After six years at CP+B I've forged a tiny new consultancy focused on my sweet spots: the early phases of platform design, service design and civic innovation. Here's how I help agencies, brands and cities grow:
Behavioral insights: I help organizations understand the moment-by-moment relationships that people have with their products, services and places. And I map those journeys to spot unmet needs and untapped opportunities.
Opportunity mapping: I lead executive teams in prioritizing and addressing those gaps, which become briefs for improving current-state experiences and inventing new sources of value.
Accelerated making: Sometimes you need to drop the strategic muck and make something to understand it. I lead creative ideation, interaction design and prototyping efforts to jumpstart the making process.
City of Philadelphia
Turkish Airlines • American Express Travel
Vail Resorts • Hotels.com
Domino's • Best Buy • Microsoft
American Express OPEN • NBC
Aspen Dental • B-Cycle • P.ink
Research: key activities
Persona creation and scenario development
User research, interviews, observations and behavior mapping
Stakeholder interviews (internal/external)
Current-state experience auditing
Workshop/internal: observations, insights and next steps
Strategy: key activities
Internal/organizational capabilities discovery
Current-state user and organizational journey mapping
Workshop/external: collaborative design with target users and external stakeholders
Workshop/internal: opportunity identification, prioritization and key alignments
Design: key activities
Future product/service journey mapping: ideal state + first launch
Ideation, concepting and creative direction
Interactions planning and design
Digital and physical prototyping
Workshop/external: iterative feedback from users/stakeholders
Workshop/internal: creative collaborations and reviews
Why hire me?
I help answer questions like these:
1
Who is our target?
What is the gift we should be giving them?
2
What are the weak points in our customer's/visitor's journey?
What are their unmet needs? Untapped opportunities?
How can we convert those into invention opportunities and talkworthy moments?
3
How can we (better) align our organization
to deliver a (better) choreographed customer experience?
4
Digital has changed everything.
What should we do with our physical spaces?
5
The top of our funnel is fine, but the lower end lacks inspiration.
How can we get people excited about visiting us?
6
We're ready to place some big bets and surprise the world.
What conventions can we authentically challenge?
7
Our thing isn't working out. We're ready to change.
What's worth blowing up and rebuilding from scratch?
Lagniappe.
Prior to starting my consultancy, I spent six years at CP+B, where as VP/Director of Experience Design I led innovation initiatives for many global brands we know and love. One of which we even invented from scratch: P.ink is a new healthcare platform focused on improving the quality of life for breast cancer survivors—with tattoos. (More in USA Today.) In prior lives I was managing director of the sonic branding and interaction firm Sonic ID US+UK and founder of Carbon IQ, San Francisco’s first user experience consultancy.
I enjoy thinking out loud and nurturing talent. Favorite gigs: Brands that Believe in Sex After Marriage at SXSW; Sound, Brands and Social Change at Sao Paulo's World Usability Day and the Experience Architecture Forum at Harvard; and Designing the Greatest Product Journey on Earth at the Experience Design Summit in San Jose, Costa Rica. I'm also chairing the always-inspiring IXDA's Student Design Challenge. Our most recent briefs: The Future We Deserve and Envisioning the Wearable City.
My work has secured patents for my clients, earned press and won many big awards. But what I really get excited about is creating something that changes a zillion people or even just one in a new and profound way.
Let's do that, shall we? I'm in Boulder, USA and I collaborate with clients everywhere for consulting, workshops, and speaking engagements.
Noel Franus
noel@franus.com
+1 303.881.9053
twitter: @nfranus
blog: http://franus.com