Blogs | design mind

中国：创新与消费的未来－意见领袖调研活动

frog Shanghai — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 04:08:09 -0600

您是否一直关注科技、文化、经济以及设计的发展趋势？想要发表自己的独到见解吗？想与更多的意见领袖分享自己的经验和体会吗？快来参与frog的调研活动并与我们分享您的真知灼见！

frog的资深设计研究员Kajal Vatsa、创意总监Brandon Berry Edwards及资深交互设计师张雷中将会在SXSW 2012互动展览会的Interactive 2012环节中进行主题为“中国：创新与消费的未来”的演讲。

此次演讲将会从多角度展开讨论，如文化、科技与设计等。演讲内容包括：1. 具有中国特色的创新科技；2. 年轻一代对科技的态度和行为；3. 社交媒体的变化与预测；4. 医疗健康发展；5. 娱乐与新媒体趋势；等等。

本次调研活动中frog将与各位分享更多演讲信息，并邀请各位针对各自经历和体验提出见解，精彩的互动环节及美食都将在活动中一一呈现。恭请各位光临！frog将为各位积极分享见解的嘉宾们提供精美纪念品。

新浪微博活动页面：http://event.weibo.com/335326

Love What You Make

frog Shanghai — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 04:27:57 -0600

Love What You Make 你是否准备好在设计界展露头角大放光芒？你是否对自己的作品充满激情？你是否愿意与青蛙们一对一分享你的作品并获取他们独到的意见与建议？

青蛙诚邀您加入Love What You Make活动并且与我们分享您正在进行的项目或设计作品！活动中青蛙设计将会派出资深团队设计菁英与参加活动的15名明日之秀进行一对一的快速指导教学并从中获取青蛙独到的意见、建议、经验与灵感。活动基于“speed networking”概念，每个参加活动的设计师将会与1名青蛙面对面并分享其设计作品，限定交谈时间为10分钟。你也有机会从本次活动中了解到青蛙设计的前世今生并且结交新朋友。

活动规则：

• 本人来自设计相关专业—不论是互动设计师、视觉动画师还是工业设计师，只要本人拥有得意作品与我们分享，那么Welcome!

• 设计师有10分钟时间来向青蛙介绍分享其个人作品。如果你试图拖延时间，那么Sorry!

• 设计师可以随身携带自己的作品集。但仅能与青蛙分享一个作品，青蛙不接受任何形式的“讨价还价”。

新浪微博活动页面：http://event.weibo.com/331508

豆瓣活动页面：http://www.douban.com/event/15623843

The Myth of the Brand New Innovation Myth

Fabio Sergio — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 10:09:12 -0600

A version of this article also appears on FastCoDesign.

One could argue that Steve Jobs’ prominence in the collective imagination of what a truly innovative business leader should think, say, and do has only strengthened exponentially after his recent demise. As it often happens in the case of similarly influential, seminal figures, the hard recollection of facts and of “what really happened” gets quickly out-shined by references to memorable, albeit often anecdotal, events in that person's life. These are the stories that tend to be told again and again until they take on the aura of myths, and as even the modern Greeks can easily attest most human beings tend to embrace myths, especially when they come wrapped in compelling narratives involving a hero.

Along these lines one could also argue that Jobs’ near-ubiquitous biography has been instrumental in this still ongoing “mythification” process: If you happen to work as a professional in the creative industry, countless conversations these days start with a client, a colleague, or even a friend quoting a passage from the book, and one can can come to see this state of things either as a precious conversation starter or as an unavoidable reference to someone whom you're expected to either praise or criticize.

There's no denying that the role Jobs has come to play in the field of innovation-at-large is usually associated with the term “genius”—and I largely agree with this value statement—but what I’m interested in is how Jobs’ role in the high-tech industry fits with the forces currently shaping the perception of where innovation comes from in a contemporary business environment, both in large corporations and in small start-ups.

Are innovation and creativity the material of über-talented individuals working in splendid isolation, or are they the result of a team effort, even when well-orchestrated by a conductor?

