d’Cipher
Client | Cognizant Technology Solutions
Organization | Cognizant Interactive
My Role | Concept, Creative Direction, Editorial Strategy, Project Management
What’s a compelling way to communicate the non-linear nature of design thinking to stakeholders who roll in zeroes and ones?
Prologue.
Have you ever found yourself in an airport where you couldn’t read the signs? How about when you used a product that missed the mark in its choice of vocabulary or cultural references?
While we can’t expect every single daily encounter to be tailored to our individual needs, it sure makes a difference when they feel relevant to us. Branding creates belonging — and this feeling is hyper-important when it comes to creating a seamless work tribe, impervious to clichés.
You have a tone issue.
Internal publications in the IT solutions world are often categorised in the same vein as a flight safety instructions manual: lifeless. When Cognizant assigned me the job of revamping the editorial voice of its digital experience solutions unit Cognizant Interactive (CI), the first thing I did was to talk to people across the design and business leadership team.
While working through a creative strategy for the magazine based on interviews and feedback sessions with internal stakeholders, several recurring themes emerged: ‘you feel like the business is not talking to you’, ‘the brand is not talking to you’, ‘the work is not talking to you’.
Based on this shared insight, the strategic unlock was to contrast CI’s editorial voice from bland, superficial affirmations with authentic, personality-driven messaging and use it as fuel to reframe the direction of the work itself.
Gap in internal storytelling.
d’Cipher was born from this gap in internal storytelling. The moniker is meant to invoke design as a language for problem solving.
In a print-first magazine that explores the intersection of technology, design and culture, in-house experts take you through the trenches of their projects, give insights into how digital experience works at Cognizant Interactive (CI), do deep dives into their hobbies and passion projects, and share their individuality and influences through their take on the process, not just the final output. This wasn't just about creating a beautifully designed print publication; d’Cipher needed to be full of key insights about the evolving interaction between design thinking and business impact.
Editorial principles.
Working with a multidisciplinary team of designers, developers, product managers and business leads, I codified a set of editorial principles for the magazine in line with the culture and internal infrastructures that bring Cognizant Interactive’s service competencies to life.
One of the core editorial principles for this project was relevance. Relevance in the context of d’Cipher was all about reflecting what it means to be you as a person with a certain worldview, how this informs the workplace, and how a sense of personhood helps to build products and services with distinct users in mind.
Strategic brief.
Therefore, my creative brief to all the participating designers, developers, engineers and business heads across the Cognizant Interactive team was that this project is primarily made for ‘you’ — we want it to feel personalised — and a key aspect of the magazine feeling both relevant and personal for external stakeholders is that it’s adapted for a range of components, namely case studies, op-eds, photo essays, reviews, commentaries, etc.
Relevance via personalisation can be defined in several ways, but for d’Cipher, we thought about it as the process of communicating the nuanced nature of our work so that it feels relevant to each stakeholder. This requires getting to know the business, gaining a strong understanding of a constantly changing industry, user behaviours, and other market nuances.
The editorial process.
For example, to feature a client case study in the magazine, I would work closely with all product functions at CI to make sure we’re not just thinking from a sales-first, operations-centric creation framework. The editorial process involved multiple internal stakeholders, including UX researchers during the Understand It phase, designers during the Think It phase, and engineers during the Build It phase. Likewise, UX writers (also referred to as content designers) write intentionally, and the same level of intentionality goes into the creation of scalable design.
Volume 1: Design & the Everyday World
d'Cipher’s debut issue centred around design and the everyday world. It stood out amongst other client-facing publications because instead of prioritising technical expositions alone, it used design as a gateway to open up fascinating conversations about business, social issues, culture and urban living.
For instance, despite this being a digital age, user experience (UX) is also a powerful physical phenomenon (the reason why d’Cipher was conceived as a print-first publication). From books and newspapers to posters, storefronts, billboards and signage, design needs to work as much in the analogue world as on screens. And that means studying how UX works in a physical environment (such as a vegetable shop).
Inside the debut edition.
This special themed issue delves into the world of digital trends, its cultural influence on the design industry, and the new type tools being used to create user-centric solutions.
UX encompassing CX & EX.
It also includes features on the business value of design, the subliminal linkages between pop culture and tech culture, and the power of designing for data, along with expert interviews, personal essays and portfolio showcases, exploring the methods, logics and creative force behind the broader and entrenched form that UX (user experience) takes today, having grown to encompass CX (customer experience) and EX (employee experience).
Looking through a critical lens.
Ultimately, UX doesn't exist in a vacuum but is just one element in a dynamic and ever-evolving digital landscape. Because it recognises that fact and leans into it, d'Cipher isn't just a must-read for designers and developers but also business heads of all stripes involved in creating digital products and services. Exploring and critiquing tech, innovation, brands, cultural moments and artistic leaps from across the globe, it's an expertly curated critical lens on the intersections of global and industry trends in the context of design.
Epilogue.
d’Cipher is all about supporting designers, engineers and developers throughout the ebbs and flows of their creative process. We utilized the magazine’s framework to tell stories of making and doing across a variety of creative disciplines, illustrating the cross-functional nature of digital experience solutions: highlighting the work while also peeking into the process and contrasting the simplicity of design thinking with the complex, non-linear journey of creativity.
I was the founding Editor-in-Chief of d’Cipher, a quarterly publication that became a flagship client-facing communication touchpoint for Cognizant’s global leadership team.