2021
Global
Construction
Business design
Towards more sustatainable en customer centric solutions for Equitone
Etex is a global player in the supply of building materials with more than 10.000 employees worldwide.
The exteriors division is responsible for all materials that are used for outdoor applications for roofs and facade cladding materials. There are 3 brands: Eternit for farming, Cedral for residential and Equitone for professional and architectural facade materials.
Challenge
Etex exteriors division asked The Argonauts to facilitate a design expedition on the Equitone brand for 50 teammates from different disciplines (sales, marketing, engineering, operations,,...) across the world. The final goal was to come up with new ideas for innovative products and services for the Equitone brand.
Approach & results
The covid-crisis forced us to facilitate the whole expedition in a remote way. So we started by creating an online co-creation platform in Miro where all teammates were able to work together asynchronously, as they were working in different timezones.
The group was divided into 6 teams with whom we went through a design sprint in 6 steps:
- Empathize with the 3 key users of the Equitone material: the student architect, the installer and the senior design architect. → in depth interviews and empathy analysis.
- Prepare persona’s that each of the teams were going to use as the key-user for their solution, based on the results of the empathize phase.
- Define clear design challenges for each of the teams-> which problem will the teams solve for whom and what is the desired effect?
- Ideate on possible solutions, inspired by technologies, trends and Etex strategic priorities such as sustainability and growth potential.
- Prototype solutions and validate key assumptions
- Pitch finale solutions to the leadership team.
Result
The online design expedition finally resulted in 5 well-prepared pitches to the leadership team of the Exteriors division of which the best will be implemented in the organization.
