I help innovation leaders ask & answer

“What should we make next?”

Industrial Design

  • Function & Aesthetics

  • Interaction & Experience

  • Design Identity

  • Signature Differentiation

Customer Insights

  • Cultural Context

  • Research (Desk/Field)

  • Analysis & Synthesis

  • Insight Framing

Product Innovation

  • Consumer Needs

  • Value Proposition

  • Concept Articulation

  • Radical & Incremental

Strategy & Futures

  • Portfolio Strategy

  • Advanced Product

  • Business Foresight

  • Emergent Shifts

Key Narratives

  • Brand Positioning

  • Persuasive Narratives

  • Effective Storytelling

  • Key Audience Buy-In

Catalyze Transformation

  • Effective Collaboration

  • Facilitation & Workshops

  • Design Thinking

  • Capability Elevation

reconceived {notions}

reconceived: a tiny shift that brings a big difference (vs. existing, preconceived notions)

notions: understanding, ideas, conceptions expressions, articulations

There are many possibilities to reconceive:

  1. Start with the preconceived: truly understanding the incumbent status: the complexity around contexts, nuances, tensions, unaddressed needs, gaps, issues to have an informed grasp of why the current state exists the way it did.

  2. Reconceive a different possibility: through creative re-imagination. Identify an underserved need. Challenging a false assumption. Finding a fresh perspective. From ‘today’ to ‘tomorrow’.

  3. Articulating the renewed notion: expressing the renewed idea as a tangible outcome: e.g. as {design} {insight} {product} {future} {vision} … connecting resonantly with the audience.

Here are just a few examples to briefly illustrate the core principle of reconceived notions across different manifestations. If that piques your interest, reach out or see how we might work together.

reconceived {design}

preconceived: Conventional daily planner is defined by visual grid-lines filled to the brims of pages; yet “my life don’t fit neatly into these boxes”.

reconceived: Re-imagined daily planner: a simple analog clock face in the center of a blank page. Add appointments around the clock. Plenty of space for scribbling, sketching, expanding. Give room for life and thoughts that emerge.

Won MUJI Award (out of 3000+ global entries), received award from luminaries including Naoto Fukasawa. Royalty-licensed for commercial production under MUJI.

reconceived {design}

preconceived: “commercial toilet products are a race-to-bottom, neglected commodity sourced from various OEM suppliers, with standard expectations for dated designs & incoherence.”

reconceived: unified signature design language across divergent products; recasting Initial as hygiene flagbearers & industry leader. Carries an elegance that punctuates the spaces of leading, self-respecting buildings & facilities.

Won Singapore’s President Design Award (2013). Still going strong & looking great a decade later.

reconceived {insights}

preconceived: Localizing for Asian consumers simply translates to cost-down of a product that worked in the West (a learning pen to promote correct ergonomics for young children).

reconceived: observing how kids learned to write in Asia - realization that the precision demanded by complex Asian scripts required a different grip & position. Ergonomics - even for a thousand-year-old instrument, may not be universal: truly “different strokes for different folks".

reconceived {insights}

preconceived: Understand & better serve Muslim’s lifestyles & needs: “can a large corporate address a foreign & unfamiliar needs of a religious group?” + “Isn’t it too sensitive a topic?”

reconceived: In-depth research in Middle East (Iran & Saudi Arabia) that surfaced addressable commercial opportunities to better serve the world’s 1.7B+ Muslims: the facets of household needs where Muslims are lead-users (vs. secular populations).

reconceived {product strategy}

preconceived: OEM “bulky black brick” B2B supplier of power adapters & related accessories (this is ~2010s, pre-USB C standardization).

reconceived: Product-planning & design for B2C business & product line centered on empowering mobility, enabled by portfolio of re-imagined visual & brand identity.

reconceived {category}

preconceived: the problematic positioning for tablets are defined in relation to comparison devices: “more mobile than laptop” + “more screen than a smartphone”: but increasingly squeezed as laptops becoming more mobile & smartphone’s screen grew.

reconceived: re-articulate a fresh raison d'être for the tablet category that stands independently & resonate based on insights from global consumer engagements (US, EU, Asia), & use it to guide & inspire future product features.

reconceived {storytelling}

preconceived: Global C-suite is in a different space (both physically & mind-space) vs. customers of urban compact apartments & micro-living. Challenge in truly seeing & empathizing the life & space of a different culture, person.

reconceived: Using 360º camera for fieldwork during research & bringing a slice of immersive VR storytelling to global C-suite, to enable a visceral feel & appreciation the spatial context (constraints) of modern urban compact living & implications, as part of a global collaboration project (spanning EU + Asia).

reconceived {vision}

preconceived: that a sub-par patient experience characterized by uncertainty, anxiety, loss-of-personal-agency & endless waiting is the unfortunate “standard” for a public hospital.

reconceived: led 200+ healthcare providers (from different teams incl. Outpatient, Inpatient, Emergency & leadership) in a yearlong visioning and design thinking engagement to boldly co-imagine a future hospital healthcare experience with & for humanity. Backed by fresh signature ideas with experience prototypes that are driven by the teams. Even while COVID was ongoing.

Clients

I have helped these esteemed organizations to re-imagine their offering.