Guests: Sarah Lyons, Streaming Media Leader, Product Executive & Former Head of Product at HBO Max & Sean Rhodes, Executive Creative Director, frog North America

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Design Mind frogcast Episode 32 — The Future of Streaming Media

On this episode, we&#8217;re talking about designing products people love in the world of streaming entertainment. For this conversation, we&#8217;re joined by Sarah Lyons, streaming media leader, product executive and former Head of Product at HBO Max, interviewed by Sean Rhodes, Executive Creative Director, frog North America. We discuss the future of streaming media, consumer trends and behaviors, and why we should all pay attention to how children consume media.
Listen to the podcast episode and read the full transcripts below. You can also find us on <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/design-mind-frogcast/id1541644073">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/5mxbuRY6KtBwIrNhWhu0sx">Spotify</a>  and anywhere you listen to podcasts.

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23_Insights_Regenerative-Compass-Mockup-Download2

Sean Rhodes

Elizabeth Wood

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Elizabeth-Wood_Headshot-s2

Our Guests: Experts in mobility from frog, Capgemini Invent and Cornell Tech

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Design Mind frogcast Ep. 30 - The Road Ahead 

On this episode, we’re talking about the future of mobility with four experts in the space: Greg Lindsay, Futurist, Author and Urban Tech Fellow at Cornell Tech Jacobs Institute, Anne Junge, Head of Customer Transformation Germany at frog, Sean Rhodes, Executive Creative Director North America at frog, and Dr. Philipp Haaf, Global Head of Smart Mobility Connect at Capgemini Invent. To dig in even more about mobility, <a href="https://go.frog.co/the-road-ahead" target="_blank" rel="noopener">download the new frog report ‘The Road Ahead.’</a>
Listen to the podcast episode and read the full transcripts below. You can also find us on <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/design-mind-frogcast/id1541644073">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/5mxbuRY6KtBwIrNhWhu0sx">Spotify</a>  and anywhere you listen to podcasts.

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Small financial services institutions are naturally positioned to ride the Web3 tsunami of innovation.

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Web3 Advances Innovation in Financial Services 

