In this master thesis there has been an ambition to contribute with a tool for concept development in the digital media industry, where the focus is improving this practice. This led to inclusion of the term “early branding” in concept development, which can help digital media companies mature their concept development and through maturity get less risk, higher productivity and a product of high quality. “Early branding” challenges the common perception of branding. Normally, branding is seen as a company’s corporate identity or logo. In our perspective, branding is something that is beyond a company’s own control. A brand is created by the users due to the emotional value they attach to a company’s product – if the emotional value is positive, the result can be that the users become the co-creators of the brand. The term “early branding” stems from the desire to include branding in concept development instead of afterwards, when the product is finished and ready to be launched. The early inclusion of branding – hereof “early branding” – can impact the creation of new digital products. The way to use “early branding” is to include the primary users while concept developing.
The main contribution of this thesis is hereby a model that companies can use to determine where they need to spend more of their resources to mature their use of “early branding”. To do so, this thesis also contains a model that gives an overview of standards and techniques in “early branding” and the outcome by the use of “early branding”. In addition to these standards and techniques we developed a simplified motivation model that companies can use to evaluate the use of their products, which can help gain an insight on how to increase the motivation level for their users. Furthermore, these standards and techniques are implemented in an already existing maturity framework, which contains 5 levels of maturity with focus on software development, but now also consists of a communicative aesthetic perspective. This model can be used to evaluate both the theoretical functional and the aesthetic content perspective, as well as the internal culture of the company.
This led to the main contribution, which is a model made by a combination of the four aspects from “early branding”, which is ‘Motivation’, ‘Aesthetics’, ‘Functionality’ and ‘Experience design’ and the maturity frameworks 5 levels of maturity. The levels are based on the amount of user-involvement. Digital media companies can use this model as a tool to evaluate the use of standards and techniques within “early branding” and companies can from this evaluation determine where they could benefit from increasing the effort to achieve a design that fulfils user-needs. A high level of early branding can result in high product quality and productivity. This model is not limited in its use and can be used across different industries by both small and big companies.
In a time where the creative industry is in growth, it can be difficult for companies to shine in the crowd of other companies, who provide similar products. When companies are using “early branding” the goal is, that companies can create valuable relationships with their users, which can lead to loyal users, which potentially will turn into co-creators of the company’s brand.
Through the thesis the involved theories and created models are exemplified with four different companies; KMD, which is big IT-company in Denmark and specialised in public IT-solutions. LEGO which is a big toy-company based in Denmark and with users all over the world. AskCody, which is a small Danish IT-company that provides users with way-finding and other helpful IT-solutions and finally, Sekoia, a small IT-company focused on IT- solutions for nursing homes to increase the efficiency of the nurses daily work.