 Welcome to this episode of Door Hardware Nerds. I'm your host, Mia Merrill. Today, we're going to be doing a special interview on design and I have two guests with me. Can you please introduce yourselves? So my name is Paela Munoz. I am the Global Head of Product Design. I'm based in Sweden in our headquarters in Stockholm. And my name is Joe Marton. I'm the Senior Manager of Industrial Design for North America. I'm headquartered here in New Haven, Connecticut. And I have a small team of industrial designers here to help support our efforts. Perfect. Well, welcome. Thank you. Thank you. Today I want to focus on customers and our brands. So how can design benefit our customers? Well, design evokes emotions. So it benefits customers in so many ways for feeling their needs. And it's not only about the design, the aesthetics is the design as it holds, what a product stands for and how it matches what the customer needs, but also unveil the desires that they don't know yet. That's right. It's probably worth pointing out that when we ask questions like this, which we do every day, is that our customers include both our end users, the people who actually work with and touch the products that we make, but they also include distributors and people who are our partners in business. And as we develop these solutions, first and foremost is the end user experience to make sure that it's safe, it's dynamic and exciting, it's new. But it also needs to be a solution that fits the strategic vision of our partners so that they are getting a product that they can be successful in supporting and selling. Yeah, another example could be installers as well. Exactly. Our customers can be the ones that are not using the product directly, but for example, installing the product. And we want to create this great customer experience all the way for all customer types. Exactly, right. So to that end, sometimes with installers, we're thinking about even the design of instructions or packaging that helps it to be a more efficient process for making those installations. Exactly. Easy to install, yeah. Yep, as well as ease of use or no instruction to use, right? Yeah, when possible, it should be intuitive. Yeah. Well, certainly for end users, we don't want somebody to have to figure out how to get through a door. It should be obvious to them. And I think that we do a very good job at that, but as we look at new technologies and new types of things, we're going to continue to be challenged with what does it mean, what will that experience be like in the future? Yeah, and talking about customers I have one of my heartfelt topics is accessibility. So this is really something that we think all the way through. And when it comes to accessibility, then the focus will be on customers feeling free to access an environment, to feel free to come in and out. And in this new world, well, when we talk about the pandemic and perhaps customers don't want to interact with products in the way that we did in the past. So there is this full focus on different topics that are very, very important and that are very customer-centric. Yeah, I mean, I heard something a few weeks ago. Almost everyone will become disabled at some point in their lives as they age. So accessibility is, we may not be thinking of it now at our age, but at some point it's going to be... And I would like to highlight also when it comes to accessibility, it could be a person that doesn't have a physical impairment. It could be that you are in an environment that you have the impairment of light and then you still need to access the product, you still need to see it. So impairment can be different things depending on the context. Exactly. It's interesting that as you bring up accessibility for people with disabilities is that so much of Door Hardware has been around for hundreds, if not thousands of years and it's really only quite recently that we've been trying to address that community of people to be able to use these things, especially in terms of their everyday convenience, but most importantly is the ability to exit a building in an emergency situation quickly and safely. And as designers, we oftentimes are looking at how do we create something that is visually like familiar with the history of architecture that you don't want something that looks like it's for a hospital setting or that's been made specially for a group of people, we want to create solutions that preserve like a desirable aesthetic but also enables people to... That is including. Yeah, that inclusive of everyone's needs. And that's one of the exciting things about our job is trying to weave that line between achieving all of those goals and exceeding them like to our ability to make it not just what we must do but what we can do, yeah. Yeah, but I think that both worlds go hand in hand accessibility and inclusiveness. Absolutely, yeah. So they shouldn't be treated separately. All right, so how does design impact our brands? Well, a lot, I would say because our brands are our core, who we are. It's an identity. And of course, we want our products to reflect the brands regardless of what brand it is but what the brand stands for the image we would like to show but also how we want to be perceived and do this for real with good design. The relationship that an end user or a distributor as one of our customers has with us is very important and they should understand who we are in that relationship and so we can do that in a number of ways. One is to continually produce products that meet and exceed their expectations in their everyday experience but by providing consistent use of our brands in the packaging and the communication when possible on the product itself it helps to connect that positive experience with a consistent brand appearance so that whether it's Yale or Corbyn Ruslan, Sergeant Ross Abloy, any of our many brands it forges a deeper trust between that end user and us moving forward. So that's very important. In treating this as designers and working in teams treating this with respect it means that we create that consistency but also that we can actually deliver something that we can stand for something that is sustainable. I frequently use the word storytelling when it comes with this and I feel that a brand is integral in storytelling that why should I buy this new product? Well, just simply outlining that this handle allows for this much leverage or it has good features for unlocking. That's one portion of the story but really around that story is that like we as a brand have been providing these solutions and will continue to be providing these solutions. You can count on us to do that. We know that part of our legacy is to deliver these things consistently at the highest levels. Well, thank you so much for joining us again. Thank you, thank you for having us here. Yeah, that was very good. If you wanna see examples of design I will put a link below for the Good Design Studio. I'm also going to include links for Asa Abloy Global as well as some Asa Abloy local sites and some industrial design links if you wanna learn more if you're curious about what you've heard today. Thanks for watching.