Rohan Gunatillake, the lead producer of festivalslab (the Edinburgh Festival Innovations Lab) gives four reasons why new thinking and tools can produce better experiences.

“Here at the Edinburgh Festivals Innovation Lab, we explore how to best use new thinking and new tools to make the experience of the twelve major Edinburgh festivals even better – for audiences, performers and the festivals organisations themselves. As part of this ongoing work, this week saw the launch of Festivals Design DNA, a project which began life as a simple question: what happens if we approached innovation through the eyes of a designer, and in particular a service designer?

Working together with Glasgow-based service design agency Snook, we have created a set of practical tools to help cultural organisations use the principles and approaches of service design to improve the experiences they produce – supporting the innovation process all the way from ideation to delivery.”

Read article

The Interaction-Design.org Foundation is a labour of love founded by Mads Soegaard in 2002, and in 2010, his wife, Rikke Dam, joined the project (and their exotic office on a semi-deserted island in Thailand). Apart from Rikke and Mads, hundreds of people have helped out and continue to do so.

They are on a mission to make free and open educational materials: There are so many great minds in the human-computer interaction and interaction design community and they want to empower these authors to reach all their interested readers around the world.

Their currently featured chapter (one out of nine) is an authoritative overview of Social Computing by Tom Erickson – veteran researcher at IBM Research Lab. It includes 9 HD videos filmed in Copenhagen and commentaries by renowned designers/researchers like Elizabeth Churchill from Yahoo! and Andrea Forte.

Read chapter (and watch videos)

Nokia releases a new phone concept – Gem – which “revolutionizes mobile design by turning the entire handset into a touchscreen”.

Launched on the 25th anniversary of the Nokia Research Centre, the GEM device changes appearance from camera to phone or map according to the function selected by the user. It could even display advertising messages on the back of the phone.

The back and front are also interactive, making it possible to pinch and zoom the rear of the phone while getting a constant clear view of the image on the front.

Read announcement (with concept video)

Article by Experientia® collaborator Irene Cassarino, with additional input from Jan-Christoph Zoels.

 

How do you create community services and business models for a carbon neutral building block before the buildings stand?

Thirty Finnish entrepreneurs came together last Tuesday (20 September 2011) in Helsinki to present innovative business and service models for a carbon neutral to negative building block in the Helsinki docklands Jätkäsaari.

Campers are urban enthusiasts that were challenged to develop entrepreneurial projects around sustainable living in a urban environment – with the ultimate aim of activating the Low2No vision beyond the perimeter of the 22.000 sqm of the Airut* block on Jätkäsaari.

The Low2No Camp was sponsored by Sitra, the Finnish Innovation Fund, and supported by Demos Helsinki and Experientia.

 

On Tuesday afternoon, the Campers presented their concept ideas to an audience of stakeholders, experts and possible investors.

Indeed, while for us (the designers) the event had the bittersweet flavour of closure, for the Campers it was just the beginning of a possible entrepreneurial path. Their adventure started in June, when – along with the Demos Helsinki crew – they sustainably travelled (boat + train) to the Maker Lab in Berlin. Refreshed and excited through the intense and multicultural brainstorming sessions, they came back to Helsinki with five preliminary ideas to be grown into concept and eventually entrepreneurial proposals.

 

When we met them after their Berlin campaign, the five teams of Campers were so excited about their oversea experience that helping them to boil down their ideas into viable concepts has been at the same time amazing and challenging.

Not all propositions survived the Summer break and – as always happens when voluntary effort and self motivation are the main drivers of action – the geometry of teams also changed. They all have another job after all, as the majority of budding entrepreneurs have, and some people’s availability decreased when the new season started.

 

The five ventures presented at the final events were – in brief:

1. 100 ways to Eden is a social enterprise that makes urban food production as integral part of our everyday life.

The carbon footprint of an industrialised food production is enormous, not to mention other negative impacts on nature, social environment and health.

The most effective way to improve the situation is to turn urban food consumers into urban food producers. This change will be possible through intensive research, education, development and networking. There is a greener and better future for all.

The first projects that will make the “shift to Eden” start to happen within next few years include:

• Multiple “Laaritalkoot”: service of small scale planters, greenhuts, composters, aquaponics (see below) etc.
• Experimental “Green lighthouse” serves as community and information hub.
• Edenet: Web services for information, discussion, networking, support from the growing urban community of gardeners.

Team members: Pinja Sipari, Kirmo Kivelä, Kaisa Nirkkonen, Tomi Oravainen, Minna Ritoluoma

2. Aquaponics Finland designs and commercialises hydroponic irrigation and gardening systems. Aquaponics aims at replacing traditional issues surrounding access to food by essentially bringing scalable farming into the home, into the courtyard – including a warehouse scenario that in addition to supporting local food demands, handles logistics for local aquaponics users.

The project (slide presentation) will enable a considerable decrease in carbon impact due to reduced transportation, processing of food & logistics, with the added benefit of having fresh organic food grown within the fiber of the community.

Team members: Antti Kirjalainen, Peter Kuria

 

3. Pukuhuone.fi – ”Dressing Room” is an ecological style guide which believes in style before fashion, sharing before ownership and storytelling before ignorance.

It brings together local designers and artisans, vintage shops, flea markets, tailors and shoemakers, laundries and repair services to create a platform which leads the consumer to dress up with a bit more love and care.

On a larger scale pukuhuone.fi aims to slow down fashion, speed up sharing and make old (recycled, shared, something with a story) more valuable than new (anonymous, with no personality, silent).

Pukuhuone.fi fights against faceless mass production, poor quality materials, information overload and fast fashion which creates needs people don’t really have. Style will save us but we need good storytellers to make that happen.

Team members: Hanna Linkola, Outi Ugas, Anniina Nurmi, Minna Ainoa, Laura Puromies, Outi Pyy, Arto Sivonen

 

4. School of Activism is a world-traveling series of urban activist workshops and festivals: a platform for those who shape our urban future.

Two groups of 30 selected participants – activists, producers, innovators, artists, and allround urban mavericks from all around the globe – come together in a new city each year for two weeks worth of creative sessions, lectures by urban luminaries, and unforgettable urban interventions.

The School organises workshops both from pioneering mavericks of old and trailblazing innovators of the present, followed by sessions that put that breadth of knowledge and inspiration into practice to solve urban problems.

School of activisms offers the chance to solve actual problems in some of the host city’s suburbs: with plenty of time to chat on cool new ideas, get to know each other, get a glimpse into local happenings and places, and ask the questions people were always keen on asking.

Team members: Heta Kuchka, Arto Sivonen and Olli Sirén

5. Ab Hukkatila Oy – Ab Waste Ltd does toward space what internet did toward information.

Hukkatila is an development company with an eye on urban places that are empty, underused, or shunned but do have potential because of their location, demand for certain functions in the area, their unique design, unintentional and unseen attractiveness and functions. Development strategies focus are temporary usage, mixed use or ‘life after urban death’ scenarios.

The goal is to create more enjoyable urban environment, regenerate the local communities, promote mixed use of places and develop replicable concepts of synergistic space and property sharing.

Hukkatila exploits sophisticated place-bound architecture, integrated with urban food and energy saving ecosystems, open source apps for built environment, in order to make unlikely processes and collaborations happen.

Team members: Eve Astala, Virkkala Inari, Inari Penttilä, Jaakko Lehtonen, Lari Lohikoski

 

Camper Eero Yli-Vakkuri also took the chance to present No Chair Design Challenge, the provoking challenge to worldwide designers not to design any chairs for all 2012.

Are you a designer? Then look at the tutorial (video).

During their presentations Campers collected plenty of audience feedback. Next steps include a colloquium with an experienced VC and business mentor from Sitra to advice teams business and managerial approach.

Good luck to all from Experientia!

 

* The Airut Block

The block which is the result of the Low2No project will be called Airut.

Airut signifies a “forerunner” and “messenger” in Finnish, thus it is conceptually easy to link to the idea and spirit of Low2No. The block aims to be a forerunner in sustainable building and construction, as well as to spread and promote the ideas of the Low2No model of sustainable urban living.

