Every place has a purpose. We help you find it and make it tangible.
We use Design Anthropology to give place purpose, value and meaning. Design Anthropology connects business strategy, identity and design with customer value and values to generate greater economic and social benefit.
Design is what we make.
Anthropology is how we understand the human cultures, values, contexts and past experiences that drive customer choices.
Design Anthropology helps us figure out what we should make and why, by translating human values into tangible experiences for tomorrow’s customers.
We use Design Anthropology to craft experience masterplans that transform places and spaces into high-impact destinations by aligning design, brand, and operations around a clear place purpose.
Experience masterplanning is an approach that focuses on designing not just the physical layout of buildings and spaces but the sensory, emotional, and social and cultural experience of being in those spaces.
These strategic frameworks bring together designers, architects, engineers, marketers, and operators under a shared vision, ensuring that every project is cohesive, engaging, distinctive, and commercially successful.
We call this Design Anthropology.
Delivering:
Place Purpose & Value Frameworks
Narrative & Identity Development
Experience Mapping
Placemaking & Activation Strategies
Customer & Market Insights,
Design & Business Integration
Places need to do more for people and business.
Modern society is undergoing rapid and complex change as a result of interconnected forces. When building places and spaces, human values are increasingly being left behind when they should be at the forefront of decisions, especially with competing demands for these spaces.
Often architects and engineers are constrained by standards and assumptions about people and places that don’t take a rich enough human experience into account. Decisions are made that can be difficult and costly to change later. Adding Design Anthropology early into the mix helps us all think broadly about human social and economic needs and short and long-term uses. Giving your team an edge by improving experiences and creating more long-term commercial value.
We bring human truths to the table, allowing imagination to flourish.
The short version of what we do is translating human values into highly valuable and tangible experiences. To do this we go much deeper than what might be termed experience design. We ask: why are things the way they are? What is happening that will change how we understand and create value? Are traditional assumptions and standards fit for the modern built environment? What’s the role of the built form for different stakeholders? What's different today? These questions help give projects foundations upon which to explore more interesting ideas.
How do we make progress?
We work in two key areas:
Innovation
Finding and releasing new value for owners, occupiers and visitors. We see value from five key perspectives: social, cultural, economic, environmental and commercial.
Identity and Experience
How to make places loveable and meaningful.
We work with architects, engineers, landlords, urban planners, governments and organisations that strive to create more rewarding urban places and spaces, cultures, social and economic infrastructures.
The road to success.
Design Anthropology connects business strategy, identity and design with customer value and values to generate greater economic and social benefit.
These are some of the stepping stones to success we might use in a typical project:
We work with you and your team to bring strategic and creative thinking to challenge and pull apart a brief before putting it back together. The result is a compelling story and organising idea that clearly states the direction and possible outcomes.
Output: Reverse client brief, opportunity and value definition, design story.
Practical research to understand people and what is significant and meaningful to them, as well as a place’s historical, architectural and cultural past/present and emerging futures. We delve into daily life to understand hidden relationships among people, place, technology and architecture — generating insights that you can work with to drive creative design and thinking.
Outputs: Identity study with commercial and social insights and recommendations. Current state experience maps and models, archetypes and personas.
Translating the research and previous steps into ideas and concepts that are more likely to deliver for all stakeholders. We iterate ideas and concepts, testing them against required value propositions until we have a prioritised list of ideas and concepts.
Output: Validated ideas and concepts to guide decision making on final strategic vision and design roadmap.
Using all of the above, we define a projects future state vision, experience and a strategy on what, how and when to deliver. This vision is used to align clients and stakeholders to stay on course.
Output: Strategic design handbook that includes: vision, design principles, defined concepts and roadmap. We can assist with design governance to ensure all designed elements remain true to the long-term vision.
Has the design worked as intended or has it been changed? Similar to post-occupancy evaluation, we define a way to evaluate and measure whether the promised value is being achieved.
Output: Place evaluation framework. Used in conjunction with the Design Strategy to support planned change.
It's good to talk.
We believe the reasons places and buildings either work or don’t work are usually based on people. The more we can understand people and the culture that surrounds them the better our buildings will be.
If you’d like to discuss how we can help your project in these areas please get in touch.
Chris Hayward
With over 20 years of experience, Chris specialises in applied and design anthropology, product, service, and experience design, focusing on strategic research and experience strategy. His expertise lies in helping organisations unlock new value through transformative place-based and digital futures.
Chris has led numerous complex projects across a wide range of industries, including aviation, sport and entertainment, workplace, digital transformation, digital government, metaverse strategies, community development, academia, and large-scale public realm architecture and destination strategies.
His work has delivered impactful solutions for global brands, government agencies, and non-profit groups, spanning Asia, the Middle East, Europe, Oceania and North America.
Simon Jordan
Simon is a Creative Strategist and business leader, with a 30-year career spanning senior and board level roles in advertising, design, architecture and urbanism. Operating at the intersection of experience design, innovation, creativity and business strategy, Simon has worked on multiple initiatives for world-class brands, organisations and institutions, creating places and spaces that better satisfy the communities they serve.
In 2001 Simon co-founded interdisciplinary design and architecture practice Jump Studios working with clients as diverse as Nike, Google, o2, The Ministry of Sound, Science Museum, Adidas, Saatchi & Saatchi and Rapha, to name a few. He oversaw the acquisition of Jump Studios by global sport and entertainment giant Populous in 2015, later exiting to pursue new challenges and opportunities reflecting emerging trends in how we shape our cities and place. In addition to WMP, Simon works as a strategic advisor to a number of architecture, urbanism and experiential design studios.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/simontjordan
Locations
London, United Kingdom
Brisbane, Australia
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