The motivation for the reflections that follow relates to the slowly-building backlash against the current widespread industry notion that today's innovative businesses need to be structured around a shared vision, cross-disciplinary group collaboration, and a deep understanding of the intended end-users of their products or services.

Distributed evidence for this apparent innovation "pendulum swing" can be found in recent articles, including "Groupthink" by Jonah Lehrer in the New Yorker and “The Rise of the New Groupthink”, by Susan Cain in the New York Times. Lehrer takes the position that brainstorming is useless, while Cain posits that the current obsession with collaboration and “groupthink” needs to be rebalanced in light of evidence highlighting the key role that lone and often introverted thinkers and inventors have played in major recent and not-so-recent breakthrough innovations.

I cannot but associate these considerations with those that have fueled recursive debates around the role user research plays in driving truly disruptive rather than incremental innovation. For example, after the publication of his book Design-Driven Innovation, economist Roberto Verganti posted various reflections on the Harvard Business Review website, questioning the role and sustainability of so-called user-driven innovation.

In a recent-past-that-feels-like-ages-ago, these opposing visions of the world used to pitch Sony against Nokia, with Sony usually representing the “creating desire and demand” camp, and Nokia typically getting associated with the user-centered approach. Most recently, Apple has replaced Sony in flying the flag of “people don't really know what they will love until we show it to them” (this quote being my own anecdotal contribution to the Myth of Jobs), and Nokia's slot has arguably been filled by companies like Google with its data driven decision-making process, or Facebook and Twitter, both of which constantly evolve their services around customer feedback or manifest behavior.

So, what gives?

Is innovation the result of the prophetic reflections of lone, introverted, self-centered, creative geniuses, or instead the fruit of the collaboration of a group of talented contributors working together to shape a collective shared vision?

Are radically innovative (and successful) products and services the result of disruptive technologies and effective marketing acumen aimed at generating desire, or should markets and technological innovation eminently follow what people want, need, dream of, or aspire to, whether those desires are consciously expressed or need to be uncovered using insight-generating research techniques?

As a designer I think the answer is yes.

That’s because I don’t think there is an archetypal, simplistic image of what type of personality or process best fosters innovative thinking, or even what type of physical working environment can best support a creative culture. That view of the world is too polarized. In my experience there is no single specific behavioral trait, methodological approach, or carefully-selected set of contextual factors that guarantees success in the ability to think differently and translate that thinking into success in the market.

That said, there is indeed a common trait in the typical way creative thinkers approach challenges: they can comfortably hold opposing thoughts in their heads and get to work. At times, this trait can be misconstrued as “the magic of creativity” and especially in the design field I frown when I hear that label because it reveals a preconception that designers are industrial artists that purely rely on their intuition to give shape to their solutions. Not so. The truth is that designers often confidently leap off an unstable conceptual platform with the apparent confidence that the resulting oxymoronic cognitive springboard will not just overlook an empty pool and a hard landing.

Informed intuition. Controlled chaos. Abductive analysis. This is often the mindset of successful creative, innovative thinkers: seeing opposites and apparently contradicting goals not just as a potential for dissonance, but as an opportunity for dynamic harmony.

To paraphrase one of Walt Whitman's most famous verses “creative thinkers are vast, they contain multitudes”: creativity is inherently inclusive.

I will quickly also add that this ability applies to all creative thinkers, whether they are indeed designers, artists, technologists, engineers or economists, and however they might be labeled as, CEO, CMO, CTO, CCO or ABCDO.

Ok, so what now? The truth does not lie in the extremes, and definitely also not in the middle. The truth lies in harnessing the positive tension between the extremes, and fine-tuning it until it resonates with what current technologies can enable and with what intended consumers and end-users are ready to adopt in a given socio-cultural economic context.

