Mizuho America works creates tools and instruments for neurosurgery and frequently collaborates with the world’s leading neurosurgeons. The marketing team brought me is as a Design Expert to define their visual brand narrative, create brand guidelines and a cohesive design system to be used throughout their asset library.
To begin understanding of needs and the development of the design system, the first two projects I undertook were an informational "Quick Start Guide" for surgery staff to use with one of the most complex products Mizuho offers—a neurosurgery table and head holding device—as well as Mizuho's first ever instrument product catalog.
The sales team within Mizuho had long requested a comprehensive tool to support support sales, marketing and education: an instrument product catalog to include over 2000 instruments.
Mizuho had never undergone the process of categorizing their hundreds of medical instruments. Some of the instruments belonged to "sets" that were created in collaboration with high profile neurosurgeons, while many others could only be "classified" with similar types of instruments. I worked directly with stakeholders across the organization to understand how instruments were marketed, sold and used to develop a cohesive classifying system which would be used throughout the product catalog and in marketing materials.
At the same time, I worked with team engineers as well as marketing and sales stakeholders to investigate and understand how their larger surgery tables were used. As I was unable to obtain mechanical/technical CAD drawings from the team, I set forth to full understand the process of how to communicate how the table was used, in a way in which I would also be able to create the technical drawings myself.
In listening to the marketing team and the needs of the sales team, I concluded that the catalog needed to be easily updatable, and that would be best for certain elements (pages) to be easily replaced as needed. Initially the team had requested a printed, bound book. My recommendation came in the form of a binder with pages, with a Table of Contents that included classification system for the categories I developed, as well as the sets that the team sold, making it possible for the team to update either pages or sections individually instead of reproducing the entire book each time a small update needed to be made. This would also allow for sales staff to print individual pages or sections as their needs demanded, allowing them to leave-behind individual pages or sections as a sales tool with doctors and surgeons, or even at tradeshows and events as marketing materials. I determined that the pages themselves would need to allow space for individual sales representatives to self-print their contact information, as well as including all pertinent information for each instrument and the variants pertaining to each particular instrument.
The quantity and classification of the instruments became very complex on the design side, which, in turn, made this very complex data much easier to consume and use on the sales side. In the definition phase of the process it became clear that I would need to create harmonious visual elements as part of a very large toolkit. For the "Quick Start Guide" simplicity would be of the upmost importance as the intricate and complex information that needed to be communicated in the most simple and clear way possible for the table to be used successfully.
The visual design system was developed exploring and expanding Mizuho's visual branding while accounting for the needs of these two projects—by defining the information architecture and interaction design for over 2000 instruments, and evangelizing human centered design methodologies for the quick start guide. I collaborated with stakeholders and users of both pieces identify a working design layout that also became the cohesive visual system for the brand. In the ideation phase we went through many iterations to develop the designs that we would test.
During the ideate phase, I photographed and cataloged all of Mizuho's instruments on site.
Before moving into production, both the catalog and the quick-start guide were tested, as printed prototypes both with sales team members and medical staff. In testing we found information that needed to be adjusted for clarity, and changes to the production and printing process that would need to be updated.
After the testing and updating of the first two pieces, the visual design system was then implemented in countless other marketing and sales materials including tradeshow boths and environmental and event design, marketing collateral, and digital assets.
I developed detailed design documentation aimed at production artists, support staff, and future team members. This documentation serves as a comprehensive guide for updating existing complex materials and generating new ones. Additionally, I specified final designs and produced commercial design input documentation to ensure clarity and consistency throughout the design process.
