The following blog post was written by Avanade alum Darren Hardman

Surrounded by Post-it notes and balloons, I was very pleased to officially launch Avanade’s London Digital Studio last week!

The launch of the Digital Studio - Avanade’s first in Europe - was planned to coincide with World Usability Day, as this year’s theme of sustainability is a great passion of the company. To celebrate, we commissioned an art installation created entirely using Post-it's. In keeping with the sustainability spirit of the day, once the artwork is taken down each Post-it will be reused in workshops with clients.

You might be wondering, why a Post-it? The Post-it is a user experience designer’s trademark tool. A Post-it is an opportunity. A unique point of view. A vote. The Digital Studio team uses them to capture our client’s requirements and our user’s needs.

The launch of our Digital Studio is just the beginning of a great focus that will occur over the next few months to ensure that all we do at Avanade UK is design and strategy-led.

What does that mean? It means not just focusing on the technology, but how that technology impacts real people. Making things easy-to-use and beautiful but also strategically viable will be our top priorities.

What is the London Digital Studio?

• Avanade’s London Digital Studio is the home for our UK Digital business, comprised of a purpose-built design and development studio, our core digital capabilities and broader digital community.
• It will enable us to help our clients embark upon and progress their digital journeys, transforming the human experiences for their customers and employees.
• It is where we design and develop new digital experiences, with experienced teams that constantly work together, using collaborative processes and innovative technology.
• It is where we develop and enable our local digital offerings and capabilities that we the take to our clients.
• It is where we incubate and develop our digital talent, skills and competencies that form our community.

Why have we created the Studio? It is Avanade’s vision is to be the leading Digital Innovator. Digital already represents a large portion of our business and we plan to grow this year on year.

Given the prevalence of Microsoft in the workplace, the depth of our Microsoft technology expertise and our digital domain expertise, we are uniquely positioned to help our clients deliver Enterprise-grade digital solutions but with the speed and agility of an agency. Our studio is here to help our clients realize Digital Transformation by putting new user experience at the core:

• Enabled and informed by different types of data
• Disrupting existing business processes and models
• Delivered with a mobile-first, cloud -first mindset.

Ultimately, we want to help our clients to deliver amazing human experiences for their customers and employees.

There will be more news to come on this exciting development at Avanade UK, including details on our new offerings and tools (such as Digital Acceleration Days) that will really bring Digital to life for our clients. Perhaps pop a reminder for yourself on a Post-it to look out for more information!