for their project, they need to then utilize an additional firm. This means more time and opportunity cost in exploring possible firms and finding a reliable partner, approving a new supplier, signing an MSA (master service agreement) or NDA (non-disclosure agreement), explaining the project to a new group and potentially connecting them with the other firm to move the project along. This time and hassle is greatly reduced when starting with a full-service product development firm from the beginning. While a new phase may need to be discussed and different team members may need to be brought up to speed, much of the work would ramp up far more quickly and efficiently with teammates from the same company you have already trusted to achieve your project objectives.
end-to-end product development firm

4. Retention of Proprietary Information by Less Companies (Risk Reduction)

If a business decides to outsource a different service for their current project (similar to point #3) or outsource various services for other projects down the line, using a full-service product development firm allows them to disclose their proprietary project information to less companies and potentially less people – reducing risk.
end-to-end product development firm

Conclusion

These are just a few reasons why using a full-service product development firm can benefit your business and help you achieve greater results for your project. Kaleidoscope Innovation is one such end-to-end product development firm. For over 30 years clients have partnered with Kaleidoscope to improve the human experience. Offering both consultancy-style and onsite services, Kaleidoscope provides a full breadth of disciplines to meet their partners where needed, including: Insights & Human Factors, Medical Affairs, Industrial Design & User Experience Design, Engineering, Visualization and Software Development. To connect with our team, please fill out the form on our contact page or connect with a member of our team directly.
Nick Macke

Nick Macke
Senior Account Executive
nmacke@kascope.com

Matt Suits

Matt Suits
Business Development Manager
msuits@kascope.com

 

Vital Questions to Consider When Conducting Remote Testing During COVID-19 and Social Distancing

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Remote testing social distancing

Vital Questions to Consider When Conducting Remote Testing During COVID-19 and Social Distancing

Why Remote?

In these uncertain times, individuals, businesses and entire industries have had to learn to adapt – sometimes in dramatic and unprecedented ways. Certainly, anyone involved in product development has noticed that in-person user research has been impacted and requires a greater degree of creativity to achieve results. An experienced product development firm with a strong toolkit for executing remote user research can quickly pivot and adapt to provide greater flexibility and client benefits in this “new normal.”

Kaleidoscope Innovation is one such product development firm with extensive experience employing remote testing methodologies. Our standards for delivering quality-based and accurate deliverables remain high while we keep safety for all involved as our primary concern.

More Than Just Remote

Yes, this is about remote testing. However, this profoundly unique situation requires additional measures beyond those associated with traditional remote testing. This is especially true if a physical test product or prototype needs to be shipped. Software programs, for instance, can be transmitted and displayed on the web or a smartphone without personal handling. However, additional safety measures around shipping physical objects should be both implemented and communicated to help keep participants safe and to put their mind at ease while testing.

Research teams need to exercise both flexibility and wisdom as they adapt their remote research to this unique time.

Remote testing social distancing

Challenges and Questions to Consider

There are always going to be challenges inherent to any research approach, especially when technologies are used. Telephones, laptops and web cams of some sort must often be used in remote testing, and this may be difficult to execute seamlessly with participants who live a more low-tech lifestyle. Even with remote technology, observing and studying human behavior and product interaction becomes more challenging without the inherent benefits of in-person observations.

Here are a few challenges and questions that our team considers with remote testing, as well as some of their tips.

Remote testing social distancing

Challenge: Knowing Where to Start

  • Questions to Ask Yourself As You Design Your Study:
    • – What do you need to learn from participants?
    • – What tasks do you need participants to perform?
    • – If adapting from what was originally intended to be an in-person study, what needs to change and what can stay the same?
    • – How do you best step participants through the study components and sections to avoid participant frustration, errors and moving ahead too quickly?
    • – Should you use research with or without real-time moderation (or a combination, such as the homework and interview method)?
    • – How else might you best minimize issues and maximize benefits associated with remote testing?
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  • Our Team’s Tips:
    • – Determine what you need to learn from participants, what tasks need to be performed, what data you need to capture, and other critical questions before deciding what platform or technology to use for your study. Use a technology best tailored to your study, not the other way around.
Remote testing social distancing

