1. What is Kocha?
Long story short, Kocha was my grandfather’s surname. I feel if I represent someone (especially someone I love), it reminds/demands me to push the boundary and go beyond with my design services. Which is why “Kocha” is the right name for my studio.
2. Value Proposition
From a conceptual point of view, I’m pretty much fascinated by word. Some people say the word can limit our perception, and most people cannot imagine further than their words library.
For that reason, I used “Brand Desk” to help me push the boundary. (Brand Desk is a stack of cards that describe how we want to be perceived by our audience. Each card contains a word and its opposite word on the other side.)
Ideally, we need five words (cards) to represent who we are and who we are not.
In a nutshell; In “Who we are” I also describe each word on my terms to be more specific for my studio context, which is:
We are:
- Timeless — Sustainable.
- Simple — Honest.
- Focused — Mindfulness.
- Curious — Imaginative.
- Experimental — Creativity.
We are not (with a reason why we are not):
- Aggressive: We put people first and, then, work toward happiness.
- Exclusive: We’re accessible, affordable, and accountable.
- Futuristic: Fully present is our priority. We are now.
- Mass-market: Instead of mass-market, we rather have our own point of view.
- Serious: We are serious about not being serious.
And I use those brand keywords to defined the studio’s mission and vision which is:
Mission
“Helping good people create new value through design”
The relationship is timeless or at least lasts longer than design. These days my happiness is to know that my design can be useful to others. I love to work on a project where I can have a good relationship with people I work with. As simple as difficult as that.
Vision
“Close the gap between strategy and execution”
I want to help people transform their idea into something tangible as quick and as little resource as possible. I knew it was going to be hard to get designer work directly with the client. But I believe this is an honest way to get the most out of the project.
3. Studio Framework
At the time I wrote this article (Feb 2019)—I’ve learned (the hard way)—to develop some of our studio’s framework and define our value proposition design, which includes:
Our core values: How do we run our business
- Anthropology: We identify and deliver our value from the perspective of the people who use our products and services.
- Balance: We are striving for the best possibility via fewer possible resources.
- Creativity: We allow our minds to make new connections between seemingly unrelated ideas.
Our design process: How do we design
- Imagination: Start from the conceptual point of view.
- Design: Visualise concepts.
- Experimental: Work through the concepts.
- Affordance: Functional the concepts.
- Simplicity: Constraints and simplification its forms.
Our design standard: How do we judge a good design
- Feeling: Is it appropriate and aesthetic?
- Thinking: Does it solve the right problem?
- Sensing: Does it have the right balance?
