C A S E S T U D Y
Human Experience Lab — Corporate Identity
How to create an identity for experience matters
CLIENT: Human Experience Lab
INITIATIVE: Identity development
SECTOR: Life sciences
FOCUS: User experience research
MARKET: Technology
Background
No longer can high-tech companies dismiss the importance of user experience. Now everyone from the receptionist to the CEO seems to talk about it. Human Experience Lab CEO Paul Sorenson calls it “the iPod effect.” Apple’s first music player wasn’t the first to market, but its simple, easy-to-use design made all existing MP3 players seem clumsy. Superior user experience changed the game. And Human Experience Lab helps deliver it.
Challenge
While Human Experience Lab (HX Lab) is a relatively new company, Sorenson has worked as a human factors engineer—and evangelized the benefits of user experience—in the high-tech industry for more than 25 years.
HX Lab offers complex perception-based research aimed at nuanced engineering. They adapt established psychophysical methods and experimental design to interact with complex cognitive and perceptual stimuli, enabling companies to answer such questions as, “How good does the quality of our video need to be?” The results can be used to benchmark the design of products and services that deliver measurably better experiences.
After looking at the competition, Donatelli believed there was a real opportunity to do something striking and memorable.
The Human Experience Lab signature visually combines the network between the human mind and body with technology that’s necessary to create ideas and products that are as functional as they are beautiful.
Solution
HXLab challenged Donatelli+Associates to create a brand identity that communicated the value of its user-centered research and design practice, as well as differentiates its unique expertise and services. After reviewing the competition, Donatelli believed there was a significant opportunity to design a new ID that solved HXLab’s needs.
The name—Human Experience Lab—drove how Donatelli approached the visuals and inspired a design that is experiential at every touch point. What would 360 degrees of human experience look like? How would it feel?
To convey the science-based nature of HX Lab’s work, Donatelli used a human brain as a rich dimensional backdrop. The symbol conveys the dynamic intersection of the human mind and body, and how that plays in regard to space and technology.
The identity system presents HX Lab as a leader and facilitator of advanced human potential through the ongoing exploration of individual devices, work processes, tech-enabled ecosystems and complex made-environments, as well as their impact on the overall human experience.
The identity system presents Human Experience Lab as a leader and facilitator of advanced human potential through the ongoing exploration of individual devices, work-processes, tech-enabled ecosystems and complex environments, in addition to their impact on the overall human experience.
Results
Even before HX Lab launched its new identity and website, comments show that Donatelli’s design hits the mark. “It really helped crystallize how I think about the company,” says Sorenson. “I can quickly articulate how each of the visual elements of the design tie into concrete aspects of HX Lab’s expertise and services. And I look forward to seeing how clients as well as HX Lab’s employees, partners and vendors respond to the new identity.”
View the project
Human Experience Lab — Corporate Identity
About Human Experience Lab
Human Experience Lab helps companies advance user experiences that fit the way people perceive, think, learn and feel. Its services include human factors and ergonomics, strategic planning and implementation, ethnographic research, developing prototype interaction models, and other activities used to design new products and services that deliver measurably better experiences and add business value.