Since “Web3” entered the mainstream media discourse, the conversation has focused on how big brands—like <a href="https://www.engadget.com/nike-acquires-virtual-sneaker-crypto-collectibles-startup-rtfkt-064837247.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Nike</a>, <a href="https://stories.starbucks.com/press/2022/starbucks-brewing-revolutionary-web3-experience-for-its-starbucks-rewards-members/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Starbucks</a>, <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/2022/10/13/disney-is-diving-into-web3-and-the-metaverse-heres/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Disney</a>—are gaining valuable first-mover advantage in a new paradigm of community-building and brand engagement. In <a href="https://youtu.be/8kUcP0zFJzg" target="_blank" rel="noopener">the Web3 ethos</a> of co-ownership and co-creation of value, the traditional line between companies and customers blurs: one-way transactions evolve into relationships in which both participants can create and receive value. 
Can <a href="https://www.frog.co/insights/chief-challenges/strategy-innovation" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Web3</a> provide a new level of scale to the co-ownership model of small financial institutions? At its core, Web3 is an innovative set of technologies and ideas for conducting commerce, building a community, running an organization and owning assets. Within this framework, we can imagine and contextualize new user experiences, business models and value chains.
&nbsp;
<h3>A new and improved model of co-ownership  </h3>
The model of co-ownership with customers is new for most businesses, but many small financial institutions—credit unions and community/regional banks—have operated within a similar framework for decades. Credit union customers are owners and benefit directly through low fees and favorable rates. Community and regional banking drives local financial activity, benefiting customers where they live and work.  
In recent history, small businesses turned to community banks for a bundle of <a href="https://www.frog.co/sector/financial-service-design" target="_blank" rel="noopener">financial services</a> like deposits, cash management, lending and payroll. But the cloud super-charged the competition from national megabanks with deep resources. Meanwhile, nimble <a href="https://www.frog.co/work/konfio-rebranding-human-centered-banking" target="_blank" rel="noopener">fintech</a> startups with consumer product DNA attracted customers with useability, simplicity, delight and stickiness.
&nbsp;
<h3>Web3: A secret weapon against industry squeeze </h3>
Fintechs like Square and Shopify rapidly changed <a href="https://www.frog.co/designmind/the-future-of-financial-services" target="_blank" rel="noopener">the financial services landscape</a>. <a href="https://www.protocol.com/fintech/shopify-financial-services-payments-lending" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Shopify rolled out financial services</a> in 2016 and as much as 70% of their revenue now comes from “merchant solutions” products—directly competing with traditional bank offerings for small business. And a new breed of vertically organized fintechs—Toast, for restaurants; ServiceTitan for HVAC; Mindbody for fitness and salons; DoorDash for delivery; Miter for construction—have penetrated many small business categories with their bundles of tailored financial services and operational tools. 
Many community banks are scrambling to catch up with these modern fintech offerings. Instead of chasing from behind, small financial institutions should leverage their own DNA of co-ownership and co-creation of value to leap ahead. We can apply some of Web3’s big ideas—trustless coordination, high-velocity money, self-sovereign identity and programmable assets—to build the next generation of financial services and transform the relationships between banks, small business owners, employees, partners and customers.
&nbsp;
<h3>Four ways Web3 will accelerate breakthroughs in financial services  </h3>
Trustless coordination 
Web3 enables decentralized coordination among network participants, reducing or eliminating a reliance on top-down hierarchy or arbitration by trusted third parties.
&nbsp;
<ul>
<li data-leveltext="" data-font="Symbol" data-listid="2" data-list-defn-props="{&quot;335552541&quot;:1,&quot;335559684&quot;:-2,&quot;335559685&quot;:720,&quot;335559991&quot;:360,&quot;469769226&quot;:&quot;Symbol&quot;,&quot;469769242&quot;:[8226],&quot;469777803&quot;:&quot;left&quot;,&quot;469777804&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;469777815&quot;:&quot;hybridMultilevel&quot;}" aria-setsize="-1" data-aria-posinset="1" data-aria-level="1">Could we provide an intuitive on-ramp to business formation, with corporate structure, ownership and equity arrangements, profit sharing and other contingencies codified in smart contracts, automating the integrity of the business? </li>
<li data-leveltext="" data-font="Symbol" data-listid="2" data-list-defn-props="{&quot;335552541&quot;:1,&quot;335559684&quot;:-2,&quot;335559685&quot;:720,&quot;335559991&quot;:360,&quot;469769226&quot;:&quot;Symbol&quot;,&quot;469769242&quot;:[8226],&quot;469777803&quot;:&quot;left&quot;,&quot;469777804&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;469777815&quot;:&quot;hybridMultilevel&quot;}" aria-setsize="-1" data-aria-posinset="2" data-aria-level="1">Could we give business owners a guarantee they’ll receive payment for a completed service or delivered product, without requiring a deposit or involving a third party? 
 </li>
</ul>
High-velocity money 
