c4di show SMEs how to use design to drive innovations: read more to find out our areas of expertise and how we've applied our skills to real-life problems

Jamie Hutcheon of Cocoa Ooze is a chocolatier, just turned twenty and with boundless enthusiasm. When c4di first met Jamie he had just gone into his truffle-making business full time and needed to take stock of the opportunities available to him and look strategically at where best to place his efforts.

Jamie’s packaging needed immediate attention and c4di delivered a core values workshop and subsequent report which has provided Jamie with essential guidance regarding his branding at a crucial time in the development of his business.

C4di also ran an ideas generation workshop with Jamie who has subsequently launched a number of products following on from this, one of which, a raspberry, mango and passionfruit Layered Chocolate won a Grampian Food Forum Innovation Award at the Grampian Food Forum Innovation Awards 2011

Jamie is on course to double his turnover this year.

The award winning family run business The Store rears Aberdeen Angus cattle which is supplied to Waitrose amongst others. They also have a farm shop on site and attend farmers markets throughout the North East. Last year they opened a café and employed several new members of staff.

The busy owner felt that he needed to invest more time in developing effective internal communications with a new and enthusiastic team in place.

A core values workshop was delivered to the staff, family members and The Store’s design agency.

The resultant report flagged up a number of positive ideas for business development, particularly from the staff. The report also provided recommendations on how the company’s existing branding and values could be communicated more effectively to its key markets.

We are delighted to announce that The Store were winners of The Taste of Grampian Local Independent Retailer of the Year Award at the Grampian Food Forum Innovation Awards 2011.

Tritech International Ltd, the innovative subsea technology company, has made steps to harness the creative potential of staff at all levels of the organisation to achieve competitive advantage in the marketplace. This process, which aims to foster a culture of creativity and drive innovation, was kick started with a unique workshop led by c4di.

The workshop saw the team from Tritech working together to design a new space port based at Aberdeen Airport. Using a range of design-based techniques including brainstorming, user-centred design and rapid prototyping, they creatively worked together in an inter-disciplinary group to prototype a new service and a new building.

“This exercise is designed to take delegates through the 4 stages of the innovation cycle - Problem identification, Perspective shift, Ideation (the process of creating new ideas) and Evaluation” comments Professor Julian Malins, Project Director at C4DI and Professor of Design at Robert Gordon University. “This gave the Tritech team an insight into the importance of placing the user at the centre of developing meaningful innovations.”

“What this kind of exercise does is help release staff member’s imaginations and creativity to move past barriers such as the fear of failure or being wrong, therefore enabling them to come up with ideas and solutions that might never have been arrived at through conventional processes. This kind of ‘serious play’ has long been established in the design world, and we have found it immediately beneficial and applicable to the wider business sector.”

Maurice Fraser, Sales & Marketing Director, Tritech International Ltd, commented:

“At Tritech we are always keen to identify new techniques to harness a faster and creative innovation process. The format offered from the CD4I team was fun and we hope to apply some of the knowledge gained in the workshop to our innovation thinking.”

As part of a c4di insights exercise, we helped a Dumfries & Galloway manufacturer of conserves and preserves to determine their core values in a visual way.

The first stage of our work was to spend an afternoon observing the manufacture, labelling and packaging of products. Insights gathered during this process helped drive the process of determining core values.

Using our specially designed core values cards, we then started the process of defining & distilling those particular values that were most important to the company, and which made it unique. Several iterations of the exercise were undertaken, ending up with determining three specific core values.

Finally, existing products, branding, services and visual and written communications were evaluated against these values. By auditing and identifying areas that require refreshing in a strategic and systematic way like this has resulted in an improved and more consistent brand that remains authentic and true to its previously unarticulated core values.