VÄSTTRAFIK/ TRAM SIGHTSEEING APP

Tourists in Gothenburg pay good money for sightseeing tours. Unnecessarily, we thought. So we created the app Tram Sightseeing. For the price of a tram ticket, Tram Sightseeing gives you a guided tour. You simply put your headphones on and listen to the app telling you about the sights as they pass outside the tram window. The sights are geotagged and thanks to the GPS in your phone, the app knows exactly where you are.

Source:
http://www.fb.se/work/vasttrafik/the-tram-sightseeing-app

Blaise Bertrand on Packaging

What we know as designers, is that as the world becomes more complex, we have to deal with that complexity and distill it into messages that explain things in simple, yet sensitive, ways.

THIS IS WATER

'...the real value of a real education which has (almost) nothing to do with knowledge and everything to do with simple awareness'

Empathy in Animals

Rapid prototyping Google Glass - Tom Chi

Rapid prototyping—doing is the best way of thinking

Excellent article to summarize the video here:

Getting to Google Glass

Smart Accessories for Smart Phones

Timothy Morey of frog's Innovation Strategy Group shares how "smart accessories" are disrupting markets and reshaping our understanding of the world.

'To Design is much more than simply to assemble, to order, or even to edit; it is to add value and meaning, to illuminate, to simplify, to clarify, to modify, to dignify, to dramatize, to persuade, and perhaps even to amuse.' --Paul Rand

Shoeboxes

I shot this at the shoe section of Mustafa, a 24 hours departmental store in Little India.

First of all, this is not the storeroom, Mustafa is infamously known for displaying pretty much everything they have stock. And if there is no space, toss out the packaging!

It just gripped me as to how much work was put into to label each and every box (article color and name). As a customer, it did serve it's purpose once I figured what was going on, although the various colored markers were a little confusing at the beginning, but I believe the floor staff handling the stock was 100% sure of the system they've took upon themselves to create.

So is this an indicator to shoe packaging designers? Does this really matter from a UX and branding perspective?

Yves Béhar Redesigns NIVEA Brand

From OLPC, Puma Shoebox, NYC Condoms and so on... Yves Béhar, you are the most accomplished designer of the 21 century.

Great food should be like great design

“A great meal is not just great food, but is great companionship. A great piece of design is something that allows people to be together.” — Gianfranco Zaccai
 
Great food should be like great design. First sight should be very appetizing
And then when you taste it (experience it), it should be very satisfying.

Sometimes food is ceremonial—to make a statement
Sometimes it needs to be subtle—just needs to be there
Sometimes it should almost disappear

It is not just the design of the object, it is the design of the experience.

How Rejection Breeds Creativity

Extracted from an article at 99u.com

In 2006, Stefani Germanotta had hit a turning point in her career. She had quit a rigorous musical theatre program at an elite college to focus on her musical passion and, after a year of hard work and little income, had signed a deal with Def Jam records.  But this promise wouldn't last. Just three months after signing, Def Jam changed its mind about Stefani's unusual style and released her from her contract.

 

Rejected, Stefani went back the drawing board, working in clubs and experimenting with new performers and new influences. These experiments produced a new sound that was drawing positive attention from critics and fans. Within a year, there was another offer; this one from Interscope Records. Nearly two years after her initial rejection, Stefani was finally able to introduce her sound and her self to the world – as Lady Gaga.

Rejection happens and, when it does, how we respond to it matters. Lady Gaga responded by experimenting with new influences and making her sound more unique. Just as Gaga experienced, recent research suggests that when most of us experience rejection, it can actually enhance our creativity, depending on how we respond to it.

Joe Sparano / Solving Problems

Appreciation of fine things

 

 The Classy Man's Tequila Sunrise

Q: Why go through all this trouble to make the same thing?

A: Because people are different, and we each choose to appreciate different things.

I thought this classy cocktail is indeed a classic example of how to explain design. And yes, a lot of it has to do with presentation.

So...why would someone pay over 260 million for a painting? :)

Well I personally believe that we are made up of what we choose in life. Be it fashion, food, or whatever we consume (brands etc....the list goes on, even friends)

Also something else to take out of this is a reminder that people would be more willing to part with their money for something that looks better, or in other words, something that has a better perceived value. 

So...how do we create this so called value?

How design thinking finds new answers

By Campbell Butler

The other day I sat in a brainstorm with a bunch of fellow graphic designers, discussing the future direction of an international business. Someone in the team made a flippant joke about the moment: Most of us had gone to art school, not business school. 

As designers we sometimes worry about engaging in the “business side” of things. But today’s businesses are desperate to find experimental and creative solutions and designers are just the problem-solvers they need. We’ve been trained to take a brief, assess the problem, instinctively create different directions, analyse the positives and negatives, reject one, create another, see what works, see what doesn’t.

