Tasman Creative Ltd
Ideation / Business Strategy / Brand Design / UI & UX Design / Service Design
Stage
Incorporated 2024 (Live)
Year
2022 - Present
Tasman Creative is an advisory and design venture that supports tech and digital start-ups to generate and grow ideas into innovative products. Drawing influence and inspiration from a focus on the memories and experiences often overlooked in our journeys by focusing on the destination. Born and raised in New Zealand, embracing a Kiwi can-do attitude creating people focused, powerful strategies, designs and products.
This is my own personal start-up story creating a company and role which gives me the ability to leverage the two sides of my experience and passion, whilst growing my experience and supporting others.
Ideation
The ideation phase defined and then explored a guiding problem, working through idea brainstorming and mapping, ranking and finally selection for progression.
Problem:
Pre-funding digital start-ups have great ideas but often lack the experience and resources to clearly articulate, develop and market these ideas in order to secure angel investment or series A funding.
Idea Selected:
Create a company/ service that specifically targets supporting early-stage crypto and blockchain native digital start-ups to incubate and grow their ideas using a lean model combining business consulting and design practices in a single, affordable resource.
Exploration & Refinement
Shifting into a divergent mindset this phase explored competitors, potential market size, customer pain points and needs in more detail to refine and identify potential service offering areas/ verticals and unique points of value for the business.
Exploration Insights:
Full service providers with proven experience tend to be too costly for most start-ups. Smaller agencies or individuals with lower costs tend to provide individual aspects as opposed to full service or lack wrap around project and client management capabilities. Many agencies lack the risk appetite and pace to take on pre-funding clients.
Refinement:
Target providing design services, as the larger market of the two, with wrap around ideation, business strategy design, project management support and marketing/ brand strategy as opposed to being strategy and business advisory led.
Design & Development
This phase had two key components, one for the design and development of service offerings and one for the design and development of the company brand and website.
Services:
Mapping people, technology and process to establish a service blue print for the front end user experience of services and back end/ behind the scenes that goes into providing the service.
Brand & Website:
Designing the brand identity including logos, typography, colour palette, voice & tone, art direction, and the brand strategy. Progressing through a shortened product design process focusing on problem definition for what the website will solve, user journey mapping, prototyping, validation, build and launch along with ongoing iteration.
During this time I also went through the process of shifting from freelance to incorporation and registration as a LLC.
Learnings
One of the key learnings from setting up Tasman Creative has been the challenge of balancing breadth and depth. It's important to try to balance having enough capability and depth within a single vertical element alongside being able to support and provide services across a range of areas. Prioritising which key areas to focus on adding depth too has been crucial in managing this balance.
A second key learning has been the importance of not just building relationships and networks but also how to convert those into leads and sales of services. Building a relationship of trust, responsiveness and humility, along with a clear articulation of value proposition has been key in helping to convert relationships to sales.
Alongside these key learnings, the work setting up and running Tasman Creative continues to offer a range of development and growth opportunities in design, strategy, commercial and non-technical areas.
Journey
Ideation / Service Design / Brand Design / UI & UX Design
Stage
Ideation/ Concept Design
Year
2024
Journey is an AI powered, self-service research tool providing insights into the performance of business ideas in future consumer markets. Its purpose is to make it easier for businesses to explore and test an ideas’ future market fit, in real-time, in-house without breaking the bank.
Journey is one of my own concepts within Tasman Creative and is still in the ideation and concept design phase. It is currently being used as a means of testing different design ideas, iterating and exploring is' value proposition and potential market fit.
Ideation
The ideation phase defined and then explored a guiding problem, working through idea brainstorming and mapping, ranking and finally selection for progression.
Problem:
Traditional approaches to researching the future fit or viability of ideas are costly, time consuming and often require external resources and capabilities, making them inaccessible or ill-suited for many businesses. Increasing the risk that businesses make decisions which are not robust or resilient to future conditions, or have limited proactive planning and flexibility, leading to the loss of revenue opportunities and sunk costs.
Idea Selected:
Create a self-service research and insights tool that can test the resilience/fit of a business idea in potential future market conditions to enable small, medium and large businesses to make more robust strategic decisions for the future, at an affordable price, in real-time.
Design & Early Prototyping
Early design of the steps and supporting processes that the platform will need to provide to move through idea entry, generative future market condition considerations, idea testing & refinement, future planning and tracking.
Manual testing of potential automated AI prompting and functions that can be used to enhance the tool and enable real-time or "near real-time" application and insights.
Early wireframing and lo-fi prototyping to test and iterate user flows, platform process and value proposition/ market alignment with input and lessons learnt from additional founders and businesses.
CONNECT3Dx
Graphic Design & Illustration / Brand Design & Strategy / UI & UX Design / GTM Support
Stage
Pre-funding
Year
2023 - Present
CONNECT3Dx is a B2B retail SaaS provider and franchiser combating the counterfeiting of physical goods through a unique 2FA system built using blockchain technology, along with an innovative customer rewards programme. They are currently in the pre-funding phase as they go to market for their Series A raise via an NFT and token focused launch which serves as a community builder and capital raiser.
Brand Design & Strategy
Designing the brand and brand identity including logos, typography, colour palette, voice & tone, art direction, and brand strategy. Focusing on simplicity and consistency to build a strong and distinct brand within the target market.
Tailoring the brand strategy to focus upon creating emotional experiences for current and future consumers to build mental awareness and familiarity. Cementing a dual focus where there is a sixty to forty split between current and future demand.
- 60% focus of branding, messaging and advertising on creativity and emotional experiences to foster future demand.
- 40% on rational and informational marketing to capture current demand.
Product Design
Collaboratively working through the initial four steps of the product design process for the design of the 2FA and loyalty rewards programme SaaS products.
1. Discovery: Stakeholder interviews to clearly articulate and understand needs and objectives.
2. Definition: Synthesis and confirmation of key problem statements the SaaS products will solve. Journey mapping and user flows for each SaaS product.
3. Prototyping: Development of lo-fidelity designs, components, animations, high-fidelity designs and prototypes. Iterative testing and refinement in parallel with the validation phase.
4. Validation: Initial usability testing to confirm whether the prototype successfully resolves our problem statements along with the identification of any bugs, UI or UX improvements.
Build and launch phases are planned to be undertaken post raise.
Go To Market Support
Supporting the planning and scheduling of a social media based GTM campaign, in alignment with the brand strategy and guidelines.
Developing supporting infographics, light paper documents, animations, promotional content, product walkthroughs and interactive experiences.
Eon Labs
Graphic Design & Illustration / Brand Design / UI & UX Design / Gamification Strategy
Stage
Pre-Funding x Series A
Year
2024
Eon Labs is a Venture Studio cross SaaS company creating unique experiences, ventures and digitals tools for the Aptos Blockchain ecosystem. They provide a range of defi, crypto and NFT focused tools and experiences including:
The first Aptos based NFT lending platform
The first Aptos based social media raiding and community building tool
The first Aptos based arcade claw game experience for community members
The first Aptos based peer-to-peer NFT and cryptocurrency swap tool
The first Aptos based V2 NFT customisable experience and idle collector game experience
