Background

Akoha Inc. is a Montreal-based social media company that leverages the web and mobile technologies to encourage people to embrace and share special moments that make life a little more awesome. Akoha offers an abundance of real-world activities designed to invite people to discover life’s special moments, to capture them, and to share them with friends.

Challenge

Akoha was one of our first clients. They approached us with a simple but exciting premise. What if a game could help make the world a better place? Their first challenge to us: prepare Akoha for a launch at the TED Conference by completely redesigning their online application interface.

Project Components

After an in-depth requirements gathering process, we worked on developing a Design Strategy for Akoha. We applied the strategy to interaction design for both mobile and web, and later conducted training to socialize the new direction for the brand.

Solution

Akoha is a playful brand, so we needed a playful solution. The original website didn’t seem like a game and the interactions were cumbersome, taking users’ efforts away from what was really important – making the community a better place. Over the past 14 months we have helped Akoha on a number of different projects including their launch at SXSW and their TED talk. We’ve helped them understand the needs of their customers by coaching them through ethnography, helping them migrate from using physical objects to using digital tools for game interaction, and helping them develop a formal design process.

Client Testimonial

“Normative has been a crucial part of the evolution of Akoha. Not only did they do a spectacular job on the tactical aspects of our product redesign but more importantly they helped us to understand the central role that design thinking played in the product development process.

Working closely with the team, they created a design thinking framework that was tailored to the particular needs of our organization. We loved working with Normative and I would recommend them without reservation to anyone that is looking for a strategic design partner that truly understands the web.”

Alex Eberts, Akoha