Airut is an old Finnish word which has Germanic roots. It has been used in spoken language for about 1000 years, and was introduced in written language for the first time in 1745.

It is not commonly used in Finnish spoken language today, thus it has a fresh sound to it. Also, it can rarely be found in brand or company names.

 

Links:
- Low2No website
- Low2No Camp
- Profiles of Campers
- Low2No campers facebook page
- Demos Finland website

A week ago Mayo Clinic — the world’s largest and first integrated nonprofit medical practice — hosted the Transform symposium in Rochester, Minn., USA.

The event focused on innovations and designing solutions to transform the experience and delivery of health care.

Videos of most of presentations are now online. Speakers are listed here in the order of the presentation schedule.

 
SESSION: DESIGNING SOLUTIONS

Opening [18:26] by John Hockenberry
Journalist and Commentator
Four-time Peabody Award winner and four-time Emmy Award winner John Hockenberry has broad experience as a journalist and commentator for more than three decades. Currently, Hockenberry is host of the live public radio morning news program “The Takeaway,” produced by Public Radio International and WNYC New York. He is a former anchor for MSNBC and correspondent for NBC News, ABC News, and National Public Radio. He has been a regular commentator for “The Infinite Mind” radio program on mental health issues and host of the four-part Public Broadcasting Service documentary “Remaking American Medicine.”

Design for social impact [11:26] by William Drenttel
Director, Winterhouse Institute, and Publisher, Design Observer
William Drenttel is a partner at Winterhouse, a design practice in northwest Connecticut that focuses on online publishing, health care and education, and design programs of social impact. He is the publisher and editorial director of Design Observer, the leading international website about design, urbanism, social innovation and visual culture.

“Prove it” kills innovation [19:57] by Roger Martin
Dean, Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto
Martin writes extensively for newspapers and magazines, including Financial Times, BusinessWeek, Washington Post, Fast Company and The Globe & Mail. For Harvard Business Review, he has written 11 articles and authors a regular blog. His books include The Responsibility Virus (2002), The Opposable Mind (2007), The Design of Business (2009), and the forthcoming Fixing the Game (May 2011), plus two books co-authored with Mihnea Moldoveanu, The Future of the MBA (2008) and Diaminds (2009). In 2010, he was named by BusinessWeek as one of the 27 most influential designers in the world. The previous year, The Times (of London) and Forbes.com included him as one of the 50 top management thinkers in the world (#32).

Small x Many [18.10] by David Webster
Partner at IDEO, Global Health & Wellness Practice Lead
David Webster knows from experience that design thinking can massively improve the health care ecosystem for patients, professionals and organizations. He is inspired by the rapid escalation of technologies and a new generation of colleagues who are looking to create meaningful impact in the field. He sees a broad range of opportunities for innovation, from advancing surgical tools to developing consumer brands that make healthful eating irresistible.

Designing Solutions: Through the Patient’s Eyes [22:53] by Chris Hacker
Chief Design Officer, Global Strategic Design Office, Johnson & Johnson Group of Consumer Companies
Hacker’s passion is bringing awareness to designers of their power in the business world to make sustainable design a key paradigm of design process and, therefore, make the products and materials produced more ecologically friendly to the planet.

Hanky Pancreas [07:06] by Jessica Floeh
Designer
Jessica Floeh, a human-centered designer and 2010 graduate of Parsons The New School For Design, began Hanky Pancreas™ during her master’s thesis, addressing a theme of design, technology, and the human condition. For her research, she focused on the socio-psychological impact of wearable diabetes technologies and worked with a group of women with diabetes in New York. Through them, she was inspired to create designs that would ignite conversation and support in everyday environments.

 
SESSION: CORPORATE CREATIVITY

Changing The Way People Eat [17:29] by Dondeena Bradley, Ph.D.
Vice President, Global Design and Development, Nutrition Ventures PepsiCo
Designing and developing holistic solutions that target the special nutritional needs of consumers who have diverse health issues, such as obesity and diabetes.

Mastering Work [18:53] by James Hackett
President and Chief Executive Officer, Steelcase Inc.
James Hackett is president and chief executive officer and director of Steelcase Inc., the global leader in the office furniture industry. Steelcase delivers a better work experience to its customers by providing products, services and insights into the ways people work. Its portfolio includes architecture, furniture and technology products.

Who was the Shooter’s Doctor? Away from Episodes of Care [21:11] by Paul Grundy, M.D., M.P.H., FACOEM, FACPM
Director, IBM Healthcare Transformation
An active social entrepreneur and speaker on global health care transformation, Dr. Grundy is focused on comprehensive, linked, and integrated health care and the concept of the Patient Centered Medical Home.

Discussion about the role of design in a tech-driven healthcare company [32:25] with Beth Comstock and Bob Schwartz
Respectively Senior Vice President/Chief Marketing Officer and General Manager of Global Design, GE
Beth Comstock leads the company’s organic growth and commercial innovation initiatives, and the sales, marketing and communications functions. She is responsible for the GE-wide business platforms ecomagination, devoted to reducing environmental impact with new technology, and healthymagination, focused on achieving sustainable health through innovation by lowering costs, improving quality and reaching more people.
Bob Schwartz is responsible for overseeing the Global Design function encompassing human factors, industrial design, ergonomics, and user interface and design research. As a strategic driver of business growth, his team focuses on the look, feel, usability and end-to-end experience of GE Healthcare (GEHC) products and services.

 
SESSION: RABBLE ROUSERS

Connective Tissue: What’s a designer to do? [33:24] by Allan Chochinov
Partner and Editor in Chief, Core77; Chair, MFA Products of Design, SVA
Allan Chochinov is a partner of Core77, a New York-based design network serving a global community of designers and design enthusiasts, and Chair of the new MFA in Products of Design graduate program at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.

Integrative Innovation [15:21] by Halle Tecco
Founder and Managing Director, RockHealth
RockHealth is the first seed-accelerator devoted exclusively to health apps. Tecco recognized the need and potential for startups in the interactive health space while working at Apple’s App Store covering the health and medical vertical.

Hello Health [28:47] by Jay Parkinson
Physician and Co-founder of Hello Health
Instead of pills and scalpels, Jay Parkinson, M.D., M.P.H., uses creative design to improve health. He is a pediatrician and preventive medicine specialist with a master’s degree in Public Health from Johns Hopkins. Dr. Parkinson appreciates aesthetics, our rapidly changing culture, and our health. And he straddles lines: Both pop culture and traditional health care have embraced his ideas. He is a partner in The Future Well, which creates engaging experiences that inspire health and happiness.

Health Leads [21:51] by Rebecca Onie
Co-founder of Health Leads
Last year, Health Leads trained and mobilized a corps of 660 college volunteers serving nearly 6,000 low-income patients and their families in Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, New York, Providence, R.I. and Washington, D.C.

Design at the Mayo Center for Innovation [23:43] by Lorna Ross
Creative Lead and Manager, Mayo Clinic Center for Innovation Design Team
Lorna Ross has 16 years’ experience working in design and design research, with the past nine years focused on health and health care. She is a graduate of The Royal College of Art, London.

 
SESSION: COMMUNITY INTERVENTIONS

Cultural Co-Morbidities [23:12] by John Thackara
Writer, educator and design producer
At Transform 2011, John will share with us the story of two projects he commissioned in the UK: Alzheimer 100 which is about the collaborative design of services to support caregivers; and DaSH [Design and Sexual Health] whose focus is on distributed Peer-to-Peer health information exchange. He will describe what happened as these two live prototypes impacted on the larger health and policy ecology.

The ECHO Project [17:07] by Sanjeev Arora, M.D., FACP, FACG
Director of Project ECHO (Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes)
Dr. Arora developed the Project ECHO model as a platform for service delivery, education and evaluation. Using video-conferencing technology and case-based learning, primary care providers from rural and underserved areas and prisons are trained and mentored by ECHO’s medical specialists to deliver best-practice management of complex health conditions in their communities or correctional institutions. A key component of the ECHO model is an innovation known as Knowledge Networks, in which the expertise of a single specialist is shared with numerous primary providers through telehealth clinics, thereby increasing access to care in rural areas without having to recruit, retain and fund additional providers.