Think of all the vectors that typically influence bringing a truly innovative product or service to market, and imagine them individually stretched amidst the opposing constraints that often define their conceptual and practical boundaries (time to market, development cycles, user experience, technical feasibility, branding, business models, just to name a few). Now imagine all these vectors as taut guitar strings, one alongside the other. Imagine fine-tuning each string so that it's in harmony with all the other ones when they are strummed together. Imagine this being not a one-off task, but a near-continuous activity that a talented musician needs to constantly perform as he or she is playing, not before.

Seeing an opportunity, a challenge, human beings, or the world as a whole, as multi-faceted systems that can only be approached in their full complexity: this syncretic way of thinking applies not just to the input, but also to the social and environmental context, and to the tools, process, and output of the work of creative individuals and groups.

From this conceptual standpoint, seeing brainstorming in opposition to solitary thinking, or user research as antithetical to disruptive innovation feels simply off the mark. These apparently opposing approaches are actually complementary, and effective innovators already use them as such, picking the right mind-frame and the accompanying tools and methodologies according to the specificities of the challenge at hand.

This holistic way of thinking and working is the trademark of places like the one I happen to be lucky enough to work in.

These are places where the physical working context combines an open-plan with project rooms of various sizes to support small group collaboration or individual focus, with plenty of highly transparent, portable cubicles most of my colleagues tend to refer to as “headphones”. They are environments where people can also comfortably work from home or from whatever concentration-inducing environment they prefer when they'd rather work alone uninterrupted. They supply a context in which an office is often not defined by walls surrounding an enclosed space, but happens to be the place where people live, work, and use the products and services we give shape to.

Also, these are places that are characterized by a highly collaborative, cross-disciplinary, and multicultural environment that encourages and often simply requires group collaboration because of the multifaceted complexity of the problems that need to be tackled. A context that at the same time expects every single team member to bring a strong individual point of view to an opportunity, a point of view fueled and sustained by personal passions and deep vertical knowledge.

These are places where a highly flexible process associates moments of deep immersion in the complex world of the people we shape solutions for, combined and interspersed with periods where rich stimuli are processed and interpreted to generate insights that inform the creative process without analytically prescribing mechanistic solutions.

Finally, these are places where effective ideation methodologies combine high-intensity collaborative workshops and workgroups, interspersed with slower moments of synthesis and evaluation, in groups or alone, integrating internal and external expertise, welcoming end-users as active participants to the creative process while still expecting team leaders to be the advocates and owners of a clear and well-communicated holistic vision.

Positing that the intuition of a visionary genius or the introduction of a disruptive technology are best poised to lead to radical innovation is simply a misleading construct, if postulated in absolute terms.

Maybe Jobs or Wozniak were such visionary geniuses working in uninterrupted solitary isolation … when they weren't busy working crazy-long hours with the rest of their über-talented crews, in a part of the world that's still today considered the cultural cradle of high-tech innovation.

The answer lies in harnessing the positive tensions that naturally build when any existing social or cultural paradigm can be challenged by the introduction of innovative ideas, products, or services. Without a profound understanding of what people will be ready and willing to introduce into their lives, even brilliant products have regularly failed on markets not mature enough to digest their full potential. Harnessing these tensions is in itself an art that only a group of talented individuals have proven to be capable of mastering.

Occupy Your (Open Source) Education

Kristina Loring — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 14:51:57 -0600

Student loan debt, a burden for the majority of young Americans who pursued higher education, was brought to the forefront when it became a tangible demand of the Occupy Wall Street Movement this fall. And it’s not wonder students are furious: According to the Wall Street Journal, in June 2010, total student-loan debt exceeded total credit-card debt for the first time, so it is no wonder the movement urged students to refuse to pay their loans.

So what can students do who are looking for a meaningful and engaging education, without forking over all that cash? Luckily, thanks to open source innovations and alternative learning platforms on the Internet, people are beginning to find new means to get their information, connect with experts and mentors to support their career path, and learn valuable skills, all while avoiding the expensive route of higher education. No longer are universities and colleges the gatekeepers of knowledge, but how does one go about parsing through all these new digital resources and personalizing them?

