Barco - Medical Display Family
How one design leads to a portfolio overhaul of twelve products.
Building on the commercial success of the Coronis fusion, Barco's flagship healthcare display, Made further implemented the design ethos and extended the form language over the entire healthcare product portfolio.
The proven design language allowed Barco to increase brand awareness in the field and decrease the time to market for future healthcare products.
Design management To reflect the Barco strategy
Designing a portfolio - in contrast to developing one product - demands a different and more strategic mindset. The design choices need to be scaleable and reflect the overarching strategic company goals. Before elaborating the actual design content, the context must be 100% clear.
Together with the Barco product management, marketing and sales teams, Made defined the outlines of the future product portfolio and the desired outcome of a family design exercise:
- Costs: Consistent design choices improve development efficiency and decrease time to market
- Marketing: A distinctive, recognisable look improves visibility, desirability & lowers the marketing costs
- Loyalty: Streamlining the way users operate Barco products, minimizes clients’ learning curves and improves the brand loyalty
The truth is in the eye of the beholder.
Therefore Made unravelled the Barco brand throughout intensive series of interviews, workshops, meetings & observations with end-users and key stakeholders. Doing so, we identified the brand-building design elements and assets that shape a consistent Barco portfolio, leading to a portfolio strategy.
4 vital elements in Realising Barco's portfolio overhaul
Introducing Portfolio Thinking
Before this project, Barco's product lineup grew organically. The consequence of serving multiple healthcare niches on a global scale. The products shared technical components and the Barco brand, but no consistent design cues linking the different products to one another.
By adding a portfolio strategy to the mix, we showed how different experts with different needs and different requirements could still be served with similar design solutions, overarching the different product categories and market segments.
Creating Guidelines For the product portfolio
A concise and well-documented Brand DNA guideline document supports Barco, a company with a global scale, to roll out a consistent portfolio across multiple production plants.
Portfolio Flagship to lead the way
A scale 1:1 prototype embodied the launch of the new Barco design language, showcasing every single detail as the future clients would perceive it.
Guarding the DNA to support the vision
In a company that focuses on viability (budget) and feasibility (engineering), there was a basic need for a party who concentrated on the desirability. Made now looks at both consistency and convenience throughout the development of future products, a responsibility embodied in the new role of the ‘concept guard’.
The stylish design language of our Coronis range has supported the commercial success of this line-up.
Made was involved in the product design from the very beginning, and we have always enjoyed the fresh ideas the Made team brought to the table.
Recognizable throughout the bigger portfolio
Throughout the last seven years, we revised the complete portfolio to match the Brand DNA. The 4K surgical display (MDSC-8427) being the last one.
The process has impacted the way Barco produces and develops its products with design expertise used throughout the full journey, creating more desirable outcomes.
How to design a Portfolio Strategy
Do you have a big number of products in your portfolio, but do they miss a strategy and styling to link them to each other?
The benefits of a strong portfolio strategy:
A wave of innovations starts with one. Today.
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