Overshooting the moon [32:06] by Joseph Kolars, M.D.
Professor of Medicine, Senior Associate Dean for Education and Global Initiatives University of Michigan Medical School
Joseph Kolars obtained his M.D. degree in 1982 from the University of Minnesota Medical School, pursued internal medicine training in Minneapolis, and completed postgraduate training in gastroenterology at the University of Michigan in 1989. At the University of Michigan he oversees the associate deans responsible for the education programs, as well as global health initiatives for the medical school. Over the past four years, much of his work has focused on innovations that strengthen education systems to improve care in Africa and China.

Empowering Architecture [24:34] by Michael Murphy
Executive Director, MASS Design Group
Michael Murphy co-founded the MASS Design Group in 2008. Murphy’s firm led the design and construction of the Butaro Hospital in Rwanda, which opened in January 2011.

Food Oasis [05:17] by John Crowley
Director, Engineering Group, MAYA
Crowley led the MAYA team that created FoodOasis, an end-to-end platform for closing the gap on healthy, affordable food. The FoodOasis solution focused on a critical consumer need and developed a complete solution to benefit consumers, providers and communities. MAYA believes that the challenges in health care today can only be addressed with a similar, systems-level approach that focuses on the deep, real-world challenges of consumers to drive toward business and public-sector innovation.

 
SESSION: INSPIRING HEALTH

Creating Consumers in Healthcare [19:13] by Dawn M. Owens
Chief Executive Officer, OptumHealth
Dawn Owens is chief executive officer of OptumHealth, a UnitedHealth Group business and one of the nation’s largest health and wellness companies. She leads nearly 11,000 employees in delivering information, tools and solutions that people use to navigate the health care system, finance health care needs and achieve their wellness goals.

Meet the Patient [19:34] by Gianna Marzilli Ericson and Augusta Meill
Respectively Senior Strategist Service Design and Vice President, Continuum
Gianna Marzilli Ericson combines expertise in research and design to understand people’s needs, desires and behaviors and to create compelling experiences based on that understanding. She is passionate about improving health sector services and believes wholeheartedly in the power of social science and design to inform each other.
Augusta Meill believes in the power of design to change lives. As a vice president at Continuum, a global design and innovation consultancy, she works with clients to drive business impact by creating experiences that make a real difference for people.

Paths to Resilience [25:49] by Andrew Zolli
Futures Researcher
Andrew Zolli is a futures researcher who studies the complex forces at the intersection of technology, sustainability and global society that are shaping our future. He is the Curator of PopTech, the thought leadership and social innovation network, which has pioneered new programs to train social innovators and scientists; and spurred significant advances in mobile healthcare, education, sustainability, and a number of related fields.

Anatomy of a Tweet [14:25] by Maggie Breslin
Senior Designer/Researcher, Center for Innovation, Mayo Clinic
Maggie Breslin believes strongly that good conversation is a critically important, but largely ignored, component of our health care system and champions this idea whenever she can.

I Like Doctors” [27:11] by Dave deBronkart
Patient Advocate, e-Patient Dave
Dave deBronkart, better known on the Internet as “e-Patient Dave,” may be the leading spokesperson for the e-Patient movement. e-Patients are described as empowered, engaged, equipped and enabled.

In Studio: Recipes for Systemic Change
by Bryan Boyer, Justin W. Cook, Marco Steinberg
Helsinki Design Lab (HDL) / Sitra
2011, 337 pages
> Free download
> Blog post

This book explores the HDL Studio Model, a unique way of bringing together the right people, a carefully framed problem, a supportive place, and an open-ended process to craft an integrated vision and sketch the pathway towards strategic improvement. It’s particularly geared towards problems that have no single owner.

It includes an introduction to Strategic Design, a “how-to” manual for organizing Studios, and three practical examples of what an HDL Studio looks like in action. Geoff Mulgan, CEO of NESTA, has written the foreword and Mikko Kosonen, President of Sitra, contributed the afterword.

About The Authors

Bryan Boyer
At Sitra, Bryan is a part of the Strategic Design Unit where he focuses on building the Helsinki Design Lab initia- tive to foster strategic design as a way of working in Finland and abroad. This includes the Studio Model, as well as the HDL Global event and website. In his spare time Bryan searches for innovative uses of walnuts, a fascination that stems from growing up on a walnut farm in California. Previously Bryan has worked as an independent architect, software programmer, and technology entrepreneur. He received his BFA with Honors from the Rhode Island School of Design, and his M.Arch from the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

Justin W. Cook
As Sitra’s Sustainable Design Lead, Justin is working at the intersection of climate change and the built environment. He led content development for the Low2No competition and is focusing on Low2No as a development model that aims to balance economy, ecology and society through strategic investments and interventions in existing cities. He has previously worked in the Renzo Piano Building Workshop in Genova, Italy; as a design researcher on the Harvard Stroke Pathways project; and was the principal of a design-build firm in Seattle. Justin received his BA from the University of Washington and his M.Arch from the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

Marco Steinberg
Marco directs Sitra’s internal strategic design efforts, charting new forward-oriented opportunities to help Sitra meet its mission of enhancing Finland’s national innovation ability and well being. In addition to Helsinki Design Lab he is responsible for the concept and design-development of Low2No, a transitional strategy to create sustainable urban development models in Finland through the implementation of a large scale development project in downtown Helsinki.
His previously experiences include: Professor at the Harvard Design School (1999-2009); advising governments on SME & design funding strategies; and running his own design & architecture practice. He received his BFA and BArch from Rhode Island School of Design and his MArch with Distinction from the Harvard Design School.

Megan Garber of the Nieman Journalism Lab recently visited the New York Times R&D Lab and updates us on the latest interface developments there.

The New York Times imagines the kitchen table of the future
August 30, 2011
The Times Co.’s R&D Lab is betting breakfast will be less about sharing out newsprint and more about swiping through stories, ambient commerce, and the quantified self.

Mirror, mirror: The New York Times wants to serve you info as you’re brushing your teeth
August 31, 2011
Meet the R&D Lab’s latest: a proof of concept in the form of a “magic mirror.”

Previous articles

The New York Times envisions version 2.0 of the newspaper
May 11, 2009

At the New York Times, preparing for a future across all platforms
May 12, 2009

The New York Times would like to join you in the living room
May 13, 2009

If The N.Y. Times were mounted on your wall, it might look like this
May 14, 2009

In the Times R&D Lab, the future of news is the future of advertising
May 15, 2009

A strong experience strategy, derived from qualitative user research and experience workshops, can bring a collected vision to your organization and not only identify the true value of your products but help you transform the way your company does business, argues Nick Myers on the Cooper blog.

“Like it or not, the digital world has changed at a wicked pace, and more and more interactions between companies and their customers now happen via an interface. Software serves us everywhere, and the user experience now shapes these interactions every day. At the center of all this change sits the brand. TV and print advertising now regularly feature digital experiences from the likes of Apple, Google, Toyota, GE, and Amazon. The visual interface has become the new face of your brand. [...]

The question has become: How can marketers connect customers and brands in the digital era, and direct their organizations to guide products that inspire lasting engagement?”

Read article

Historian Elin Whitney-Smith looks at previous periods of disruption to understand what companies (and people) are going through today.

“According to Elin Whitney-Smith, executives facing technological and economic change have a major decision to make: Will they handle disruption like the Spanish grandees who dominated the 17th-century economy or like the English weavers who supplanted them by embracing the printing press? This is only the sixth time since the dawn of civilization, says this long-wave theorist and economic historian, that human societies have faced a wave of change similar to the one that humanity is going through today. Each time, the disruption has been triggered by an innovation in information technology, which prompts a new form of organization. Today’s leaders have an advantage over the old guard in the five previous waves of change: They can see what’s happening more clearly. But whether they will heed the lessons of the past remains to be seen.”