Challenge: Keeping Participants Safe – and Feeling Safe

  • Questions to Ask Yourself As You Design Your Study:
    • – What can you do to help participants remain safe during your remote study – especially if they have to interact with a physical product delivered to them?
    • – How can you prepare products for delivery in the safest possible way?
    • – How can you best communicate to participants the safety precautions you are taking?
    • – What concerns, real or perceived, might participants in the remote study have related to health and safety, and how can you address their concerns?
    • – How can you build trust with participants in general, and particularly around the issue of health and safety?
    •  
  • Our Team’s Tips:
    • – If shipping devices or products for remote testing, consider taking extra precautions and including convenient sanitizing solutions for participants. Sanitize the products themselves before sending and also give participants clear sanitizing instructions for when the testing materials arrive. Make sure to communicate those extra precautions you have taken as well – before and during the remote testing. Remember: you are designing the whole experience, not just the test.
    • – While COVID-19 is a primary health and safety concern right now, remote testing might bring up real or perceived safety concerns in other areas as well, including cybersecurity. Keep in mind all aspects of safety associated with remote testing.
Remote testing social distancing

Challenge: Avoiding Biased Results

  • Questions to Ask Yourself As You Design Your Study:
    • – How skilled are your participants/representative users in using technologies relevant to your test?
    • – How accessible are remote testing technologies (i.e. high-speed internet) to participants?
    • – How can you make the study as easy as possible for your representative users to complete, especially those who are less able or willing to participate in remote testing?
    • – How can you design the test and testing experience in a way that keeps all users engaged / interested in starting and completing the study?
    • – How can you design the test and test experience to best accommodate any cultural differences among representative users?
    • – What other barriers might your participants experience to starting or completing the study beyond technological acumen and/or access?
    • – How else might you minimize possible skewed results from people unable or unwilling to engage in remote testing?
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  • Our Team’s Tips:
    • – Don’t expect your participants to learn a new communication tool/technology for your study – particularly one that is far beyond their regular level of usage. Work within the parameters of what is familiar and comfortable to them.
Remote testing social distancing

Challenge: Collecting Quality Data

  • Questions to Ask Yourself As You Design Your Study:
    • – How will you capture the results? What technologies will you employ for the study? (i.e. video conferencing software and webcam recording technologies, clickstream data software, telephone, email, mobile phone recording, online research platforms, etc.)
    • – How do you ensure the content / data that you capture is high-quality and you are able to observe what is needed and beneficial for the study?
    • – How can you make yourself available to participants throughout the study for help (both for the content itself and any technology), if engaging in testing without real-time moderation?
    • – What barriers might participants encounter when trying to capture data, including if using video? How can you design the experience to minimize errors?
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  • Our Team’s Tips:
    • – Think about how what is being asked of participants can impact their ability to best capture the experience. For instance, if a participant’s task involves using their hands to test out a product, they will likely be focusing on that more than camera angle. By the nature of having a product in their hands, they also physically may not be able to adjust and optimize the camera angle. Thinking through challenges like these can impact how you design your study. For instance, to help overcome this challenge in the example above, it might be better for your team to use testing with real-time moderation so the moderator can ask for camera adjustments as needed.
    • – Clear instructions are critical, especially when the moderator and participant are not physically in the same room. Make the instructions both legible and understandable. Consider font size and typeface for legibility, and be direct but comprehensive in your instructions to participants.
Remote testing social distancing

Benefits of remote testing

We have outlined a few of the remote testing challenges and questions to consider while addressing them. But there are some important benefits of remote testing that are important to capitalize on as well.

To start, right now remote testing helps ensure the safety of all involved during these uncertain times. This is a central benefit as research teams should be focusing now on safety of their participants and team members as their primary concern.

Additionally, remote testing in general enables research teams to reach a broader group of people across a wider geographic range, including internationally. This can allow for a greater degree of confidence from the sample size; especially for studies without real-time moderation it can be easier to obtain a larger sample size and find statistically significant differences. It might also enable teams to reach participants whom in-person access would have otherwise been difficult to gain, and to capture moments-based insights and longitudinal data over a period of time.