High-velocity money signifies the increased frequency of transactions among participants in an economy, reduction in the time it takes to settle financial transactions and an upending of traditional banking hours.
&nbsp;
<ul>
<li data-leveltext="" data-font="Symbol" data-listid="2" data-list-defn-props="{&quot;335552541&quot;:1,&quot;335559684&quot;:-2,&quot;335559685&quot;:720,&quot;335559991&quot;:360,&quot;469769226&quot;:&quot;Symbol&quot;,&quot;469769242&quot;:[8226],&quot;469777803&quot;:&quot;left&quot;,&quot;469777804&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;469777815&quot;:&quot;hybridMultilevel&quot;}" aria-setsize="-1" data-aria-posinset="1" data-aria-level="1">Could we eliminate the traditional pay cycle and stream wages to employees by the minute or hour, from the moment they clock in?  </li>
<li data-leveltext="" data-font="Symbol" data-listid="2" data-list-defn-props="{&quot;335552541&quot;:1,&quot;335559684&quot;:-2,&quot;335559685&quot;:720,&quot;335559991&quot;:360,&quot;469769226&quot;:&quot;Symbol&quot;,&quot;469769242&quot;:[8226],&quot;469777803&quot;:&quot;left&quot;,&quot;469777804&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;469777815&quot;:&quot;hybridMultilevel&quot;}" aria-setsize="-1" data-aria-posinset="2" data-aria-level="1">Could we power a customer rewards or referral program with a wide menu of eligible activities that pay participants in real time? 
 </li>
</ul>
Self-sovereign identity  
Self-sovereign identity is a model that gives individuals ownership and control over their digital identities and a say in how their personal data is shared, reducing reliance on a central authority.
&nbsp;
<ul>
<li data-leveltext="" data-font="Symbol" data-listid="2" data-list-defn-props="{&quot;335552541&quot;:1,&quot;335559684&quot;:-2,&quot;335559685&quot;:720,&quot;335559991&quot;:360,&quot;469769226&quot;:&quot;Symbol&quot;,&quot;469769242&quot;:[8226],&quot;469777803&quot;:&quot;left&quot;,&quot;469777804&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;469777815&quot;:&quot;hybridMultilevel&quot;}" aria-setsize="-1" data-aria-posinset="1" data-aria-level="1">Could we perform instant background checks and employment history validation when a job applicant presents their digital wallet? </li>
<li data-leveltext="" data-font="Symbol" data-listid="2" data-list-defn-props="{&quot;335552541&quot;:1,&quot;335559684&quot;:-2,&quot;335559685&quot;:720,&quot;335559991&quot;:360,&quot;469769226&quot;:&quot;Symbol&quot;,&quot;469769242&quot;:[8226],&quot;469777803&quot;:&quot;left&quot;,&quot;469777804&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;469777815&quot;:&quot;hybridMultilevel&quot;}" aria-setsize="-1" data-aria-posinset="2" data-aria-level="1">Could we provide customers with the convenience of seamlessly transacting for a product or service in a physical space just by providing their ID? 
 </li>
</ul>
Programmable assets 
Through the creation and execution of smart contracts, assets—from intellectual property to physical deeds—behave according to an independently verifiable, automated ruleset.
&nbsp;
<ul>
<li data-leveltext="" data-font="Symbol" data-listid="2" data-list-defn-props="{&quot;335552541&quot;:1,&quot;335559684&quot;:-2,&quot;335559685&quot;:720,&quot;335559991&quot;:360,&quot;469769226&quot;:&quot;Symbol&quot;,&quot;469769242&quot;:[8226],&quot;469777803&quot;:&quot;left&quot;,&quot;469777804&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;469777815&quot;:&quot;hybridMultilevel&quot;}" aria-setsize="-1" data-aria-posinset="3" data-aria-level="1">Could we transform lending arrangements through automated profit collection or royalty payments to create a self-repaying loan? Or inject ownership rights that expire when debt obligations are met? </li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li data-leveltext="" data-font="Symbol" data-listid="2" data-list-defn-props="{&quot;335552541&quot;:1,&quot;335559684&quot;:-2,&quot;335559685&quot;:720,&quot;335559991&quot;:360,&quot;469769226&quot;:&quot;Symbol&quot;,&quot;469769242&quot;:[8226],&quot;469777803&quot;:&quot;left&quot;,&quot;469777804&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;469777815&quot;:&quot;hybridMultilevel&quot;}" aria-setsize="-1" data-aria-posinset="1" data-aria-level="1">Could we give employees spending power that automatically adjusts to revenue fluctuations, seasonality, macroeconomic data points or even the weather? </li>
</ul>
Designing for a radically different near-future is a challenging exercise requiring the right mix of imagination and forward thinking as well as an understanding of the technical, regulatory and adoption hurdles to come. The Web3 horizon is just within reach as a new framework to build the future of financial services for small businesses. As blockchain financial instruments progress from niche to mass adoption, small financial services institutions can compete and win by offering small businesses a new breed of customer-facing and operational financial services. 
Already, frog is helping companies across industries ideate, experiment and evolve their technical and strategic approach to building in Web3. At frog, we help businesses focus on emerging behaviors that create and sustain profitable growth and make a company’s vision a market-changing reality. Many of the conventions that will underpin Web3 have been pressure tested by early adopters, and the space will continue to gain clarity as regulators lean in. Web3 forces a vivid reimagining of small financial services institutions, setting up early adopters to innovate and win. Now is the time to get started, shape the landscape and leap ahead of the competition.