Read interview

(via Roger Dennis)

In her New York Times review of Talk to Me (online journal), the latest exhibition by Paola Antonelli at the MoMA, Alice Rawsthorn describes what could be considered the essence of interaction design:

“Digital technology is enabling objects to become so complex and powerful that we now expect to interact with them. If you hand an unfamiliar object to a small child, he or she will instinctively search for buttons or sensors to operate it.

Though the same same microchips that enable things as small as smart phones to fulfill hundreds of different functions also make them more opaque. In the industrial era when form generally followed function, you could guess how to use an electronic product from its appearance. You can’t do that with a tiny digital device, which is why designers face the new challenge that Ms. Antonelli calls “script writing,” in other words, ensuring that the object can tell us how to use it.”

Read article

Make sure to also check the very rich online journal.

One of the people presenting at the DPPI conference in Milan last week was Aviaja Borup Lynggaard, an industrial Ph.D. scholar at Bang & Olufsen (B&O), attached to the Aarhus School of Architecture and Aarhus University.

Her very interesting Ph.D. project – which aims to inspire new B&O products – is called On the move – creating domesticity through experience design. It is part of the larger research project Mobile Home Center, which receives funding from Danish National Advanced Technology Foundation.

The project explores how to achieve a sense of home for people who travel extensively.

Together with researchers from The Danish School of Education, Aarhus University and the Aarhus School of Architecture, Aviaja Borup Lynggaard sets out to map how people manage a mobile lifestyle and to develop prototypes and concepts for products and services.

The project is guided by home researcher and anthropologist Ida Winther’s definition of the phenomenon home as an activity, ‘homing’, defined as something one does to achieve a sense of being at home, wherever one is currently located.

The goal is to study how interaction design can help promote this sense of home and facilitate homing.

Aviaja Borup Lynggaard’s project is focused on people who have an extremely mobile lifestyle, including B&O customers with heavy travel activity between multiple homes or hotels.

The project applies a user-centred design process that actively involves the customers in the design process from start to finish through ethnographic studies, interviews and trials of concepts and prototypes for new products.

The Ph.D. project will foster a range of products and services for subsequent development at B&O.

Three recent papers provide more background:

Home awareness – connecting people sensuously to places (pdf – 09/2010)
People living a global lifestyle connect remotely to their families while away from home. In this paper we identify a need for connecting with a home as the physical place itself. For this purpose we introduce the concept of Home Awareness that connects people sensuously to remote places through sound, light and feeling of temperature. A working prototype has been successfully tested and we present some results from early user studies.

Tactics for homing in mobile life – a fieldwalk study of extremely mobile people (pdf – 09/2010)
For many people home making is an activity, which extends beyond a single house. We introduce the terminology of Homing as the act of home making, when in a primary home, secondary home or more temporary spaces. By point of departure in existing literature on home making and through ethnographic studies of extremely mobile people we identify general tactics for homing. We present the identified tactics and show how people deploy not only one but several tactics in their intention of making a homely feeling despite not being in their primary home.
Reviewing the mobile technologies currently in use we argue that several of the tactics identified are currently not well supported. We discuss how technology design can learn from this study through pointing to the potential in designing mobile technologies to better support these unsupported tactics.
We consider the tactics as a tool for deeper understanding of mobile practices and thus informing the design of more relevant future technologies for people engaged in a mobile lifestyle.

On the move : creating domesticity through experience design (pdf – 10/2010)
This paper is a summary of the Ph.D. project about home and mobility. The project concerns design for mobile life and through various prototypes it is an investigation of how to support the act of home making away from the primary home.

Imagine when a journey from A to B is no longer routine, as your car in the near-future encourages a sense of play, exploration and learning.

This is the image engineers and designers from Toyota Motor Europe (TME) and the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design (CIID) had for Toyota’s “Window to the World” vehicle concept, which was recently exhibited at the ACEA exhibition: “Our Future Mobility Now”.

The concept re-defines the relationship between passengers in a vehicle and the world around it, by transforming the vehicle’s windows into an interactive interface. Using augmented reality, what used to be a pane of glass, begins to provide passengers with information about landmarks and other objects as they go past. The window can also be used as a canvas for drawings, which then interacts with the passing environment.

Engineers and designers from TME’s Kansei Design Division teamed up with CIID to develop this concept in the context of near-future mobility. Instead of creating a concept simply with strong visual aesthetics, they aimed to create beautiful and intangible experiences to address specific needs and desires, to bring genuine value to the vehicle’s passengers.

Through the latest advances in augmented technology, TME Kansei Division and CIID developed five concepts for Toyota’s “Window to the World”.

Read press release and watch video

Imagine a world in which we are assigned a number that indicates how influential we are. This number would help determine whether you receive a job, a hotel-room upgrade or free samples at the supermarket. If your influence score is low, you don’t get the promotion, the suite or the complimentary cookies. This is not science fiction. It’s happening to millions of social network users. Stephanie Rosenbloom reports on it in The New York Times.

“Companies with names like Klout, PeerIndex and Twitter Grader are in the process of scoring millions, eventually billions, of people on their level of influence — or in the lingo, rating “influencers.” Yet the companies are not simply looking at the number of followers or friends you’ve amassed. Rather, they are beginning to measure influence in more nuanced ways, and posting their judgments — in the form of a score — online.

To some, it’s an inspiring tool — one that’s encouraging the democratization of influence. No longer must you be a celebrity, a politician or a media personality to be considered influential. Social scoring can also help build a personal brand. To critics, social scoring is a brave new technoworld, where your rating could help determine how well you are treated by everyone with whom you interact.”

Read article

A road(map) to sustainability: How an Expo centre can become low-impact

The Event project, funded by Flanders In Shape, a Flemish design promotion agency, created a framework for the Kortrijk Xpo centre to become the most environmentally sustainable trade fair and congress complex in Belgium by 2020 and a top five player in Europe. Experientia and Futureproofed created an environmental roadmap to guide Kortrijk Xpo in achieving its ambitious objective.

The roadmap detailed steps to take over a ten-year time-frame, and included a benchmark of sustainable expo centres from around the world, a calculation of the carbon footprint resulting from expo activities, tailored reduction targets, a behavioural change framework, and over 100 carbon reduction concepts.

These focused on reducing travel and providing alternative transport means, harnessing the potential of social networking and building conference communities, and motivating and encouraging all stakeholders, including conference attendees, to participate in the change to more sustainable practices.

As Europe approaches the 2020 deadline for the EU’s European Energy Policy, the roadmap will help position Kortrijk Xpo as a far-sighted leader in sustainable practices for temporary events.

- Read article
- Download illustrated pdf

On 29 March, Experientia partner Mark Vanderbeeken chaired the European SEE Conference on integrating design into regional and national policies.

The high-level conference, which also featured Peter Dröll, the European Commission’s Head of Innovation Policy, was organised by the SEE project, a network of eleven European partners engaging with national and regional governments to integrate design into innovation policy.

The summary of the event is now available on pages 10 to 12 of the latest SEE Bulletin, the only publication entirely dedicated to exploring matters related to design policies and programmes for design support.

Also in the publication:
- A discussion on design supply and demand and the policy repercussions by Dr Qian Sun of the University of Salford;
- A policy map with interviews from Italy, Finland, Estonia and South Korea;
- Background on Dublin’s bid For World Design Capital 2014;
- Case study on Argentina’s seminar programme ‘Design and Business, Concepts that Merge’;
- Case study on Wales’ Service Design Programme;
- A short concluding reflection on the SEE project legacy.

Download SEE Bulletin Issue 6

(Conference presentation and audio recordings are also available for download)

Experientia wins Italian National Prize for Innovation in Services, sponsored by the Italian government and Confcommercio.
The President of the Republic, Giorgio Napolitano, awards the prize.
 

Rome, Tuesday 14 June 2011

Today, the president of the Italian republic, Giorgio Napolitano, awarded Experientia srl with the prestigious National Prize for Innovation in Services, for their project Low2No, for having “planned a residential area in Finland with low CO2 emissions, using innovative methodologies devised in Italy.”