We can rapidly create visual concepts that test how products, communications, experiences and interfaces can work together. And we can test multiple directions. It allows businesses to take risks they couldn’t imagine, because they can see tangible possibilities. That, is business prototyping.

There’s an opportunity now as designers to get beneath the veneer of subjective aesthetics and establish design, and design thinking, at the heart of tomorrow’s businesses – an opportunity we should grab with both hands.

So, am I a graphic designer anymore?

source: http://blog.wolffolins.com/post/22729638252/how-design-thinking-finds-new-answers

The Innovation Sweet Spot

Extracted from The Innovation Sweet Spot


In 1984, Steve Jobs introduced the Macintosh to the world.  At that time, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, only 8.2% of American households had computers.  Jobs wanted to see a computer in every home. The Mac was designed to be “everyone’s computer”….not just a tool for scientists and tech types.  While the first generation Mac had some drawbacks, it eventually took off — along with its wildly popular sibling products.  In September of this year, Apple’s market capitalization was $624 Billion – worth more than all the listed companies in Portugal, Ireland, Greece, and Spain combined.

The greatest ideas are not necessarily created by sitting around and

brainstorming new inventions the world needs, but are derived from unmet

needs in your own life that are likely shared by others…

The Age of UX Design

Notes and snippets from Marcin Treder 

 An interface was considered an addition to great technology, usability was less important. Function was the main drive and success indicator.

(advanced)Features were seen to be more important over usability.

Users were suffering, and this was the rise of a new age of technology.

Fierce competition gave birth to a more vivid differentiation approach while technology became cheaper than ever. Consumers were flooded with cognitive overload and had an extremely short attention span.  

"great products create a great end-to-end experience: they shouldn’t be just usable, but seductive, pleasurable and inspiring."

YouTube, Airbnb, Flipboard, Square, Pinterest, Etsy, Path, AboutMe, Slideshare – all these well designed, successful products were co-founded by designers. Just think how Samsung and Apple fiercely fight over design patents. They want to conquer customers’ emotions with unique designs. Remind yourself of Microsoft, who surprised the design world with a coherent, beautiful system across devices – Windows 8. Google, the former engineers' kingdom, redesigned all its significant products and employs UX designers all over the world. And of course Apple, the most valuable company in the world, built its success on well-crafted designs. These are all signs of a change of paradigm.  

User experience design (abbreviation UX, UXD)
A discipline focused on designing the end-to-end experience of a certain product. To design an experience means to plan and act upon a certain set of actions, which should result in a planned change in the behaviour of a target group (when interacting with a product). A UX designer’s work should always be derived from people’s problems and aim at finding a pleasurable, seductive, inspiring solution. The results of that work should always be measurable through metrics describing user behaviour. UX designers use knowledge and methods that originate from psychology, anthropology, sociology, computer science, graphic design, industrial design and cognitive science. When you’re designing an experience, you are in fact planning a change in the behaviour of your target group. You’ve found out their problem and you’re trying to destroy the burden using design methods. User experience lies at the crossroads of art and science and requires both extremely acute analytical thinking and creativity.  

Designing a door handle
> Think about the need to open doors
> Is the door handle usable?
> Does it encourage people to open doors?
> Does it provide a unique experience?
> Does it make the user want to open doors twice as enthusiastically as before?  

Solving UX problems
Spot it, define it, feel the pain it causes and eliminate it. That’s the highway to great user experience.

Unique Value Proposition 
(a single, clear sentence describing the way you’re different from your competitors and why you’re worth buying) and the canvas depicts your idea, key partners and resources, and your model of revenue.

Always remember that in any commercial project UX design cannot be separated from the business model of a product.

Ogilvy’s Tips On Advertising, Meeting Clients, Writing Copies

From the man that said "if it doesn't sell, it isn't creative"

The 10 Faces of Innovation

LEARNING
1 Anthropologist
2 Experimenter
3 Cross-Pollinator
ORGANIZING
4 Hurdler
5 Collaborator
6 Director
BUILDING
7 Experience Architect
8 Set Designer
9 Caregiver
10 Storyteller





10 vs 1. 1 being the Devil's Advocate 

by David Kelly (GM at IDEO) 

Consumerism

“People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole!” I read this somewhere online, believed to be said by a consumer marketing guru. I just couldn't agree more to this statement. Now if we reflect on every product we have ever purchased, say for the iPhone, what was it that we really wanted? A phone to call others and be contacted? Or was it something else? Update: The man who said this analogy is Professor Theodore Levitt.

Mark Farrow / Visualizing Music

HUNGER TV - MARK FARROW - VISUALISING MUSIC from Hunger TV on Vimeo.

Mark Farrow loves music, and this is how it all started.