Michael Calfee

Author

frog-author-michael-calfee

Most business leaders understand that design is critical, but far fewer understand how to systematize it for sustained innovation and success.

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Design Systems 101 

One of frog’s most significant early successes was the Snow White Design System. When the iconic Apple IIc launched in 1984, it defined the aesthetic of the emerging personal computer industry, helped turn Apple into a household name, and catalyzed Steve Jobs&#8217;s visionary reputation. But Jobs was one in a billion. It was Snow White that translated his unique vision into a system that could be consistently executed by the rest of his company. In those early days, only the most pioneering and design-centric enterprises understood the value of Design Systems. Today, no organization trying to deliver innovative products at any kind of scale can function for long without one.
Today&#8217;s business landscape has convinced even the most skeptical and practically minded leaders that design is critical for winning customers’ attention and loyalty through digital products and services. But even within organizations rushing to scale their design teams and implement DesignOps, there remain fundamental misunderstandings about Design Systems. Design Systems help to translate design’s unique capabilities across the vast and complex digital landscape, functioning as the practical embodiment of an organization’s design philosophy and creating the foundation for any successful DesignOps practice.
&nbsp;
<h2>What is a Design System?</h2>
A mature Design System is a living ecosystem of assets, tools, people and processes that work together to create harmony across products and platforms, raise confidence and familiarity with users, and save time and money for your organization. In the world of software, front-end is where users and potential buyers first experience and understand a product’s value. The primary purpose and value of a Design System is to enable great front-ends by helping organizations manage the tremendous challenges involved in creating cohesive, coherent digital experiences.
&nbsp;
<h3>A blueprint for consistent customer experiences</h3>
Enterprises win when they provide effortless and personalized customer experiences across every touchpoint. In order to do that at little to no marginal cost, they need an entire system of digital products tailored to specific user types and customer journeys, accessible on all major platforms (web, iOS, Android). With every additional product or platform, however, operation and coordination costs increase exponentially, grinding innovation to a halt. By investing in a Design System, enterprise teams can avoid stifling development costs as they innovate around customer needs, enabling them to &#8220;own all the glass” by providing the experiences customers demand on every channel.
&nbsp;
<h3>A product for building better products</h3>
Regardless of your industry or product, building great UX is a team sport. For organizations operating at scale, hundreds of designers and tens of thousands of developers could be collaborating on products and services at any given time. Design Systems aid this collaboration by centralizing many of the most significant coordination costs of large, cross-functional teams. By establishing systems and parameters that ensure consistency and cohesion across experiences, Design Systems allow teams to focus on shipping features that create the greatest value for users. Improved coordination increases both quality and speed to market, enabling test-and-learn cycles that realize value more rapidly and help organizations make better data-driven decisions.
&nbsp;
<h2>How do you create a Design System?</h2>
No two enterprises have the same needs or objectives, and that means there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to creating a Design System. While there are definite phases of Design System maturity, and while all successful Design Systems take some of the same overarching factors into account, each organization’s journey toward a fully-realized Design System will be organic and unique to its own culture and mission.
&nbsp;
<h3>Phases of Design System development</h3>
In our work with clients, we’ve observed three distinct phases of Design System maturity. Identifying which phase you&#8217;re in is a critical first step for any organization seeking to deploy their own Design System.
<img decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="aligncenter wp-image-21348 size-large" src="https://wp.frogdesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/21-Marketing-Design-Mind-DesignSystems101-trifinity-04-1024x434.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="271" srcset="https://frogdesign.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/05213450/21-Marketing-Design-Mind-DesignSystems101-trifinity-04-1024x434.jpg 1024w, https://frogdesign.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/05213450/21-Marketing-Design-Mind-DesignSystems101-trifinity-04-300x127.jpg 300w, https://frogdesign.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/05213450/21-Marketing-Design-Mind-DesignSystems101-trifinity-04-768x326.jpg 768w, https://frogdesign.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/05213450/21-Marketing-Design-Mind-DesignSystems101-trifinity-04-1536x652.jpg 1536w, https://frogdesign.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/05213450/21-Marketing-Design-Mind-DesignSystems101-trifinity-04-2048x869.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" />
Phase I: Imagine 
For most enterprises, the first step toward a great Design System is creating a great product. In this phase, it’s all about finding ways to solve user problems more effectively and efficiently than the competition. Once you’ve nailed this product-market fit, you will either experience or anticipate massive growth in consumer demand for your product. Demand validates both the need for and the viability of a Design System.
Phase II: Make 
Once you have a winning product, its user experience can be “modularized” into its component parts. These experiential building blocks are the foundation of a user interface (UI) framework, which can be rearranged and redeployed like Lego bricks in order to help build new products and experiences. Once the UX has been modularized, the components can be “industrialized” by integrating them into existing design and development workflows, reducing friction to their adoption and use. When modularization and industrialization are accomplished, you have a nascent Design System.
Phase III: Scale 
In the final phase, a cross-functional design, product, and development team implements and scales the Design System in order to support other teams in building new products and features.
The most successful organizations scale their Design System holistically, considering critical dimensions such as the overall purpose of the system, the talent and tools it requires, the processes and structures that link talent and tools together, the organizational culture the system fosters, and how its results can be measured.
&nbsp;
<h2>A system for scalable success</h2>
When enterprises effectively leverage this approach, they’re able to unify business concerns and design processes. The Design System acts as a single source of truth for large-scale product design, providing an “automated” workflow that’s backed by modular tooling that integrates design seamlessly into the product development lifecycle.
As your products evolve, however, so must your Design System. By enhancing the entire system through ongoing governance processes along with quality, value, and version control, organizations can ensure that their Design System serves as a foundation for long-term innovation and success.