Experientia is an international experience design consultancy based in Turin, Italy, which helps international companies and organizations to innovate their products, services and processes by putting people and their experiences first.

The winning project, Low2No (also known as C-Life), details Experientia’s role in the development and implementation of service offers for a low-to-no carbon emissions building development in Helsinki, involving user-centred service and participatory design methods. The entire construction project will be completed in 2013.

At the award ceremony at the Quirinale (the Italian presidential palace), Michele Visciola, the president of Experientia, accompanied by the CEO Pierpaolo Perotto, received the prize from President Napolitano.

“It is an honour for us to receive this prize from the hands of the President of the Republic,” Visciola declared, “It demonstrates that in Italy, we have young, quality businesses that can compete on an international level in terms of excellence.”

Jan-Christoph Zoels, the director of the service design project, highlighted the importance of the project by stating, “Beautiful and well-engineered, sustainable houses are not enough. Half of the contribution to a community’s carbon footprint is based on people’s lifestyles. We aim to support sustainable lifestyles and services during a building’s entire lifetime.”

Experientia has worked on the planning and design of services, to create, within the Low2No project, a “Food Hub” (offering services related to the purchase, consumption and sharing of regional, organic food, an ethical and sustainable alternative to the products commonly offered in the Finnish market); an “Eco-laundry” (using highly efficient practices and detergents with a low environmental impact); and a communal, wood-fuelled sauna (an eco-friendly response to the presence of a private electric sauna in most Finnish homes).

During the day, at a separate event organised by the ConfCommercio and hosted by ConfCommerico president Carlo Sangalli, the representatives from Experientia, including senior partners Jan-Christoph Zoels and Mark Vanderbeeken, and project team member Camilla Masala, met with the press and public.
 

WHO IS EXPERIENTIA?

Experientia is an international experience design consultancy based in Turin, Italy, which helps international companies and organizations to innovate their products, services and processes by putting people and their experiences first. Experientia puts people and their experiences, past and future, at the centre of strategic innovation, guiding the company’s processes of research, strategy development, solution creation, prototype design and testing.
 

THE PRIZE

The National Prize for Innovation was founded by the Italian government as a key initiative of the National Day of Innovation, an annual event to raise citizens’ awareness of the theme of innovation. It is also an opportunity for the principle public and private actors to take stock of the state of innovation in the country and share identified strategic objectives within the European framework and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Through this prize, the government honours the best examples of creativity and innovation in the sectors of industry, design, university and public research, public administration and services, including financial services.

ConfCommercio, the Italian “Confederation of business, professional activities and autonomous work”, was responsible for the selection for the design section of the National Prize for Innovation in Services, which included “Innovation in Business”; “Innovation in Tourism”, “ICT and Service Design”. Experientia has won the prize for the ICT and Service Design category.

This year, the National Day of Innovation holds particular significance, not only because of the presence of the President of the Republic Giorgio Napolitano, and the Minister for public administration and innovation Renato Brunetta, but because it coincides with the celebrations of 150 years of Italian Unity.
 

THE PROJECT

The winning project, Low2No (also known as C-Life), aims to facilitate behavioural change for more sustainable lifestyles. Experientia has designed a service platform for the low-to-no carbon emissions building development in Helsinki, involving user-centred service and participatory design methods.

The Low2No service platform represents one of the principle points of contact with the soul and mission of the zone. It will contribute to making sustainability an integral part of the daily activities and lives of the residents and workers of the area. It will support locals in adopting the change and transformation of their usual habits, and give them the possibility to communicate and compare themselves with their peers, through the project’s elements of participation and socialisation.

The project is a collaborative effort between international engineering and planning firm Arup (London), architectural firm Sauerbruch Hutton (Berlin), and user experience design consultancy Experientia, on behalf of Finnish Innovation Fund Sitra, the developer SRV and the housing agency VVO. Experientia’s dual role on the team involves the design of an advanced smart metering system (a digital energy-consumption metre) for residential households, and the design and implementation of a service platform for the entire zone.

Low2No is a mixed-use block. It comprises 14,000 square metres of mixed residential space (both rental and privately owned) with 6,500 square metres of office space and a business incubator and 1,800 square metres of commercial space.

The involvement of future residents and entrepreneurs in identifying their needs and generating shared ideas and solutions has a created a user-centric service platform, within which the client represents more than a simple final element of the chain, but becomes a key actor in the implementation and supply of the services themselves.
 

CONTACT
Mark Vanderbeeken, Experientia srl, +39 011 812 9687, info at experientia dot com
 

Experientia vince la terza edizione del Premio Nazionale per l’Innovazione nei Servizi, istituito dal Governo Italiano e Confcommercio-Imprese per l’Italia.
Il Presidente della Repubblica Giorgio Napolitano consegna il premio.
 

Roma, martedì 14 giugno 2011

Oggi il Presidente della Repubblica Italiana Giorgio Napolitano ha insignito Experientia Srl del prestigioso Premio Nazionale per l’Innovazione nei Servizi per il suo progetto C-Life/Low2No, “per aver progettato in Finlandia un quartiere cittadino a bassa emissione di CO2 con metodologie innovative elaborate in Italia“.

Experientia Srl è una società di consulenza internazionale con sede a Torino, fondata per aiutare aziende e organizzazioni ad innovare i propri prodotti, servizi e processi attraverso una piena valorizzazione dell’esperienza degli utenti.

Low2No è un progetto che mira alla realizzazione entro il 2013 di un quartiere a impatto zero in un’area della città di Helsinki. Il nome Low2No fa riferimento alla caratteristica del progetto di ridurre progressivamente le emissioni di anidride carbonica generate, partendo da un basso (“low”) impatto delle stesse fino a (‘‘to’’ oppure “2”) raggiungere zero emissioni (“no”).

Alla cerimonia di premiazione al Quirinale era presente Michele Visciòla, Presidente di Experientia Srl, che accompagnato dall’Amministratore Delegato Pierpaolo Perotto, ha ricevuto il premio dal Presidente Napolitano.

“Per noi è un onore ricevere questo premio dalle mani del Presidente della Repubblica – ha dichiarato Visciòla – ed è la dimostrazione che in Italia esistono qualità ed imprese giovani in grado di competere nello scenario internazionale su piani di eccellenza”.

Per Jan-Christoph Zoels, direttore del progetto, “Case belle e ben progettate con i criteri della sostenibilità non bastano. Un buon 50% del contributo all’impatto di CO2 di una comunità dipende dai comportamenti di consumo di energia e dallo stile di vita delle persone. Dobbiamo progettare le condizioni affinché si affermino stili di vita sostenibili e servizi adeguati per tutto il ciclo di vita degli edifici.”

Experientia sta progettando alcuni servizi che permetteranno di creare, all’interno del quartiere, nuove imprese: ci sarà un centro denominato Food Hub (una complessa offerta di servizi legati all’acquisto, consumo e condivisione del cibo, un’alternativa etica e sostenibile ai prodotti abitualmente reperibili sul mercato finlandese); un centro “Eco-laundry” (un servizio di lavanderia altamente efficiente, basato sull’utilizzo di prodotti detergenti a basso impatto ambientale), e un centro di Sauna tradizionale comune (alimentata a legna e all’interno del quale saranno a disposizione differenti servizi).

Nel corso della giornata, in un evento congiunto organizzato da Confcommercio e presieduto dal Presidente Carlo Sangalli, i soci fondatori di Experientia, Pierpaolo Perotto, Mark Vanderbeeken, Michele Visciòla, Jan-Christoph Zoels e una delle collaboratrici al progetto Low2No Camilla Masala hanno preso parte agli incontri con la stampa ed il pubblico.
 

CHI E’ EXPERIENTIA

Experientia Srl è una società di consulenza internazionale con sede a Torino, fondata per aiutare aziende e organizzazioni ad innovare i propri prodotti, servizi e processi attraverso una piena valorizzazione dell’esperienza degli utenti. L’obiettivo di Experientia è mettere le persone e le loro esperienze, future e passate, al centro delle strategie di innovazione realizzando ricerche, creando soluzioni, progettando prototipi e testandone i risultati.

