Great emotional design creates a bond between the consumer and the brand'creating an emotional connection to your target market translates into conversions and sales as well as online and offline interactions. Product design is a creative discipline that challenges designers to build an aesthetic, functional, and marketable product. As the discipline matures alongside rapid technological innovation, product, brand, and user experience designers are finding new ways to connect emotionally with their users and customers, consequently creating opportunities for more sustained engagement. What is emotional branding' How does the brand or product bring meaning to the users' lives' Creating emotional brand connections to your target market can translate into conversions and sales as well as online and offline interactions. Great emotional design that connects with the user on multiple levels is a huge part of this process. There is more to effective brand design than choosing a logo or a brand color based on design trends and best practices. Successful brands use branding techniques that don't just get attention'they sustain interest and loyalty....

In the face of accelerating global challenges, innovators must employ "design thinking" or expansive ways of thinking to create a more sustainable world....

Can design thinking help a nonprofit organization sustain both innovation and its human impact into the future'...

Design thinking offers a way to explore uncharted territory, uncover options, and solve complex business problems. But as much as leaders need new approaches to create competitive advantage, inspire innovation, and discover new paths for growth, they often don't get the results they expect.1 Participants in design thinking exercises frequently neither understand the process nor have the skills needed to practice it successfully. In such cases, it's no wonder that they become disenchanted or think they have failed.2 To get the benefits of design thinking, leaders need to know when to apply it, and they have to prepare both their employees and managers to do so. Our research has identified the characteristics that make an organization 'design thinking-ready' as well as a strategic approach to adopting it. Design thinking is a discipline that emerged in the last half century or so from studies of innovation processes, problem-solving, and creativity. It takes an iterative, experimental approach to problem-solving that involves gaining a deep understanding of customer needs; defining a problem area; ideating new solutions; and then prototyping, testing, and refining them....