Albert Dang

Authors

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friedolin_BW

It's no longer sufficient to focus investment primarily in content—to win in the Attention Economy, you must also develop a strategy that provides consumers with a differentiated experience

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HBO_designmind_3

How D2C Streaming Can Win the Content Arms Race

By this point in the streaming wars, it&#8217;s clear that content is one of the largest investments streaming companies are making. However, it is not sufficient to simply invest primarily in content. For direct to consumer companies looking to win in the attention economy, you must develop a strategy that provides consumers not only with compelling content, but with a <a href="https://go.frog.co/winning-in-the-attention-economy" target="_blank" rel="noopener">differentiated experience.</a>
Why is it challenging to compete on content alone? The answer lies in understanding content beyond the bounds of the traditional media landscape. To understand the strategic role of content investment in the pursuit of consumer attention, streaming competitors should consider it in regard to these four dimensions: ability to invest, quality, quantity and price.

Apple and Amazon, the two most valuable players in the streaming sector, can outspend the competition with little impact on their ability to run their core businesses. In 2019 they invested $6B each on content alone—more than every one of their competitors combined. They can place many different content bets, knowing some will be flops and some will become hits like The Morning Show and Fleabag, which lock consumers into the product ecosystems that generate the majority of their revenue. This ability to create value from the huge, lucrative non-streaming segments of their businesses gives them a major advantage over any competitor trying to compete on the basis of content alone.
Owners of existing platforms and devices also have huge advantages in scale and access. There are 1.5B active Apple devices in the world, which provide both a seamless audience access point for AppleTV+ and the opportunity to leverage access to customer data for strategic investment and development. AT&amp;T is counting on a similar dynamic with its new streaming platform HBO Max, recently announcing that video streamed through the service will not count against users’ data limits. By attracting new mobile subscribers and reducing churn, the move could generate billions.

Ability to Invest

HBO is a perennial and undisputed innovator when it comes to quality content. Because it is supported by subscribers rather than advertisers, it can create some of the most boundary-pushing, unique and innovative content in the history of media companies. The approach has resulted in HBO winning an outsized number of Emmys nearly every year, a strong indicator of its ability to consistently and successfully navigate the risky business of creating great content. The challenge, however, is that HBO’s content appeals to a relatively small potential audience, and an even smaller segment of that potential audience is willing to pay the subscription fee for the service. They have the highest quality content, but even with huge hits like Game of Thrones, they don’t have the scale of audience or engagement to dominate the attention economy.

Quality

Netflix has taken a different approach, instead positioning itself as the industry leader in content quantity. As a percentage of its overall budget, Netflix spends more on content than any of its streaming rivals, and it has increased its content budget 35% year-over-year since 2015. While Netflix does have some HBO-quality tent poles such as Stranger Things, they’ve remained invested in quantity over quality. Why? Because when media companies move to develop their own D2C models, Netflix loses access to their catalogs. They fill the gap with their own broad catalog of content, designed to appeal to the largest, most diverse global audience possible. With 183M global subscribers and a <a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/news/netflix-market-cap-surpasses-disney-123801623.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">$158B market cap</a>, the strategy appeals to consumers and Wall Street alike.

Quantity

Many streaming services built by existing tech companies can essentially offer content for free: Amazon Prime Video is included for free with every Prime membership, and Apple offers a free year of AppleTV+ to new iPhone users. As described above, they can afford these free bundling offers because they lock users into their sphere of more lucrative products and services. Streaming competitors without these supporting ecosystems can’t underwrite costs in the same way.
With the rise of Attention Challengers in social media and gaming, however, all streaming services have been forced to reckon with a powerful economic fact: it’s hard to compete with free. Social media content platforms like YouTube, TikTok and Instagram all provide free and virtually infinite streams of user-generated content, which both boosts user engagement and costs the companies nothing to produce. Instead of investing in content production, these social media companies have invested in technology—like algorithms for identifying and curating the best content or helping brands target users in sophisticated ways. While these business models are similar to classic TV business models in that they rely on advertisers, their reach and scale are much larger and their distribution costs far lower than anything in traditional media.
Finally, “Freemium” Attention Challengers like Fortnite push the price-to-value ratio even further. Players can play Fortnite for free on nearly any device or console, enabling a massive global user base. Monetization occurs through in-game purchases and add-ons such as character skins, custom outfits and emotes (in-game gestures and dances). These add-ons tap into players’ emotional desire for self-expression and creativity, allowing them to be whoever and whatever they want in virtual space. <a href="https://www.businessofapps.com/data/fortnite-statistics/#:~:text=According%20to%20analytics%20firm%20SuperData,a%20total%20of%20%24109.8%20billion)." target="_blank" rel="noopener">70% of Fortnite’s 250M users</a> have made in-game purchases averaging $85 each, illustrating again the power of experience differentiation in the attention economy. 
&nbsp;
<h3>Embracing the golden age of content</h3>
We’re now living in the golden age of content and entertainment. Between streaming, gaming and social media, consumers have never had so many options. While the content arms race and streaming competition has fueled the fires of the Attention Economy, it has also made one-dimensional investments in content less and less efficient in the fight to win a space in consumers&#8217; media diet. With Attention Challengers continuously expanding the boundaries of digital experiences, streaming video providers have no choice but to think beyond content and to boldly invest in experience differentiation.