Experientia, oltre che dai 4 soci fondatori, è partecipata con una quota del 20% da Finsa Consulting Srl technology for people, che si occupa di consulenza, sviluppo ed integrazione di soluzioni ICT e di Business Intelligence, con headquarter a Genova e uffici a Roma, Torino e Milano.
 

IL PREMIO

Il Premio Nazionale per l’innovazione è stato istituito nel 2008 dal Governo italiano (presieduto da Romano Prodi) come iniziativa chiave della Giornata Nazionale dell’Innovazione, un’occasione annuale di sensibilizzazione dei cittadini sui temi dell’innovazione e di coordinamento tra tutti i principali attori pubblici e privati per fare il punto sullo stato dell’innovazione nel Paese e condividere gli obiettivi strategici da raggiungere, anche nel quadro europeo e OCSE.

Attraverso questo premio il Governo vuole valorizzare le migliori esperienze d’innovazione nei settori dell’industria, del design, dell’università e della ricerca pubblica, della pubblica amministrazione e dei servizi, inclusi quelli bancari.

Confcommercio, la “Confederazione Generale Italiana delle Imprese, delle Attività Professionali e del Lavoro Autonomo”, è stata responsabile per la selezione della sezione del design dei servizi del Premio Nazionale dell’Innovazione, che comprende le seguenti categorie: “Innovazione nel Commercio”; “Innovazione nel Turismo”; “ICT & Service Design nei Servizi”. Experientia ha ricevuto il premio appartenente a quest’ultima categoria, che è relativa ai due migliori progetti di innovazione tecnologica o di applicazione di metodologie di Service Design o di Service Science Management and Engineering (SSME).

Quest’anno la Giornata Nazionale dell’Innovazione riveste particolare importanza non solo per la presenza del Presidente della Repubblica Giorgio Napolitano e del Ministro per la pubblica amministrazione e l’innovazione Renato Brunetta, ma anche per la coincidenza con i festeggiamenti dei 150 anni dell’Unità d’Italia.
 

IL PROGETTO

Il progetto vincitore, denominato originariamente “C-life” ma attualmente conosciuto al pubblico con il nome “Low2No”, rafforza l’impegno di Experientia nello sviluppo ed implementazione di offerte di design dei servizi e della progettazione partecipata e utente-centrica, in grado di facilitare il cambiamento di comportamenti del singolo nell’ottica della sostenibilità.

I servizi Low2No contribuiscono a rendere la sostenibilità parte integrante delle attività quotidiane e della vita di tutti i giorni. Incoraggia le persone a prendere parte e sentirsi parte all’interno del progetto di cambiamento e trasformazione delle abitudini consolidate, dando altresì la possibilità, attraverso elementi di partecipazione e socializzazione, di dialogare e confrontarsi con propri pari.

Il progetto è frutto della collaborazione tra Experientia, lo studio di architettura Sauerbruch Hutton di Berlino e la società di ingegneria ARUP di Londra. Il progetto è stato realizzato per conto del fondo governativo finlandese per l’innovazione SITRA, in collaborazione con l’agenzia per l’edilizia residenziale pubblica VVO e la società di sviluppo immobiliare SRV. Experientia è responsabile sia della progettazione di sistemi evoluti di smart metering (contatori digitali) per ambienti domestici sia della pianificazione e implementazione dell’offerta di servizi per l’intero quartiere.

Low2No rappresenta un’area ad insediamento misto, all’interno della quale ad una componente di edilizia residenziale mista (edilizia agevolata – vendita – affitto) di 14.000 mq si affiancano attività lavorative (6.500 mq di uffici e un incubatore d’impresa) e una complessa offerta di servizi (1.800 mq di spazi commerciali).

Il coinvolgimento degli utenti nell’identificazione dei bisogni e nella generazione di idee e soluzioni condivise creerà una piattaforma di servizi utente-centrici, all’interno della quale il cliente non rappresenta semplicemente un elemento finale della filiera, ma diventa un attore chiave nell’implementazione ed erogazione dei servizi stessi.
 

CONTATTO
Mark Vanderbeeken, Experientia srl, +39 011 812 9687, info at experientia dot com
 

Two talks from the 2011 PSFK conference caught my attention:

City as a platform (video)
In her role as Chief Digital Officer for the City of New York, Rachel Sterne is tasked with strengthening the City’s digital media presence and streamlining internal digital communications.
In her talk Sterne demonstrated recent innovations that are shaping the city’s future. Mentioning how city resident participation is crucial with a real-time approach, attendees were shown “The Daily Pothole,” a Tumblr that tracks the D.O.T.’s progress in filling potholes in the five boroughs and its companion app, the roll-out of QR code technology on building permits, the NYC 311 app, as well as fielding service requests via Twitter.

Industrial Design: ID For The City (alternate) (video)
Duncan Jackson and Eoin Billings (interview), are both partners at Billings Jackson, a design firm specializing in public spaces. They spoke about their work, history and how they bridge the gap between architecture and manufacturing. Instead of re-inventing the wheel, they appreciate and embrace the the urban landscape for what it is. Crafting solutions that interpret design vision in city environments is their forté and the duo explained the value in understanding the intricacies of each place, culture, and its residents before beginning a new project. Their approach is exemplified through their architectural work, with city life exuding from each structure rather then being blurred by it.

> Check also the video and PSFK report on the Microsoft Home of the Future.

With the help of medical technology companies WellDoc, Medtronic and SDI, the motor giant last Wednesday set out to prove that it’s concerned not only with the number of drivers it boasts, but with the health of those drivers, as well (announcement).

In a follow-up phone interview with FierceMobileHealthcare, WellDoc President and Chief Operating Officer Dr. Anand Iyer, whose company showed off its DiabetesManager service–which would work in correlation with the automaker’s voice-activated in-care connectivity system SYNC via the cloud–said he believes that the demonstration is the beginning of a new trend.

Read interview

On 15 March 2011 the DeST Research Unit of the INDACO Department of the Milan Politechnic together with the British Consulate General organised Designing Connectivity (pdf), a seminar on building and activating collaborative networks towards sustainability.

The seminar discussed projects that work with a variety of social and economical actors, including companies, territories and individuals, and the facilitating role that service design can play in this context.

“Connectivity is a key element in the current behavioural change approach, that started through the development of ICT technologies, and is nowadays branching out to underpin new ways to work, produce, socialise, be creative and live. Behavioural change for sustainability is the output of novel social mechanisms that are interesting to be looked at on many levels: people, companies, organisations, institutions. They are all coming together to exchange knowledge, to share experiences, to find solutions, to discuss and confront. Collaboration and connectivity are keywords that feed visions and scenarios of sustainable and collaborative futures.This theme has been explored during the seminar in relation to Creative Industries and Sustainability in order to learn by discussing, by debating, by sharing experiences and insights, and by identifying hot-spots and synergies.”

Two of Experientia’s key staff members – Irene Cassarino and Camilla Massala – presented and discussed our experience in creating a behavioural change for sustainability strategy at the Low2No project in Helsinki, Finland.

Other participants included Alessandro Belgiojoso (Project Leader, 100 cascine); Clare Brass (Director, SEED Foundation); Emily Campbell (Director of Design, RSA); Alberto Cottica (Project Leader, Kublai): Jeremy Davenport (Co-founder and Deputy Director of the Creative Industries KTN); Rosie Farrer (Development Manager, Public Services Lab, NESTA); Cristina Favini (Strategist & Manager of Design, Logotel; Project & Content Manager, Weconomy); Mark Leaver (Global Markets Advisor, Creative Industries KTN); Katie Mills (Knowledge Transfer Consultant at the University of the Arts London); Alison Prendiville (Deputy Director of C4D (Centre for Competitive Creative Design) and Course Director MDes Innovation and Creativity in Industry at London College of Communication, University of the Arts); Ben Reason (Director and Founder, Live|Work); Roberto Santolamazza (Director, Treviso Tecnologia); Adam Thorpe (Reader, Design Against Crime Research Centre (DAC), Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design); in addition to the INDACO Department team (Venanzio Arquilla, Stefano Maffei, Anna Meroni, Marzia Mortati, Giuliano Simonelli, and Beatrice Villari).