Further, the execution of the study (data collection) often costs less and takes less time. However, it is important to keep in mind that remote studies can be more complex, requiring more time for preparation and analysis. Expenses involved in remote studies – for example shipment of testing materials – tend to be overlooked or underestimated.

Finally, depending on how the study is organized, remote testing can often serve as a more flexible option for participants to take on their own time. (NOTE: The research team needs to be more flexible too!)

Remote testing social distancing

Moving Forward

In conclusion, it is important to think through all of the challenges, risks and benefits associated with remote testing and create a test and testing environment that work best for your participants and your project objectives. At Kaleidoscope Innovation, we consider all of these questions and more for remote studies. We are continuing to engage in Insights and Human Factors work and have been adjusting to the current climate by leaning on our remote testing and other expertise to serve clients in these uncertain times. If you’re looking for Insights and Human Factors support for your project, fill out our contact form or reach out to a member of our team.

Valerie Fenster

Valerie Fenster
Director of Insights & Human Factors
vfenster@kascope.com

 

Matt Suits

Matt Suits
Business Development Manager
msuits@kascope.com

 

Top Innovation Books Every Designer Must Read

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Kaleidoscope Innovation - Top Innovation Books

Top Innovation Books Every Designer Must Read

Now could be an excellent time to crack open a good book and do a deeper dive into a topic of interest. As an end-to-end product design and development firm, we want to share a few of our experts’ top picks for anyone interested in innovation:

1. The Little Black Book of Innovation: How It Works, How to Do It, by Scott D. Anthony

One particularly helpful aspect of this book is that the author has highlighted a lot of the thought leadership of innovation.

But The Little Black Book of Innovation is not just a historical synopsis. It reveals what we have learned from these individuals. For example, one of the influential people mentioned in the book is AG Lafely, former Chairman of the Board,  President and CEO of Procter & Gamble. Anthony points out that Lafely’s big push when he first became the CEO for P&G was that “the consumer is king; the consumer is our boss.” Though he was not the first person to say that, he brought that thinking to the forefront in the innovation space.

The Little Black Book of Innovation is structured to address the disconnect that many people talk about innovation but do a poor job of defining it. It seems Anthony’s argument is that the current state of innovation is defined by those who have come before, what they have done and how we’ve arrived where we are today.

As it is not a how-to book, it may or may not provide much meaning for the non-practitioner. But for someone who is in the innovation space, we recommend this as a great book to understand where those thoughts and principles come from.

Once you understand the rules, then you can start to break them.

 

2. The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses, by Eric Ries

There are a number of ties in The Lean Startup to design thinking in general, which is not the “end-all” for all innovation, but it is certainly a key theme or key methodology.

One major conflict addressed in the book is: What is that minimum viable product (MVP)?

On the software side, the book includes the topic of how people are selling a product that has not even been made yet. (This goes back to the “consumer is king” approach.)

In The Lean Startup, there is also a lot of talk about the “pivot.” This happens in innovation when you build a product and then find out that people are using it for a different reason than you intended. Rather than fighting it, you just accept it and then really embrace those needs and better cater to those customers.

Being able to pivot is crucial to an industry utilizing methods such as user-centered design.

 

3. 101 Design Methods: A Structured Approach for Driving Innovation in Your Organization, by Vijay Kumar

​Vijay Kumar, the author of this book, is a professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology’s Institute of Design, and he leads the Strategic Design Planning and the Design Methods programs.

The book’s website provides insights into what he describes as seven modes of the design innovation process.

If for no other reason, we recommend 101 Design Methods for the examples and the case studies.

We would describe 101 Design Methods as very much a how-to book. We feel that for a practitioner, especially a younger practitioner who is new to the space, it is important to be comfortable with experimentation. So you may read about a technique and try it out, and then it may work or it may not work.

4. Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant, by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne

In Blue Ocean Strategy, the authors examine white space—which they refer to as the “blue ocean.”

According to the Amazon Editorial Review for the audio book, “W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne assert that tomorrow’s leading companies will succeed, not by battling their rivals for market share in the bloody ‘red ocean’ of a shrinking profit pool, but by creating ‘blue oceans’ of untapped new market spaces ripe for growth.”

This book is less about product innovation and more looking at other domains and areas of innovation, whether that is on the service side, distribution, etc.