Fast Company writer and author of DIY U, Anya Kamentz, is an expert in the growing open source technology movement and it’s influence on the shifting paradigm of education in the U.S. In 2011, the Gates Foundation turned to Anya to write a free ebook follow up to DIY U. The Edupunks’ Guide, is a guidebook for independent learners that shares new methods of content delivery, new platforms and new forms of accreditation that harness technology for an alternative type of curriculum.

Today, Anya will launch her other ebook, Learning, Freedom, and the Web, in collaboration with the Mozilla Foundation. I sat down to chat about how infonauts or aspiring students can play in the open world, the truth behind “digital distraction,” and the role of creative professionals in reinventing the crumbling American education system.

Sciences, Humanities, and ... Design? The Case for a Third Pillar of Education

Jon Freach — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 12:42:45 -0600

During course reviews with students at the Austin Center for Design, where I am a professor, our faculty saw a concerning pattern. Many of our students were inhibited, some even fearful, of actually making things. Luckily, they were seeking advice and direction on how to use their hands and actually experiment.

But the problematic part was that they were students at a design school. We actively recruit and accept those without deep design backgrounds because of the other skills and experience they bring to our program like business, science, engineering, education, social work, or simply their intellectual curiosity and adeptness. We do this with full confidence that we can leverage our own design training to help them along. The expectation at our school is that students won't be creating just beautiful objects; they'll create beautifully smart and socially impactful ones.

But, the fear of literally making these designs was a bright red flag for our faculty.

Students often traced their inhibitions back to childhood when they first grew conscious of their teacher and peers' judgment. One student vividly recalled what it was like to have a teacher title his drawing for him to avoid inevitable confusion from grown-ups. His "making trauma" was intensified when he was in fourth grade and one of his paintings mistakenly got put into a first grad art show. He didn't win.

This condition is even more widespread the higher you go up the corporate ladder. At frog, we often engage our clients in visually creative exercises to tap their knowledge about a domain and strengthen our partnership in the design process. But, in three different collaborative work sessions that I've facilitated with clients in the past year, I've been told outright at the beginning: "I'm not good at this, so don't expect much."

In a 1979 research project at the Royal College of Art, Professor Bruce Archer referred to design as the missing "third area" of education; the first two areas were considered the sciences and the humanities. Later, in a small book, Designerly Ways of Knowing, educator Nigel Cross made a formal case for the addition of design to our general education, namely the K-12 curriculum. But, he was careful to point out the tricky nature of such a proposition. Cross argued that design, as an area of study, suffered from a legacy of being a technical vocation, where one is "trained" to be a designer, often through an apprenticeship of some sort. Its aims are extrinsic, meaning a student is equipped to perform in a specific social role such as an architect capable of competently designing a building. But general education, in addition to being non-technical, consists of intrinsic goals which contribute to an individual's self-realization and basic life skills. For instance, many of us learned the principles of math and use them to pay our taxes, but didn't become mathematicians. And, we read Shakespeare to learn about comedies and tragedies and the use of language, but didn't become playwrights.

In this context, theoretical understanding takes priority over "the how." But, to be a designer you need both forms of knowledge. With this in mind, Cross called for a "fundamental change of perspective" regarding design, if it were to be a part of general education. He asserts that an education in design must have value in and of itself and not just be influenced by extrinsic motivating factors such as getting a job.

If our students (and our clients for that matter) had benefited from a general education in design, would they be so apprehensive about the act of making things? What if that student's teacher had used a different tactic to present his work to the public, one that didn't lead to a crippling self-consciousness about making his visualizations real?

It's not for lack of talent that he and others don't naturally draw or make something. In fact, they're often really good at it when they try. Would a general education in design have relaxed his inhibitions and taught him to love what he makes no matter what? Perhaps this kind of education, with its intrinsic values, can develop "designerly" qualities and knowledge in people over the course of their formative years: help them develop an understanding and ease with the fundamentals of image and form, give them the skills to spot a wicked problem and the desire to tackle it, provide them with confidence in expressing their ideas, and instill the conviction to see their inventions to fruition. After all, we may be afraid to do our taxes, procrastinate paying our bills, or dread writing that email to a co-worker, but we do them anyway because of our lifetime of knowledge and experience with such social and cultural norms.