The seminar notebook is now available. A seminar blog provides even more inspiration.

My favourite New York Times writer Anand Giridharadas delved into the topic of “making stuff” in this week’s Magazine.

“The American romance with making actual things is going through a resurgence. In recent years, a nationwide movement of do-it-yourself aficionados has embraced the self-made object. Within this group is a quixotic band of soldering, laser-cutting, software-programming types who, defying all economic logic, contend that they can reverse America’s manufacturing slump. America will make things again, they say, because Americans will make things — not just in factories but also in their own homes, and not because it’s artisinal or faddish, but because it’s easier, better for the environment, and more fun.”

Read article

August de los Reyes, design director of Artefact Group (formerly of Microsoft Surface), was one of the speakers at MIX11, a Microsoft organised gathering of developers, designers, UX experts and business professionals “creating the most innovative and profitable consumer sites on the web”.

In his excellent talk August wowed the audience with his talk on 21st Century Design and how the future thinking of design is changing.

He advocates that natural user interfaces are all about alignment (rather than usability), and argues that we rethink the design process annd focus on motivation, needs, positive emotion, learnability, adaptability, and revolutionary changes. This is in contrast to a [more conventional] user-centric design which puts faith in the users (who often don’t know what, why, and how they like something), and incremental design evolution.

Watch video

(via UX Strategy)

Mark Schatzker of Condé Nast Traveler tested the latest—and supposedly, greatest—of Augmented Reality apps in Rome, Italy, and was anything but impressed.

“Can a $5 or $10 app really make visiting cities like Paris, Tokyo, or Moscow a breeze? To find out, I flew to Rome carrying an iPhone 4 and a Samsung Captivate, which runs Google’s Android operating system. After three days of rigorous testing—during which I walked more than 25 miles, weaved past several thousand tourists, consumed two excellent bowls of pasta and molti cones of gelato, and downloaded over 100 megabytes of data—I had the answer. So, does AR deliver all that it promises? Not so much.”

Read article

User Experience designers have a unique opportunity to become the facilitators of holistic design and the advocates of innovation, argues Jake Truemper. By combining traditional user-centered activities with a greater emphasis on creating engaging designs we can bring usability into alignment with innovation in the design process.

“Ethnographic studies (such as contextual inquiry) and user personas are well suited to embolden innovative design. By watching users interact with interfaces in the context of their own home or workplace we learn a tremendous amount about them. These ethnographic techniques also help us to understand process flows comprehensively. By understanding these flows at a high level, user experience practitioners can identify opportunities to break down and rebuild a new process flow that forsakes the vestigial practices that have compounded over time, and brings in those missing elements that users find ways to incorporate on their own.”

Read article

Rahul Sen believes that the interaction design community is witnessing an important revolution — an ‘IxD Bauhaus’ of sorts.

Provokingly, he compares Apple and its skeuomorphic design guidelines to the pre-Bauhaus period, when the built environment had bloated in stimuli, caused by an excess of decor and ‘pastry-work’, whereas the new clean Bauhaus style is exemplified by the Windows Phone’s new design language [and some iPad apps such as Flipboard, Flud and Wired).

What can visual interaction designers learn from the Bauhaus (and where it failed)?

Read article

Brave NUI World: Designing natural user interfaces for touch and gesture
by Daniel Wigdor and Dennis Wixon
Paperback, 264 pages
Morgan Kaufmann, 2011
(Amazon link)

Natural user interfaces (NUIs) have been hailed as next evolutionary step in human-computer interaction. As software companies struggle to catch up with one another in terms of developing the next great touch-based interface, designers are charged with the daunting task of keeping up with the advances in NUI technology and this new aspect to user experience design.

Product and interaction designers, developers and managers are already well versed in UI design, but touch-based interfaces have added a new level of complexity. They need quick references and real world examples in order to make informed decisions when designing for these particular interfaces.

Brave NUI World is the first practical book for product and interaction developers and designing touch and gesture interfaces.

Written by the team from Microsoft that developed the multi-touch, multi-user Surface® tabletop product, this book gives you the necessary tools and information to integrate touch and gesture practices into your daily work, presenting scenarios, problem solving, metaphors, and techniques intended to avoid making mistakes.

Daniel Wigdor is UX Architect and Platform Architect at Microsoft and an Assistant Professor of computer science at the University of Toronto. Before joining U of T, he worked at Microsoft in nearly a dozen different roles, among them serving as the User Experience Architect of the Microsoft Surface product, and as a cross company expert in the creation of Natural User Interfaces. Dennis Wixon is currently Discipline Lead for Microsoft US BPD. Prior to this role he was the head of research for Microsoft Surface, and has also managed research teams at Microsoft Game Studies, and MSN/Home Products.

Sample chapter

A New Culture of Learning: Cultivating the Imagination for a World of Constant Change
by Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown
Publisher: CreateSpace – January, 2011)
Paperback, 140 pages
(Amazon link)

The 21st century is a world in constant change. In A New Culture of Learning, Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown pursue an understanding of how the forces of change, and emerging waves of interest associated with these forces, inspire and invite us to imagine a future of learning that is as powerful as it is optimistic. Their understanding of what constitutes “a new culture of learning” is based on several basic assumptions about the world and how learning occurs:

• The world is changing faster than ever and our skill sets have a shorter life
• Understanding play is critical to understanding learning
• The world is getting more connected that ever before – can that be a resource?
• In this connected world, mentorship takes on new importance and meaning
• Challenges we face are multi-faceted requiring systems thinking & socio-technical sensibilities
• Skills are important but so are mind sets and dispositions
• Innovation is more important than ever – but turns on our ability to cultivate imagination
• A new culture of learning needs to leverage social & technical infrastructures in new ways
• Play is the basis for cultivating imagination and innovation

By exploring play, innovation, and the cultivation of the imagination as cornerstones of learning, the authors create a vision of learning for the future that is achievable, scalable and one that grows along with the technology that fosters it and the people who engage with it. The result is a new form of culture in which knowledge is seen as fluid and evolving, the personal is both enhanced and refined in relation to the collective, and the ability to manage, negotiate and participate in the world is governed by the play of the imagination.

Typically, when we think of culture, we think of an existing, stable entity that changes and evolves over long periods of time. In A New Culture of Learning, Thomas and Brown explore a second sense of culture, one that responds to its surroundings organically. It not only adapts, it integrates change into its process as one of its environmental variables.

The book website contains some of the authors’ talks, including one by John Seely Brown on “Tinkering as a Mode of Knowledge Production”.

Irene Cassarino, Experientia’s senior open innovation expert, will be speaking on Designing for Sustainable Change at the Hub Milan on Friday, as part of the Hub’s Inspirational Conversations series at this year’s Fuorisalone in Milan.

The conversations are part of a wider event, entitled Designing Innovation: Ideas, works and story tales, that involves workshops, exhibitions, and inspirational conversations with the protagonists of Italian social innovation.

Irene will speak together with Eva Teruzzi, director of business R&D at Fiera Milano. Together they will address how to develop awareness of sustainability and conduct business regarding our future technologies.

“When we plan a new urban environment, we need to think of a 100-year-plus horizon,” says Irene Cassarino. “The main challenge is to create an environment that responds to the needs and ambitions of different communities of inhabitants (different also across time), in terms of long-term sustainability objectives, which are themselves uncertain and constantly evolving. This, in our experience in Helsinki (Low2No) and Denmark (FredericiaC), means ‘planning for sustainable change’. When planning technology applications that are people’s future, how can we work with companies and public administrations to develop sustainable change solutions?”

