DESIGNING A VISUAL INQUIRY TOOL FOR IDENTITY COMMUNICATION

In this doctoral dissertation, I relate three studies performed to address the challenge of a visual inquiry tool for identity communication in the context of startups and SMEs. The challenge being: how to develop a visual inquiry tool (a tool on which a team of stakeholders with different backgrounds could try and solve their challenge in a designerly way) especially tailored to help them tackle the issue of communicating a coherent brand identity to all their different stakeholders. These three chapters (or studies) have been developed within a design science paradigm of research, which allows to develop knowledge through both theoretical and in the form of artefacts to tackle a practical problem. The main contributions of this dissertation are: 1) a brand identity ontology based on an extensive literature review, which addresses the semantic issues found in the brand identity literature and gives us the opportunity to explore and redefine the concept in terms of a conceptual model and 2) an identity communication map, this is derived from the ontology but is this time directly aimed at practitioners. It addresses the challenge of creating a coherent and structured identity communication especially in the context of startup and SMEs. And lastly, 3) by analyzing existing visual inquiry tools, we derived a design theory for managing any business challenge in a designerly way. This last contribution aims at supporting future designers and researchers when developing such artefacts. The view proposed in this thesis is highly interdisciplinary, but focuses mainly on design and proposes to adopt a new approach when solving management problems

Robust estimation of bacterial cell count from optical density

Optical density (OD) is widely used to estimate the density of cells in liquid culture, but cannot be compared between instruments without a standardized calibration protocol and is challenging to relate to actual cell count. We address this with an interlaboratory study comparing three simple, low-cost, and highly accessible OD calibration protocols across 244 laboratories, applied to eight strains of constitutive GFP-expressing E. coli. Based on our results, we recommend calibrating OD to estimated cell count using serial dilution of silica microspheres, which produces highly precise calibration (95.5% of residuals <1.2-fold), is easily assessed for quality control, also assesses instrument effective linear range, and can be combined with fluorescence calibration to obtain units of Molecules of Equivalent Fluorescein (MEFL) per cell, allowing direct comparison and data fusion with flow cytometry measurements: in our study, fluorescence per cell measurements showed only a 1.07-fold mean difference between plate reader and flow cytometry data

A Visual Inquiry Tool for Brand Identity

Brand identity is of paramount importance for companies. Owing to the advancement of technology, faster innovation, growing competition, and more demanding consumers, managing a brand is becoming increasingly complex. This is especially true for entrepreneurs in startups and SMEs, who may not have the knowledge and various resources to ensure a clear branding strategy. This paper describes the development, in three steps, of a visual collaboration tool that supports practitioners in SMEs and startups to collaboratively strategize their brand identity in a structured way. This paper reports the creation, demonstration, and a first evaluation of what we have called the Brand Identity Tool

Foundations of a visual tool for brand identity

Brand Identity is of paramount importance for organisations today. Due to the advancement of technology, faster innovation, growing competition and more demanding consumers, managing a brand is becoming more and more complex. Therefore, organisations need a consistent portrayal to create a single, compelling representation of themselves. Entrepreneurs in Startups and SMEs need to have a clear branding strategy: a narrative that defines the company’s vision, inspires employees and others, and remains relevant through changes. This paper aims to present a systematic literature review that uncovers the key concepts of corporate brand identity, in order to lay the foundation for the development of a brand identity ontology. This ontology will be the first step towards the development of a strategic tool that helps entrepreneurs co-design their brand identity, in order to express and communicate a clear and consistent image to all their stakeholders. This paper also adds to the averment of emerging stream of research in Information Systems, that states that the Information Systems discipline, through its tradition in designing artefacts, has a role to play in the design of strategic management tools