This article originally appeared on The Atlantic.

Above the Alps

Martin Ruegg — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:11:23 -0600

Having been in San Francisco for nearly a year, I was excited to head back to Switzerland this Autumn and revisit my roots. In October the Alps are still free of snow and the grass is a lush green. An ideal time to explore the Confederation Helvetica.

My first stop after leaving the lowlands was Grindelwald, a town famous for the impressively steep faces of Mt. Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau. Not far from this touristy village, my two brothers share a tiny rural shack devoid of any modern amenities. Electricity, plumbing and satellite TV are all but forgotten. Yet despite the lack of such creature comforts the place has charm. And breathtaking views as you may have seen in the film Heidi. Normally it would have been the ideal place to disconnect from technology, if it had not been for the RC airplane and GoPro camera supplied by my older brother. By combining these two toys into one, it gave us the opportunity to see the unique mountain panorama from an airborne perspective.

Please enjoy the film, and in prelude some time-lapse footage of the winding mountain passes of the Alps!

Imperialist Tendencies

Jan Chipchase — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 09:24:39 -0600

The views expressed here are my own, and not my employer, clients or other stakeholders.

I enjoyed going to the recent Pop!Tech conference—the combination of bright minds, warm hearts and the Maine autumn is highly conducive to reflecting on what has been and imagining on what will be next.

During the event, I gave a talk to the audience about my research work, and in the panel session at the end of my talk I took two questions from a member of the audience relating to personal motivations of doing this kind of research and whether anyone has the moral right to extract knowledge from a community for corporate gain. Given the asker’s frustrated-politeness I’ll paraphrase what I (and a bunch of folks that came up to me after the talk) took as the intent of his questions:

"What’s is like working for BigCorps pillaging the intellect of people around the world for commercial gain?"

"How do you sleep at night as the corporations you work for pump their worthless products into the world?"

Short answer is that I sleep just fine.*

Those with a desire to go beyond the 110 character headlines should draw a fresh mug of their favourite brew, find a comfy armchair, and read on.

***

Download the related Pop!Tech presentation here [PDF, 12MB].

***

Before delving into a response some context here’s some context: my Pop!Tech talk wasn’t touchy-feely marketing fluff that corporate speakers tend to gravitate toward—consider Pepsico CEO Indra Nooyi’s slick talk at this year’s TED Conference, and the debate that followed. Nor was it focused on the work that frog has done in the social innovation space which would have no-doubt resonated with the Pop!Tech audience. My talk focused on the social tension that occurs with the introduction of new technologies, including turn-of-the-second-to-last-century portable cameras, and could have applied equally to the Walkman (remember them?) and mobile phones. It touched on technology use and whether ‘adoption’ is pro-active, passive or even conscious: the consequences of near-time facial recognition; how DNA testing reveals parental discrepancy and will for many change the notion of “family,” how public displays are increasingly monitoring the world around us, and on what all this means for designers who are creating products, services and systems in which consumption, use, and adoption is sometimes conscious, sometimes not. A central tenet of the talk was that as more of what we design is jacked into our social network the option of whether to use, or opt-into a technology or service becomes one of opting into or out of society.

***

On the surface these questions are both a continuation of the design imperialism discussion that has preoccupied some in the design community, and a rally against globalisation (there’s a related interview with Fast Company here). In previous instances when I’ve been asked questions along these lines the motivation for asking was driven by an anger against the all-trampling BigCorps and me as an agent of the BigCorp, a fear/recognition of not being in sufficient control, and on occasion also guilt (where the person asking the question has trouble balancing their own consumption habits with the injustice of other people not having the same economic opportunities). Whereas the design imperialism debate honed in on local interventions, this essay will focus on my experiences working with multi-national corporations and organisations. I’m not suggesting that the lessons outlined here are the same as for more local initiatives, nor am I making a judgment on the pros or cons of local or global design solutions – that would need to be visited on a case by case basis – and yes I recognise that the international aid / donor community has for many years overlooked locally sustainable solutions often at the detriment of communities that they were there to serve – this imbalance has been a personal driver to understand for myself for much of my career. I do assume that the benefits of globalisation in the short term (~20 years) outweighs the costs and the opportunity costs.

