Diseño del OCW con el Modelo Walter Dick y Lou Carey.

6.1 Introduction

This chapter details the findings from interviews and observations for the second case, re-ferred to as Beta Telco.

Beta has around 100 000 staff worldwide, and headquarters in London. Its annual turnover is approximately £21 000 M (2008). Beta’s primary activity is the provision of communications network services and technology to domestic consumer, corporate and public sectors. The firm is divided into several business divisions, including Consumer, Business, Wholesale, Operations and Research. Subsidiaries within the Consumer, Busi-ness and Wholesale are referred to collectively as Market-Facing Units, or MFUs.

In contrast to case 1, design is not a core activity in Beta: it occurs mainly in three propor-tionally small areas of the firm, in Technology Development, the Consumer division, and in the group-wide Brand department.

Technology Development

Designers in Technology Development work mostly within a sub-division, Research

& Ventures (R&V). Designers in R&V come from a variety of backgrounds, including interactive media design and industrial (or product) design, and the team also works with outside agencies in these disciplines. They work with technologists and scient-ists to come up with commercial applications of technologies. The prototypes or con-cepts they produce are then fed out to various business divisions within Beta accord-ing to their market focus, or they may be spun off in to new ventures. Concepts judged suitable for further exploration are passed to propositions managers, who de-velop them further with external designers before seeking approval for commercial-isation. When this involves products, development and manufacture are overseen by product managers.

Case 2: Beta Telco | Introduction

The Insights Research Centre, also in Technology Development, conducts customer and foresight research. Their output is used by the R&V team, Sales and Marketing, and by the MFUs.

Consumer Division

Design activity in the MFUs is most evident in the Consumer division. This includes the creation of tangible products for the consumer and SME market, such as tele-phone handsets, fax machines and broadband routers, and services such as internet and video on demand. Associated with both products and services are a range of market communications, packaging and web sites.

Brand

The Brand department is part of the Group Marketing and Brand, and oversees all aspects of the Beta brand identity.

Of these three groups, Consumer is the only direct revenue earner, and R&V is the only group with dedicated design staff (in Consumer and Brand, design work is almost entirely bought in from outside agencies).

These three areas of activity are proportionally small, in terms of staff and costs to the firm. Although the firm as a whole is discussed, this study focuses on Technology Develop-ment and Consumer.

6.1.1 Participants

As in Case 1, identification and recruitment of participants was partly initiated directly by the researcher and partly by onward referrals to other relevant or interested people. The scope of the sample did not include respondents from all operational divisions, but sought to capture a range of relevant views.

The participants were mostly based in or near the firm’s headquarters or research facility, and include designers (including inclusivity and ergonomics specialists), researchers, product managers, support staff and senior managers and one Board officer.

Notably, B-1, isnota Beta employee but an experienced product designer working outside the firm, running a small, well-regarded product design agency. Because all Beta’s retail

Case 2: Beta Telco | Introduction

years, working with propositions managers from various divisions in the firm, depending on the product being designed. The roles of interview participants cited are listed below, in Table 6.

ID code Role

B-1 Industrial designer and Chairman, external agency

B-2 Industrial Designer, Research & Development, Technology Development B-3 Media interfaces designer, Research & Development, Technology Development B-4 Usability manager

B-5 Propositions manager, Consumer products – Handsets, Consumer Division B-6 Research manager, Human Factors specialist, Technology Development B-7 Group Chief Technical Officer

B-8 Propositions manager, Consumer products – Broadband, Consumer Division B-9 Product Manager, Head of Fixed Line Devices; Strategy, Convergence & Products B-10 Head of Consumer Affairs and Inclusion, Consumer Division

B-11 Head, Insights Research Centre, Technology Development Table 6: Interview participants from Beta Telco

6.1.2 Findings

As in the previous chapter, findings set out for Case 2 are collated from the views ex-pressed in interviews. They may also include the researcher’s own observations of the workplace, internal documents and other artefacts. It also includes other publicly available material where explicitly stated.

The following sections examine design’s contributions to strategy implementation and to strategy formulation in Beta, as identified in chapter 2 (page 34), then relates them in summary to the three contributing factors for successful, optimal design integration iden-tified in phase 1.

Case 2: Beta Telco | Introduction

6.2 Design implementing strategic