Identifying and defining the next generation of an Iconic Book Publisher's Digital Services.

This project started with an existing product; a popular but underperforming one. It was generating up to 600,000 organic visitors per month – a strong figure by any measure – but was currently costing our client money rather than generating it.

The purpose of this program of work was to define and articulate a set of service propositions for our client that clearly articulated their opportunity in the digital market—exploring where the greatest commercial opportunities for their current product lie and identifying the most appropriate initiative to transform the existing service into. To be considered a success as a service, our clients existing product needed to drive substantial income in its own right.

My role in this program was two-fold. Firstly, it was my job to get under the skin of the products that currently existed; both digital and physical. I had to interrogate the existing content, any customer research, core business and operational data, and map out the commercial competitor landscape – scoping opportunities for innovation as I went.

From this intensive study of the market and audience, my role evolved into creating and facilitating proposition development workshops with our stakeholders, which would outline a series of opportunities that formed the backbone of our final recommendations. I worked alongside Lead Designer Julie Jouault to articulate the end-user experience needs, prototype versions of our service opportunity, and synthesise incoming insights from consumer sessions.

Having the opportunity to work with such an iconic brand was not lost on me. The impact of our work gave them a clear understanding of their digital product and services objectives, purpose, and commercial ambitions, along with a clear direction for how to develop them further.