First, for those that aren’t familiar with the practice I’ll start with a backgrounder on the role of design research / ethnography that was referred to in the talk and some of the nuances of the approach that I think make the process one that is rewarding for the individuals concerned, their communities, our teams that conduct the research and employer, and ultimately the client. After that I’ll tackle each question in turn.

Research for Design

The basic premise of design research is that spending time in the contexts where people do the things that they do can inform and inspire the design process with a nuanced understanding of what drives people’s behaviour—which can then used as a foundation for understanding and exploring the opportunities for new products and services. More often than not the process leads to innovating on what already exists. The practice is mostly associated with up-front research at the beginning of the design process but in my experience it is valuable to think of it as a state of mind that can infuse, inform and inspire across and often beyond the project. Often researchers get ahead of themselves and like to talk about the opportunities they perceived after uncovering unmet needs. The fact is in many cases needs are being met, just not particularly well. The process assumes of course that the project is aligned to the client’s organisation and goals, and that the team knows how to apply the right mix of methods, understand how to make sense of what they are collecting and can articulate the opportunities that comes from this. Some people and/or agencies are good at parts of the process, far fewer can carry off the whole. Just as there are many different ways to design, there are many ways to run design research. For my clients design research is particularly effective when it explores the collision of people, technology, culture, and business models to inform what, when and how to make something and understand how best to get there.

Corporate research studies are often about a 2 month sprint: a week or two to ramp up; a week each in two or three research locations; two weeks of pure synthesis; and two weeks to write and deliver a report. Most projects have some form of hand-over workshop with the client, and for a larger consultancy like frog this is usually the bridge to a design phase—where the ideas/concepts are further explored and evaluated, before being refined with increasing levels of fidelity. A research + design project can run for 6+ months, but I’ll focus on the research phase here since it is most relevant to the questions. The client often wants the research yesterday and it is common for the team to be working 24/7 with only a couple of days break over the course of the research—stepping back only after its all done and dusted.

Common criticisms of this format of corporate research include: the time on the ground is so limited that the breadth and quality of the data is likely to be suspect; that the incoming team is insensitive to how things are done locally; that the broad range of locations and limited total time span doesn’t allows for building meaning relationships with local partners; that the team suffers burn-out; that engagements with participants and local partners is at best superficial and at worst disrespectful; and that the opportunity areas/concepts/ideas that come out of this process bear little or no acknowledgement to local needs.

All are valid concerns.

All can be mitigated.

Mitigation is not always the smartest move.

Many design research projects also include an element of what practitioners would broadly describe as participatory design – where participants are either brought in for some or all of the ideation, evaluation or design process. Using participatory design to create products to sell in the global marketplace is very different from designing with and for a specific community – something that I appreciate is important for some of you reading this – a good example of the latter is the approach espoused by fellow Pop!Tech speaker Milenko Matanovic’s work at the Pomegranate Center. Participatory design for corporate clients can lead to a moral and legal conundrum – ensuring that participants are adequately rewarded for their intellectual contribution while balancing the needs of the client to legally be able to use the outcomes of the sessions. For this reason, the participatory design sessions that I run are guided by the following principles:

Be up-front about how participant’s contributions will be used
Be pro-active about the issue of the ownership of an idea and devote as much time as is needed to discuss the issue – even if it eats into other planned activities. There’s nothing like a researcher trying to ‘stick to the schedule’ to give a participant the sense they are being hoodwinked.
Advise participants not to share anything that they don’t want the team and/or the client to have the legal right to commercially exploit. The name of the client is often not revealed or is revealed under a Non-Disclosure Agreement so trust can be an issue. It is common to reveal an abstraction of the client e.g. “a top tier consumer goods company”
Reward the session participants with equitable compensation
Ensure that every member of the team understands these principles and how they play out in practice

