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Hitachi Cooling & Heating’s recent acquisition by Johnson Controls has led to a revitalization within the corporation. They looked to revamp the entire product suite of their air conditioning platform, starting with a vision for the future. TEAMS pitched a Global Visual Brand Language strategy and won the project.
This was the largest project in TEAMS Global history, combining the skills and personnel of 3 international offices. I was chosen to coordinate the main team in Shanghai, moving there for 5 months.
As Lead Designer & Project Coordinator I led and organized the daily tasks of the Shanghai team, coordinated the communication between the global teams, and developed the project vision and execution with the VP of Design, Levente Szabo.
In 2015, Johnson Controls and Hitachi formed a joint venture comprised of 14,000 employees and 24 global locations. The combined brands had to send a strong message to the market that innovation and user-centric design was at the forefront of their agenda.
I moved to Shanghai for 6 months to serve as Lead Designer for the local Shanghai design team and Project Manager for the 4 global teams, all competing to win the pitch in Tokyo. Armed with 9 months of field and ethnographic research, we embarked on a journey to redefine users relationship with air while fitting into highly constrained global standardization.
The core team resided in Shanghai.
Competitive research offered key benchmark insights.
Ethnographic research around the globe helped us identify universal pain points.
Research was collected and insights were pulled by 4 global teams.
Insights were distilled for executive and stakeholder collaboration.
All teams met in Tokyo.
Insights were reviewed in a workshop and a direction was crafted.
UX ideation kicked off the design phase.
Extensive concept development was generated to pair ideal UX with form and function.
Concepts were distilled and refined to give us our final direction.
The global visual brand language (GVBL) we developed was fully adopted by Hitachi Johnson Controls and continues to serve as their north star in product development, branding, and service. This line of products consistently wins iF and Red Dot awards.
If you're curious to learn more, please reach out:
rosscbrinkman@gmail.com