Designed by: Marvin and IDEO
Photo & Video Credit: Marvin and IDEO
Project Involvement: Development of Marvin’s purpose (9 weeks), guidance on industrial design and UX for two new products (2017/2018)

“Marvin’s purpose is to imagine and create better ways of living. This has been at the heart of our work since Marvin’s inception more than 100 years ago, and continues to drive us forward.”—Christine Marvin, Chief Marketing + Experience Officer

A company’s well-defined purpose can strengthen its resilience and creates value—if it’s genuine. Yet figuring out where the trifecta of customer and global needs, company strengths, and employee passions overlap isn’t a straightforward process. As a member of the designlab founded by Marvin & IDEO, I co-created Marvin’s new purpose and was part of the development of two new to the world products that exemplify this new purpose, Skycove and Awaken Skylight.

Our team’s focus was to uncover authentic connections to Marvin’s 100 year legacy.

During the process to develop Marvin’s purpose statement and framework for communication we connected with 60 people through interviews, design and co-creation sessions this included Marvin employees from factory floor to executive suite as well as the company’s community of architects, partners and dealers.

Defining Marvin’s new state of wellbeing

Our team travelled to 4 Marvin locations to talk with contributors from all levels within Marvin as well as Marvin’s external partners. Leveraging interviews and elements of co-creation, our team developed the language for Marvin’s new purpose, its connection to Marvin’s values, and included various examples for communication and tone do’s and don’ts based on audience.

Exploration through conversation

We created a set of associative word cards (50+) to use in the interview sessions that allowed us to uncover patterns as well as authentic stories and experiences related to themes of ‘better living’ or ‘wellbeing’. The card set also included intentionally open cards for participants to write down their own words or sentences.

A message dependent on its audience

The initial expressions that we continued to expand on in our sessions with architects and construction partners also allowed us to discover the nuances of language and evidence that each of Marvin’s various audiences resonates with. With support from the team I created a communication framework highlighting how to communicate differently internally and externally about the theme of ‘better ways of living’. 

Impact

1. Updates to Marvin’s main website ‘Our Story’ and other marketing materials leveraged our various tone and communication guidelines. 
2. Marvin continued to further define how this purpose comes to life for its employees. The resulting framework, called ‘Better Living at Marvin’ addresses 5 key areas of employee well-being that is informing how we design programs, policies and experiences. 
3. ‘Marvin founded its Designlab’ to deepen the human-centered design process and innovation abilities. Read more about Marvin’s journey on applying human-centered design in:
   • Dwell magazine article; an interview with Christine Marvin about the human-centered design process that led to the development of Skycove and Awaken Skylight
   • How customer-centric thinking creates innovation; an article about the value that human-centered design brought to Marvin
4. Skycove made its debut at the NAHB 2020 International Builders’ Show, where it was named Best Indoor Product. It was subsequently released in select markets nationwide and continues to be incorporated into bold remodels and new building projects. To date, Skycove has received eight awards, including being named the winner in two of Architizer’s 2021 A+Product Award categories: Innovation and Skylights + Windows. 
5. Awaken made its debut at the 2020 International Builders’ Show where it won the Best Window and Door Product category and was also recognized as a finalist in the Best Home Technology Product category.
6. Strategic focus on digital innovations, Awaken Skylight kickstarted the development of an app to facilitate key user interactions.

Awaken, harnessing light and air

The first-ever smart skylight designed to support well-being with improved airflow and embedded technology to support circadian rhythms when natural light is absent.

Making the Awaken Skylight; a blogpost on the collaboration between Marvin and IDEO on this award winning product

Embedded dimmable LED lights (tunable from 2200k to 5500k, or sunlight at dawn/dusk to sunlight at noon) simulate the effects of real sunlight. So that, during the darker winter months, people can still experience the positive effects of natural light, as mimicked by the LEDs lining the skylight overhead. This addition not only evolved the impact of skylights on people’s well-being, but it also evolved technological possibilities.

As one of 4 guides on the team I supported hands-on during initial ideation including the development of our early prototypes that we built and hacked together in a tiny home on the parking lot of IDEO.
Together with another guide I created the research plan for a small Quant Study (500-750 people) to identify which elements of the concept would be valued most at scale and conducted A/B testing with other skylights on the market.

During the final phases I supported the team with refinement of the industrial design and most importantly the interaction elements of the physical controls and its digital concept version.

Skycove, immersion into nature

Think of a traditional bay window, then lean hard into the concept of an immersive space. The result is a glass box window with glass on four sides, including overhead, engineered to be more than a window, but a retreat in which to have an exciting new experience. It’s the first pre-engineered, factory-assembled solution of its kind.

Making the Skycove; a blogpost describing how Skycove came to life through human-centered design and rapid prototyping

While the Marvin team was integrated in the Palo Alto office for a year, the long-term goal was to bring human-centered innovation and design thinking back to Marvin. This was part of an initiative to fundamentally change how Marvin works. Skycove was a small but exciting element of this process, condensed into a span of just six weeks. I was part of the team that brainstormed and prototyped the early concepts of Skycove in week 1 of the project.

Team Purpose

Victoria Marvin, Christine Marvin, Vanessa Mina and extended team members (Marvin)
Nina Fuhrman, Adam Hilborn, Amy Leventhal, Marcelle van Beusekom (project lead) (IDEO)

Team Awaken Skylight

Brian Farnes, Thomas Hensrud, Victoria Marvin (Marvin)
Nikolaj Dam Roadley-Battin, Gaetano Ling, Borut Kerzic, Coline Prevost, Griffin Thomson (project lead)
Guides: Haemi Chang, Danny Stillion, Marcelle van Beusekom, Silvia Vergani

Team Skycove

Brian Farnes, Thomas Hensrud and extended team members (Marvin)
Jesse Fourt (project lead), Camden Foley and extended team members, Marcelle van Beusekom (brainstorm participation) (IDEO)