Price

Learn more about how to win in the Attention Economy by designing exceptional experiences.

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HBO-Inisght-Report-Mockup (1)

Sean Rhodes is a leader with a passionate belief in the power of design, technology and business to shape the world we want to live in. His focus has been building world-class teams and environments for multi-disciplinary collaboration that delivers creativity and productivity for product and service design.

Mobile experiences are critical to win in the attention economy, but myopic mobile strategies carried out by D2C streamers won’t cut it in the battle against Attention Challengers 


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HBO_designmind_2

The Mobile Lynchpin for D2C Streaming

<h3>It’s a mobile world—D2C streaming is just living in it.</h3>
Smart phone and mobile technology together make up a critical component that has unlocked the majority of the new opportunities that exist for streaming today. Just twenty years ago, the <a href="https://go.frog.co/winning-in-the-attention-economy" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Attention Economy</a> would have been unimaginable because by year-2000 standards, billions of today’s consumers are carrying around pocket-sized, networked supercomputers. The upside to this development for the media industry has been a massive increase in mobile streaming opportunities: 55 percent of people in the U.S. report using their smartphone to stream video. The fact that consumers can frictionlessly access media anytime, anywhere is a generational opportunity.
The downside has been the increased fragmentation of consumer attention, which shows no sign of slowing down. As 5G networks come online, media and entertainment companies are already planning to use the increased bandwidth capacity for new and immersive experiences such as real-time sports analytics and live in-event AR. Further down the line, even more disruptive developments are possible. For example, the adoption of autonomous vehicles will create entirely new blocks of attention time during commutes, leading experts to wonder about what types of experiences and media consumers will chose to fill them with.
Mobile is critical to winning in the attention economy. As D2C streaming leaders invest in the innovation efforts required to compete against Attention Challengers, including apps like Instagram and games like Fortnight and Animal Crossing, they must consider two critical mobile dimensions: one strategic and one tactical.
1. Leaning In 
The strategic dimension is focused on how a product or service enables consumers to &#8220;lean in.&#8221; Traditionally, media was considered a &#8220;lean back&#8221; experience where viewers primarily consumed content with little input or action required. But to succeed in the new Attention Economy, products and services will need to enable ways for consumers to lean in. However, in order to succeed with this type of participation from consumers, the experience needs to be considered strategically and holistically, not as an after thought. Smartphones, in particular, afford tremendous opportunities for leaning in. For example, TikTok allows users to add to the platform by creating their own content, and Instagram utilizes the dopamine inducing gestures of &#8220;liking&#8221; content. It’s clear that mobile plays an enormous part in capturing consumers&#8217; attention and will challenge leaders to be increasingly innovative and iterative in how they bring &#8220;lean in&#8221; to the typically &#8220;lean out&#8221; world of D2C streaming.
2. Owning the Glass 
There are serious challenges for any streaming service that wants to provide an experience across many different types of screens, especially mobile, but also including 10ft experiences, tablets and PCs. Many D2C streaming software platforms that enable this kind of cross-device cohesion are difficult and expensive to build. These resource-intensive solutions can be incredibly limiting, not to mention building, piloting and iterating the types of differentiated experiences that will enable D2C players to compete against the Attention Challengers.
Quibi made a massive strategic bet by investing in a UX, content format and product specifically designed to take advantage of mobile proliferation. The idea was that by offering original short-form content on a mobile-first platform, Quibi could capture small windows of attention—e.g., waiting for the train or in line for coffee—that the major streaming services aren’t competing for. While the mobile-first approach has clearly worked for social platforms like Instagram, it’s still not clear whether Quibi’s new format will win out over such proven mobile-first attention-getters. Quibi’s launch and strategy have also been complicated by COVID-19 lockdowns, which largely eliminated those moments of attention the platform aims to capture and forced them to scramble to provide an 11th-hour 10ft experience to meet consumer demand.
Questions for any company looking to compete in this space remain: 
— Is an all-in bet on mobile proliferation too one-dimensional? 
— Does the product provide an experience differentiated enough to compete with other mobile Attention Challengers? 
— What lessons can Quibi provide to other streaming services? 
In order for mobile streaming platforms to compete with Attention Challengers and win in the attention economy, they must look beyond technology and content to invest in differentiated customer experiences. We believe that the real winners are those who will bet on experience, putting people at the center of their products and services. 
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DesignOps elements to help amplify the value of your organization’s investment in design

