↳ Approach

Applying design-thinking and solution-focused methods to your customers' experience of your product means that you care.

And the result is ecstatic customers raving about your product. You may have seen it happen in the wild but how do you get that same level of joy in your own customers?

When you understand that your customer is more important than your product, you'll invest in CX — customer experience. And then you'll understand the importance of creating a strategy for their experience of your product.

Like that US senator said way back in the 1970s "You know it when you see it" In the case of Experience Strategy, if you are aware of it, most likely that's because it's either exceptionally bad or exceptionally good. Exceptionally bad can happen through intentional cluelessness. Exceptionally good can only happen through intentional empathy and careful strategy.

Designing an experience strategy that makes your customers stop and take notice isn't intuitive. It requires the ability to step into your customer's shoes at each juncture of their journey and attempt to understand what would make their time with you excellent.

Like good hosts, Housemates understand that the concept of empathy when used methodically and thoughtfully, is the foundation of a wonderful customer experience.

We see your customers as the heroes of your product's story, with you guiding them along the way, through the twists and turns until they approach the end of their journey with you victorious...and happy in the knowledge that they were expertly guided each step of the way.

Your customer experience needs the thoughtful, empathic, and strategic approach that Housemates are steeped in. Story-based, well-designed and method-focused.

Studying your user — using an interdisciplinary approach that combines design-thinking with anthropology, behavioural and social psychology — to find out what they require when interacting with your product.

The end result is happy customers using your product with delight. The path to getting to that place is called UX (user experience) research.

Housemates seek to understand your vision for a perfect experience of your product. We walk with you through your product journey, asking questions and guiding you as we listen and learn about what your user needs.

We supplement this with field research, analyzing user data as well as getting to know the user in his natural habitat. The mixed methods (quantitative and qualitative) study gives insight into who your ideal user is and how best they interact with your product.

We'll iterate and modify our research until we're certain that those people who most want to your product can do so effortlessly and with absolute joy.

Apply product-design methodology to your service and you gain clarity to what is by nature a complicated system.

Designing a service requires the same fundamentals of design-theory as when designing products but with added input from human behavioural studies such as ethnography and anthropology. The subtle difference between the two lies in the fact that human interaction is a complex system which requires another layer of understanding and knowledge for the service to deliver expected results.

Because systems change as users interact with them, the design needs flexibility and a tolerance of uncertainty. This fundamental difference is often overlooked by brands—perhaps because we interact with services every day we interact with them in a mindless way. We fail to realize that to offer an excellent service, we need to add a mindful awareness of neuroscience and behavioural theory.

Storyboards and other design approaches can be used combined with use-cases and service scenarios to provide a well thought out strategy to the service design.

Housemates combine their design skills with their background in behavioural and social psychology to collaborate with clients, finding their unique process and then guiding them in strategic execution of services for the people who need them.