XO by Newell Brands
I led the design practice for Newell XO, an initiative with the goal to develop an enterprise-level business unit focused on technology innovation. The team, made up of advanced engineers and creative technologists researched and prototyped technology innovations for their global product portfolio.
Credits
Role: Led the design practice as Design Director
Worked on: Prototyping, Mobile app UX/UI, branding and marketing
Team: Sonny Caberwal (Group lead), Sam Broe (Head of product), Noah Keating (Head of Mobile), Janelle Storesund (lead developer)
Summer 2017 - Summer 2018
Digital innovation lab for Newell Brands
The Challenge
Newell Brands is a Fortune 500 consumer products company with 200 leading brands like Sharpie, Rubbermaid, Coleman, First Alert, Yankee Candle and Calphalon, which are used by nearly a billion people daily. As many other traditional consumer goods companies, Newell Brands saw an opportunity to invest in technology and innovation to stay relevant with digital disruptors, such as Amazon.
The Solution
As part of a team of advanced engineers and creative technologists, we worked closely with leadership and specific brands to unlock new consumer benefits and leverage data to open up new opportunities for Newell Brand's portfolio of companies.
The Impact
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During our time at Newell Brands, we worked with some of the biggest brands (Yankee Candle, Crock-Pot, DYMO, Prismacolor and First Alert) to discover ways to integrate technology into their products
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We worked with Yankee Candle to develop a new innovation, making the highly successful personalized labels ($25m in 2017) on candles come to life with video messages. This initiative launched on Mother's Day in 2018 and continues to be a driver of success with over 10,000 users and 75,000 video messages shared and watched.
Yankee Candle Video Labels
Augmented labels and mobile app
The XO team worked with Yankee Candle to develop a new innovation, making the highly successful personalized labels ($25m in 2017) on candles come to life with video messages. Through image recognition we created a new gifting experience, where a person attaches a video to their personalized label on their new candle and the recipient can easily view it by pointing their camera to it or using a mobile app.
We worked on image recognition, mobile app design and development and a launch marketing campaign video. The product launched on Mother's Day in 2018 and continues to be a driver of success with over 10,000 users and 75,000 video messages shared and watched.
Mobile app prototypes
DYMO Smart Labels: QR code labels and mobile app
More and more, consumers turning to digital tools (eg. Evernote, Wunderlist and Apple reminders) to help them stay organized. The XO team saw an opportunity to create technology-enabled labels and a simple app that recognize, organize, and augment them with digital content, enabling consumers to keep their physical world organized using the digital devices they already depend on.
We explored augmented reality and image recognition (QR codes) and created a label and mobile app prototype to bring this idea to life. Through rounds of user testing, we were able to develop a fully functional prototype experience that was presented to DYMO labels to include in their innovation portfolio.
First Alert Onelink: App onboarding and hardware installation
First Alert is a leader in home security and safety. The team came to XO to help them improve the onboarding and installing experience of their popular Safe & Sound fire and carbon monoxide alarm.
We worked closely with their team to identify gaps in their current product, prototype an improved onboarding experience, testing it with users, and presenting the findings to First Alert's leadership. The prototype was positively received by leadership and tested well with users, with a lot of our recommendations making it to the final product.
