Informing, inspiring, and engaging society with EMBL’s research, services and training
During EMBL’s 43 years it has grown in size, scope and geography. Today EMBL has six sites, many activity areas and focuses on five related but distinct missions. There is a very strong unifying concept at the core of EMBL. However, during those years of growth a solid conceptual view of how…
The design sprint that started a couple of weeks ago began with the team describing their visions, their ideas, and thoughts of what a new EMBL corporate design could look and feel like. Central to describing and understanding why something looks the way it does are our design principles. Many…
A lesson re-learned in naming GitHub repos As part of the Corporate Design sprint, we had need to set up a GitHub team and repositories to home and share work on the EMBL Design Language and Design Lab (more on what those are in a future post). As an abstract task, it’s easy. Except what…
Our framework for the first week is to focus on the brand map as well as the brand strategy and related initial design principles. We started with a brainstorming session, so called “the first burst”. That implies answering questions like “what do we need”, “what are the blockers”,…
The word “brand” has become a common word in our daily language, but it is used in different contexts with different meanings. The word has its origin in ranching, when branding marks were seared into an animal’s skin to identify its owner. Television and print advertising saw the word being…
The purpose of intra1 was to understand how people currently use EMBL’s intranets. Specifically, we wanted to: Understand audience behaviours Define audience segments Define the functions and the scope of EMBL’s intranets Inform the EMBL community about projects to rebuild EMBL’s core…
Last week, Dan and I got a chance to present the work of the Strategy and Communications team to EMBL’s senior management, at the meeting of the Scientific Strategy and Management Advisory Committee (SSMAC) in Hamburg. It’s approximately one year since the Strategy and…
In the 20th Century the Modernists believed that good design was about usefulness, how well an object performed its function. For others, good design is more subjective, it’s about style and taste. I see it a little differently: I define design as the deliberate creation of value for an…
We are looking for EMBL people to help with our intranet user research. By keeping a digital diary you can help us to better understand how you use digital resources in the course of your work and home life. This will help us to design things that work better for you. We are asking for…
On Tuesday, 18 April we kicked off the first research phase for the EMBL intranet project. This first phase, or sprint, will run until 12 May and we’ve codenamed it ‘intra1’. The purpose of this sprint is to: understand current user behaviours define audience segments establish…