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DesignOps 101

Like many methodologies throughout the digital boom, DesignOps is having a “moment.”
What is DesignOps? 
DesignOps is a human-centered approach to building stronger design teams that support the orchestration of individuals, processes and tools to amplify creativity and impact at scale. Similar to DevOps, which has revolutionized the development process with an agile, iterative approach, DesignOps allows organizations to rapidly scale and iterate design processes across teams.
Why is DesignOps important now? 
Today, organizations realize the importance of digital experiences to create more meaningful customer relationships and understand the value of designers’ creativity, empathy and innovation as part of their winning strategies. These organizations invest in building large design capabilities to imitate the success of other leaders moving at a world-changing velocity and scale. Organizations often struggle to unlock the full value of their investments, not because of the strategy or the specific designers that have been hired, but because the team has not been set up for success organizationally. This is a common challenge we see when working with clients to <a href="https://www.frog.co/services/org-activation">activate their organization</a> for success or innovation.
This is where DesignOps comes in. The idea of the lone wolf genius designer is dead. Today, design is an inclusive team sport. DesignOps is about holistically enabling high-performance collaboration between designers and their partners like engineering, marketing, business and product managers.
The following elements of DesignOps will help amplify and extend the value of any design team.
The objective of DesignOps is to support the design team in alignment with the customer-centric vision of the organization:
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<li>DesignOps starts with a focus on humans; our customers. When designers have the tools and processes to respond to the customer—and the permission to look to the future—those teams deliver on a meaningful vision that sustains deep customer relationships over time.</li>
<li>Meaningful customer experiences are where the rubber meets the road. The products and services designers help create support how a customer feels across the journey engaging with various touchpoints and interactions within an organization. Delivering great experiences is the entire point.</li>
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The inputs guide the design team’s ability to effectively fulfill the objective by enabling them to deliver at scale for the organization:
<ul>
<li>Purpose demonstrates why the design team exists and how they will win. As a design team matures, its remit becomes increasingly holistic and strategic, creating greater value for the organization.</li>
<li>Talent is the heart of your design team. DesignOps enables a positive employee experience, determines your organization’s ability to attract and grow top talent, and focuses on capabilities and behaviors aligned with the purpose.</li>
<li>Processes are the key rituals that “turn people into teams.” These linkages enable how information flows across stakeholders, teams, management and operations. They create connections that might not otherwise occur to combat siloes, facilitate knowledge sharing, advance decisions, define success, collect feedback, capture learnings, and celebrate success. Processes help to determine how and when design fits into the right moment, and when to leverage methods like lean, SCRUM, agile and others for the best outcome.</li>
<li>Enablers are the tools and assets that enable work. Enablers focus on communication tools, facilitation of collaboration, reviews and feedback mechanisms to facilitate learnings, inform decision-making and drive better team efficiencies. There are many dynamic and evolving cloud-based collaboration tools that amplify a designer’s impact by removing points of friction between design and collaborators in engineering.</li>
<li>Structure determines how decisions get made and where power and authority are placed. Determine the organizational structure that design operates within or across functional teams, such as product, innovation, IT, or the organization at large. Design should be operating at the right altitude for the problem and need, be it strategic or tactical. Physical working environments also send strong signals about how work should flow.</li>
</ul>
The outcomes provide evidence that the design team’s creativity is being employed to accomplish the objective:
<ul>
<li>Culture is how it feels for a designer to work in your organization. A meaningful culture empowers employees with a clear understanding of how their contributions enable the overall purpose, and gives them the autonomy and agency to contribute in a manner that is empowered by process, tools and structure.</li>
<li>Results are how impact is measured and crosses business (ROI, revenue / spend KPIs, customer satisfaction / retention), efficiency (time to market, ways of working) and culture (impact, job satisfaction). We create a set of design standards that define what good experiences look and feel like and have the means to deliver them effectively to the market.</li>
</ul>
DesignOps focuses specifically on enabling designers to accomplish the most meaningful work possible, bolstering both creativity and overall impact. Of course, every organization’s design team will have a unique blend of goals and maturity level. It takes a careful orchestration throughout the organization to allow design to become a part of the working fabric of day-to-day operations. By helping our clients deploy DesignOps successfully, we’re helping them design for change that lasts.
Our mission is to create products and services that transform businesses at scale. DesignOps has been central to enabling our client’s success in unlocking the power of design in their organizations.

