Data Shed - Research

In order to get an idea of the Icons and software I would be designing for I looked around to see what was already out there. The main bulk of the icons I had an idea about already but a few I was unsure about. Here is some of the research into information and the icons I will be designing for. 

What the Datashed do:  http://www.thedatashed.co.uk  (taken from website)

Our core product - a simple and robust place that pulls all your data sources together, matches & stores the records and keeps them up to date so you can view it together in the same tool.Bolted on to TheDataShed are simple, web-based tools which allow you to analyse and interrogate your data wherever you are, whatever device you are on. These analysis tools are also embedded within Microsoft Excel, ensuring a simple, familiar interface for all your staff The back-end of TheDataShed is a powerful (geek alert!) OLAP database. Simply put, we've taken complex data, and built a system which stores it in such a way that you can run reports on millions of records in seconds. Using TheDataShed, you can analyse your costs and revenue clearly, look at previous marketing campaigns and make selections, and feed these selections back for future analysis. You can feed in prospecting databases and dedupe against your current customers, input offline campaign results to get a view as to how your prospects and customers have responded – the possibilities are endless… 

Ever since the days when the proprietor of a business stopped knowing each of his customers individually, the challenge has been clearly understanding who your customers are and reducing the number of duplications of the same customer within your database. If the same customer has moved house and got married and reregisters how do you know to append their previous purchase history to their new record? Pulling these seemingly separate customers together makes both analysis and marketing more applicable. 

With the advent of E-Commerce, and increasing marketing channels (SMS, Email, Direct Mail, Social Media) this has become increasingly difficult. How can you be sure you're not spending money targeting an individual three ways, when one would do? How can you understand if the initial cost of acquisition is worth the long term customer value? Having a Single Customer View allows you to get a true view on how your customers are performing and where you should be investing your marketing budgets. Do you get spikes in your sales when you’ve had a TV campaign? Let's input your slot times and find out! How do your customers respond? Sent a DM campaign out but not everyone responding using the tracked phone number? How inconvenient.
Upload the campaign data and let's match it to your customer base to see if you had responses through other channels. 

Our Single Customer View tool helps overcome a variety of challenges. Utilising some pretty clever string-matching techniques (even if we do say so ourselves!), we take all your different data sets, and mash them together to produce one single list of individuals and families, making sure that none of the data gets lost along the way.

Our simple database solutions allow you to manage any operational process or workflow. They are focussed on swift, cost-effective development - so whether you need a system to manage your HR data, finance processes or CRM, we can build it for you in days, not weeks.As with all our products, the ability to integrate our database solutions with any other system is paramount. As a result, we construct our applications to allow easy (but secure!) access to anyone or anything who needs it, and because we’re all about analysis and insight, we can build you bespoke analysis tools to go with it.

Single Customer View

A Single Customer View is an aggregated, consistent and holistic representation of the data known by an organization about its customers. The advantage to an organisation of attaining this unified view comes from the ability it gives to analyse past behavior in order to better target and personalise future customer interactions. A single customer view is also considered especially relevant where organisations engage with customers through multiple channels, since customers expect those interactions to reflect a consistent understanding of their history and preferences. However, some commentators have challenged the idea that a single view of customers across an entire organisation is either natural or meaningful, proposing that the priority should instead be consistency between the multiple views that arise in different contexts.
Where representations of a customer are held in more than one system, achieving a single customer view can be difficult: firstly because customer identity must be traceable between the records held in those systems, and secondly because anomalies or discrepancies in the customer data must be resolved^. As such, the acquisition by an organisation of a single customer view is one potential outcome of successful Master data management. Since December 2010, maintaining a single customer view has become mandatory for UK banks and other deposit takers due to new rules introduced by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme.

Icon Research Single Customer View

I searched the web for examples of single customer view icons to get an idea of what was out there and found that there was barely any, and the majority that I found were over complicated or looked tacky and dated.

 Analysis Icon

 

 Allot of the icons I found were a bit too detailed and over complicated for icons in my opinion. There are far too many colours and shadows which makes the icon look more like a picture than anything. This will not reproduce well on a small scale.

The ones above are more relevant to what I am looking for. I think one colour is perfect for the job. The icons need to be simple and eye catching but also readable on a small scale. This means I should stick to one colour ideally. I like the idea of the magnifying glass, I think there is potential with that imagery.

 Hosting Icon

These icons work well however some a still a bit too complicated when shrunk down onto a smaller scale. I like the idea of the cloud connecting, and also the house with the cables, this could work with datashed. I like the simplistic illustration style. In this case I think 2 colours works well, there is also potential here to work with.

What I found with allot of icons is that they are not actually that clear in what they do, you have to have some existing knowledge in order to get the reference. I like the simplicity of these icons however I still think they are lacking something.

Integration Icon

 From pulling together all your different data sets from your finance system, E-commerce platform, social media sites or online analytics provider, or extracting customer records for a marketing campaign, visualising your data or analysing business performance, datashed have the tool to help. Each tool has been constructed so that it can work independently - but also integrate with the rest of the suite.

I really like bother of these ideas, the jigsaw puzzle piece is definitley memorable and is quirky and different which is what datashed is looking for. I also like the idea of the linked chains which also strongly reference integration.

I also like the idea of the cogs this is a nice visual reference my only concern is that its quite big which makes shrinking it down to be a readable understandable icon is another story.

Apps Icon

The tradition Apple apps Icon is memorable and destinguisable but the elements which go together to make up the logo are completley unrelated to the kind of stuff datashed deals with. It needs to be simple and relevant. This is going to be a tough icon to create as it is quite ambiguous.

This design referes more to application windows which is again not what datashed are looking for. There idea of the applications is the tools nesecary to analyse the data not a specific applications folder.

Database Icon

The majority of icons I came across for the database revolved around this imagery seen above which is an old school hardrive. This is a recognisable icon but for those not familiar with computers it is actually not that relevant in my opinion. I will have to come up with something which is recognisable simple and eyecatching.

Consultation Icon

The icons I found for consultation were quite obvious but clear and readable in my opinion, they could be a bit simpler if anything as a few of them were over complicated I really like the speech bubble icons, this is simple and to the point. It references the point well and there is not much need for lots of detail or colour.