Manifest Digital Human Experience Society

Symbol: Transition 

Text: Problem/solution design for point-specific business challenges with a balanced integration of user experience, marketing, and technology. User-centered research and design

Interpretation: The right screw tightened. A piece of furniture moved from one side of a room to another. A knowing glance between a parent and a child. Sometimes a single action undertaken at the right time and the right place expresses elegance and mastery far more effectively than a complex plan. For Manifest, that action is the Transition. Not the kind of word you find in an opera, a sonnet or a mission statement — done effectively, it is invisible. But it can be far more powerful than the type of change you see.

A Transition involves taking a single aspect of a business or other client through the user-centered design process, judiciously applying tools from marketing, technology, and user experience design in order to meet highly specific goals. It is designed to be implemented and yield value in a defined period of time, making it a frequent choice of mid-market clients. But it can also serve as proof of concept for a larger change.

Transition can be a good choice when one leader or unit in a company is at the right moment for a change. But it can also fail in isolation. When the other components of a company prevent a Transition from yielding strategic value, Tranform may be in order. If the world itself is in flux, it may be time to Transcend. But given the hundreds of Transitions they have negotiated, Manifest’s designers tend to know where that single change needs to occur, often with uncanny speed. That’s mastery at work.

Commentary: “Choose your corner, pick away at it carefully, intensely and to the best of your ability and that way you might change the world.” –Charles Eames

Connections: Productively contrasted with Transfuse and Transfer. An essential component of Transform.