The Hub Milan is the Italian node in an international network of social, creative and professional entrepreneurs. It provides space and resources for people to be inspired, get innovative, develop networks and identify market opportunities, while building up an arsenal of experiences that will help them to truly change Milan and the world. The Hub Milan focuses exclusively on social and innovation and the people that promote it.

The Hub is located in via Paolo Sarpi 8, Milan. Irene will speak at midday on Friday April 15th and (free) registration is required.

Major emphasis on user-centred design, open innovation and social innovation in new EU innovation strategy

On 6 October 2010, the European Commission adopted the “Innovation Union“, a strategic approach to innovation, which is to become a main tool to reach the Europe 2020 targets that will underpin the smart, sustainable and inclusive growth the Europe 2020 strategy is aiming for:

• Employment: 75% of the 20-64 year-olds to be employed
• 3% of the EU’s GDP (public and private combined) to be invested in R&D/innovation
• Climate change / energy: greenhouse gas emissions 20% lower than 1990, 20% of energy from renewables, and 20% increase in energy efficiency
• Education: Reducing school drop-out rates below 10%, and at least 40% of 30-34–year-olds completing third level education
• At least 20 million fewer people in or at risk of poverty and social exclusion

The Innovation Union will focus Europe’s efforts on tackling major societal challenges, such as climate change, energy and food security, health and an ageing population.

Design and creativity have major prominence in the new EU innovation strategy, with a particular emphasis on (user-centred) design, open and co-creative innovation, and social/public sector innovation, as described in detail in the European Commission Communication and Rationale for Action, published on 6 October last year.

In other words, European innovation policy is moving beyond a technology-only approach and becoming more holistic, by embracing design, openness and broad social issues.

It will take some time for this new focus to spread to local, regional and national governmental institutions across Europe, who still often identify innovation with technological innovation.

To help speed up this process, Experientia, the international user-experience design consultancy based in Torino, Italy, has gone through the European Commission documents in detail, and a 5-page backgrounder highlights those sections that are of major relevance for design companies, design support organisations and therefore also industry organisations.

The text in the backgrounder is mainly excerpted from the Communication, and sometimes expanded with text from the Rationale for Action or from the Innovation Union website.

Please feel free to use this backgrounder to lobby for a more holistic innovation approach also in your own regional context.

Download backgrounder

LiveMint.com, the Indian online partner publication of the Wall Street Journal, reports on India’s first Design!publiC conclave “on design thinking and the challenge of government innovation,” which took place in New Delhi on 18 March.

The event — which was organised by the Center for Knowledge Societies, sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and with support from, amongst others, the Centre for Internet and Society — brought together influential thinkers in Indian government, including Arun Maira of the National Planning Commission, R. Gopalakrishnan of the National Innovation Council and Ram Sewak Sharma of the UIDAI, as well as members of leading corporate and development sector agencies.

In the lengthy article Aparna Piramal Raje, director of BP Ergo, describes the approach advocated at the conclave:

“Design thinking denotes an approach to problem-solving, with three distinct aspects. First, users are studiously followed and analysed employing ethnographic tools. Human needs, attitudes, preferences, challenges, their context and the immediate environment are documented using multimedia technology.

These in-depth observations generate insights into the heart of a given problem. Based on these, design thinkers collaborate and brainstorm to conceive a set of possible solutions. Prototypes of these solutions are created, tested and validated to arrive at a final solution. [...]

Design thinking’s biggest strength—the last mile, or the citizen-government interface—is the biggest pain point for government service providers. User-centricity forms the foundation for all design thinking; they are typically the weakest link in any government programme. Greater sensitivity to everyday interactions between citizens and government services can result in enhanced standards of living through better housing, transportation, health, education, among other necessities of daily life, the panellists said.”

Make sure to watch the video that is embedded in the article.

Excerpt from the Design!publiC vision text

“The problem of governance is perhaps as old as society, as old as the rule of law. But it is only more recently — perhaps the last five hundred years of modernity — that human societies have been able to conceive of different models of government, different modalities of public administration, all having different effects on the configuration of society. The problem of governments, of governmentality, and of governance is always also the problem of how to change the very processes and procedures of government, so as to enhance the ends of the state and to promote the collective good.

Since the establishment of India’s republic, many kinds of changes have been made to the policies and practices of its state. We may think of, for instance, successive stages of land reforms, the privatization of large-scale and extractive industries, the subsequent abolition of the License Raj and so and so forth. We may also consider the computerization of state documents beginning in the 1980s, and more recently, the Right To Information Act (RTI). More recently there have been activist campaigns to reduce the discretionary powers of government and to thereby reduce the scope of corruption in public life.

While all these cases represent the continuous process of modification, reform, and change to government policy and even to its modes of functioning, this is not what we have in mind when we speak of ‘governance innovation.’ Rather, intend a specific process of ethnographic inquiry into the real needs of citizens, followed by an inclusive approach to reorganizing and representing that information in such a way that it may promote collaborative problem-solving and solutioneering through the application of design thinking.

The concept of design thinking has emerged only recently, and it has been used to describe approaches to problem solving that include: (i) redefining the fundamental challenges at hand, (ii) evaluating multiple possible options and solutions in parallel, and (iii) prioritizing and selecting those which are likely to achieve the greatest benefits for further consideration. This approach may also be iterative, allowing decisions to be made in general and specific ways as an organization gets closer and closer to the solution. Design thinking turns out to be not an individual but collective and social process, requiring small and large groups to be able to work together in relation to the available information about the task or challenge at hand. Design thinking can lead to innovative ideas, to new insights, and to new actionable directions for organizations.

This general approach to innovation — and the central role of design thinking — has emerged from the private sector over the last quarter century, and has enjoyed particular success in regards to the development of new technology products, services and experience. The question we would like to address in this conference is whether and how this approach can be employed for the transformation public and governmental systems. [...]

[More in particular,] in this conclave, our interest is to explore how design thinking and user-centered innovation might help [governmental and quasi-governmental] organizations better accomplish their mission and better serve their beneficiaries. We also seek to explore and establish particular modalities through which governance innovation can be achieved, as well as to identify key stakeholders and personalities gripped of the challenge of governance innovation. Our larger goal is to craft a path forward for integrating design thinking and innovation methodologies in the further re-envisioning, refashioning and improvement of public services in India and elsewhere in the world.”

The conclave seems to have been extremely well prepared, given the wealth of supporting materials that are available online:

Design!publiC blog

Press release
CKS organizes “Design Public” conclave – lays foundation for creating a national framework for governance innovation. High-level officials from Government of India work together with design and Innovation Experts at “Design Public” conclave

Conclave Note
Concise document that covers vision, case studies, programme and attendees

Case studies of governance innovation
Mainly European examples (unfortunately) from Denmark, UK and Norway

Glossary on design, innovation and governance
Glossary of terms that are often used by designers and innovation specialists. Also includes key terms related to governance and state-craft.

Bibliography on governance innovation
[Pleasantly surprised to find my own name there, as well as the one of Experientia partner Jan-Christoph Zoels]

Design!publiC Book
A combination of all the above, including a detailed introduction to the design innovation ideas that were explored at the Design Public Conclave, the complete Design Public bibliography, the glossary of design terms, case studies of design innovation being applied to government, and bios for the guests that attended the conference.

“Companies should lead their users, not the other way around.”

So say Jens Skibsted and Rasmus Hansen in their recent post, User-Led Innovation Can’t Create Breakthroughs, on Fast Company’s Co.Design blog.

“They’re exactly right, but for all the wrong reasons,” reacts Lawrence Kitson of ustwo in UX Magazine and this he says “highlights a wider problem of the misunderstanding of interaction design and the field of UX.”

“Being user-centered requires the involvement of experts who focus on the user as a person. Interaction designers listen and observe, and apply their knowledge about the behavior of people and their psychology, especially when they interact with digital products and services. Being user-centered means understanding a problem and the users, analyzing user behavior and listening to their wants, then translating this into needs that drive a creative solution to the problem. Being user-led or user-driven, on the other hand, means responding to user feedback without applying the filters of analysis and translation.”

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