Sean is a leader with a passionate belief in the power of design, technology and business to shape the world we want to live in. His focus has been building world-class teams and environments for multi-disciplinary collaboration that delivers creativity and productivity for product and service design.

Find out where the next wave of innovation in financial services will come from.

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Create products and services that connect people, planet and progress.

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Connected World

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frog's track record in delivering value though design at scale shows we have DesignOps in our DNA

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DesignOps—It’s in Our DNA

In the past decade, many of our clients have invested to make design a core capability, essential to their growth and innovation imperatives. As these design teams have scaled their collaboration inside their organizations, the need for greater operational support to enable their success has emerged. But DesignOps is nothing new for frog. As a global team with hundreds of highly collaborative designers and technologists, frog has DesignOps in our DNA. Our 50-year-history in DesignOps is reflected in our internal culture that has enabled our long and successful track record with hundreds of products and services brought to market.
We define DesignOps as a human-centered approach to the orchestration of design teams, processes and tools to amplify creativity and impact at scale. frog partners to leverage our experience in supporting the establishment, scaling and maturity of internal design capabilities for these organizations. We have served clients across multiple industries with products and services spanning enterprises and consumers—so much so, that many frog alumni have been hired to run DesignOps for successful companies across industries including Salesforce, Fitbit, Uber, InVision, Youtube, AirBnB, USAA and Microsoft.
We see DesignOps as one of the key points in the intersection of digital transformation, design thinking, customer experience and agile product delivery. It’s not just a standardized methodology to adopt—it’s the orchestration of all these parts that helps bring success to organizations of any size.
One nexus of this orchestration is the design language system (DLS), which enables design teams to support better outcomes like large scale consistency, quality and speed across broader organizations. frog has long recognized the value of design systems for DesignOps. In fact, our first design system was created for Apple back in 1984. The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_White_design_language">Snow White design language</a> helped the organization to establish a bar for Apple product excellence resulting in their legendary fanatical customer base.
Now with software as an enabler to rapidly iterate and scale, our design system experience is as important as ever to delivering products and services that customers love. In the last 20 years, we’ve created over 30 DLSs that have garnered great outcomes for our clients. In 1998, we helped Dell design its massively successful e-commerce site. The design system we established with <a href="https://www.frog.co/work/ge-digital-transformation">GE</a> in 2011 to support industrial IOT applications enabled a 100 percent productivity gain and a savings of $30M in development costs in the first year. In 2014, we partnered with Intuit, an early enterprise design investor, to create the Harmony design system, which supported the redesign and cloud enablement of the Quickbooks product ecosystem leading to 30 percent revenue growth and 2X improvement in their NPS score. Recently, <a href="https://www.frog.co/work/porsche">Porsche</a> has released the successful Porsche Connect and Porsche Offroad Precision native apps (with more in the works), both supported and enabled by the design system frog helped to establish in 2017. Last year, we helped our venture client <a href="https://www.frog.co/work/reimagining-the-ride-ahead-with-alto">Alto</a> go from napkin concept to Pilot launch in 12 months through a combination of tools and ops that streamlined digital and service design and delivery.
frog’s mission is to create products and services that transform businesses at scale. Our DesignOps services have been central to enabling our clients’ success in unlocking the power of design in their organizations. We love what we make, and we love helping our clients bring new products and services to market. But it’s not just about helping clients design for the moment—rather, we design for their long-lasting future. With a considered approach to the people, tools and collaboration involved in any product development, we believe our approach to DesignOps not only helps clients get to market quickly but get to market with the right thing to build customer relationships that last.

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Sean is a leader with a passionate belief in the power of design, technology and business to shape the world we want to live in. His focus has been building world-class teams and environments for multi-disciplinary collaboration that delivers creativity and productivity for product and service design.
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Albert helps clients innovate by bringing new products and services to life through a blended practice of strategy, design, and technology. As a director of Design Technology, Albert has helped in shaping the Design Technology practice for frog at-large and our NY Studio.

Sean Rhodes

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