RSA : 8— Designing identity

5 min readDec 5, 2020

The identity development process demands a combination of investigation, strategic thinking, design excellence, and project management skills. It requires an extraordinary amount of patience, an obsession with getting it right, and an ability to synthesise vast amounts of information.

In order to give us some guiding principles we borrowed heavily from Designing Brand Identity by Alina Wheeler.

We took the core brand elements developed by Shantini Munthree (Managing Partner at The Union Marketing Group) as a starting latticework to place our research within.

The elements that we worked hard to define were:

Core Purpose
Mission
Values
Principles
Personality
Brand Essence
Capabilities
Core Competencies
Target Audience
Needs and Bbjectives
Competition
Value Propositions
Proof Points

Core Purpose

— The reason I exist beyond making a profit.

The core purpose behind any endeavour is its philosophical heart beat. In order to develop what Emma truly stood for we brainstormed around some elemental story tropes that we learned from Cilian Fennell who is the managing Director for Stillwater Communications. He was the producer of the Late Late Show in RTÉ and Head of Programmes in TG4.

Boy M eets Girl
Rags to Riches
The Quest
Overcoming the Monster
David vs. Goliath

For obvious reasons the Quest trope lent itself most when we were ideating around Emmas core purpose. The Quest is the story of the Hero’s Journey which is the archetype defined and developed by Joseph Campbell. It’s a common narrative that has shaped countless stories from ancient myths to modern day works.

From listening to the various women who we spoke to there was most definitely something heroic about their journey and how they became powerful sources of change for other women.

I believe that every woman’s journey from survivor to thriver can add real value in the fight against trafficking and abuse
— Emma

Mission

— What I do

I build a trusting and long lasting relationship with women and provide a support system to them during their recovery process by leveraging AI, security & cutting edge conversational techniques
— Emma

Values

— Core cultural beliefs

Empathy
Trust
Patience
Support

Principles

— Guidance on how to act

If values are the ingredients then the principles are the recipe. We organised a series of brief brain storming sessions in order to find 3 key resonant principles that could guide Emma and our designs.

Health first, justice second

The journey makes the hero

Self-love is the only true metric

Personality

— Brand tone and voice for receptivity and resonance

To develop Emma’s character we developed a persona around her core values. In order to get the tone right for receptivity we gave her a bio so that we could fully relate to her and image how she spoke.

Target Audience

— The addressable population, focusing on decision makers

Needs and objectives

— What needs cause them to act and what could stop them

Competition

— Points of parity and difference

Therapy aids and mediation apps are a plenty, so rather then reinvent the wheel we did a SWOT analysis on some similar apps to see what we had in common and to identify clear gaps

“We’re infusing artificial intelligence with the empathy and expertise of a therapist to create a powerful mental health solution that can reach millions”
— Woebot

S: Free, instant chat, friendly image, empathetic

W: Chat repair is poor, limited conversation, free form text hard to find, no intro

O: Using AI, voice analysis, chat bot, metaphors, journalling

T: Frustration when chat flow breaks, no access to humans

“Intelligently guide members to insurance services & healthcare resources. Featuring Mayo Clinic content, Sensely’s multilingual platform enhances access while building trust”
— Sensely

S: Humanised, personalised

W: Creepy, no response/interaction

O: Having persona

T: Having a persona someone can trust