Defining “equitable compensation” can sometimes be tricky for the simplest of design research activities (e.g. a home interview), but is especially problematic when researching highly financially constrained communities where the gulf between the wealth/power of the participants and the researchers can be considerable. The decision about whether to join the study can come down to being one of whether there will be food on the table at the end of the day. Equitable compensation is even more significant in participatory design – where the line between a participant’s “bright idea” contribution and a product/service on the market appears to the layman to be short – they assume it won’t take long before their idea will make the company billions. While it is not that common an occurrence, it is within this context that the ownership of ideas comes up, and from my experience this is more of a hot potato issue in some countries, e.g. India than others. Anyone who has tried to drive a concept, idea through an organisation will know how far removed from reality a rapid from-idea-to-market is. Each idea is reinforced, challenged and shaped with input from many different sources, including the team’s gestalt knowledge. Plus it takes a significant investment of tens if not hundreds or thousands of people to turn an idea into a product or service that people are willing and able to buy.

At some point the equitable compensation issue can create an relationship that is closer to “subcontractor-subcontractee” than “interviewer-interviewee” or “co-participants” with everything that that entails. As full-time employees of a consultancy and before that a BigCorp I and my colleagues are also bound by these contracts – when we are paid to apply our knowledge to a particular issue, our output belongs to our employer. Changing the relationship to be more transactional is not inherently a bad thing – except when the team doesn’t recognise the impact of that change. In communities and households with very low levels of income the opportunity to earn additional income is valued, as is having a customer base that for the time that they are on the ground, includes the research team.

There are other ways to structure participatory design sessions so that the outcomes are co-owned by the attendee stakeholders. These same BigCorps do invest in events where the attendees retain ownership of their ideas for example discussion might come under the Chatham House Rule but these are normally not suited to achieving a focused design. These events are also often run under the auspices of the marketing department which tells you something about their perceived value, and skills required internally.

As a side-note there are interesting issues related to international IP law, and what is considered equitable compensation for employees who create IP that lead’s their employer to make billions (or trillions if we’re talking Japanese Yen). The inventor of the Blue LED or anyone whose patents make it into the global standards specifications are prime examples, although most patents are likely to sit on the shelf until the patent attorney’s go to war.

The challenge for researchers in setting up a more transactional relationship with a participant is that setting the wrong level of compensation sets the wrong tone and can bias the responses. In my experience too many researchers over-compensate – preferring to spend too much money rather than figure out what the ‘right’ amount is. Throwing money at a problem, any problem leads to bigger headaches later on, and overpaying in communities where finances are tight creates significant distortions that can be difficult to recover from.

***

There are a numerous additional “soft” benefits to conducting design research, that that are oft-overlooked:

The research sets a more appropriate tone for the relation between the organisation and its existing or future customers. Ever walked into a group discussion where the gulf between their assumptions and yours was so large that you felt like you were in a different world? In multinational organisations where there is both a cultural and physical gulf this happens all the time, and it is acute in organisations that for the first time want to address markets of very low income consumers.
The process generates rich, storied material that is excellent at raising awareness across an organisation of the broader opportunity space. A well run project will engage people in the topic well beyond the scope of the project.
It builds a more tight knit team. A highly immersive approach puts the team in situations where they learn more about one another, motivations, family life, each other’s cultural perspectives. The impact of this is especially effective when team members are arriving from very different cultural landscapes.
Hiring a local team lays the groundwork for a meaningful, extended network of practitioners that can be drawn on later. Every study I’ve done over the past decade has lead to a rich network of fixers, guides and practitioners that can be tapped on future studies – some of whom I’ve worked with for a number of years.

While everyone likes to focus on the tangible outcomes – things that were made as a result of the research, design research is also good at helping organisations understand the folly of going in a particular direction at the expense of others. The opportunity cost of bringing product A to market is that products B, C and D are less likely to get a look in.

In ~2005 while at Nokia I was asked whether the company should design a mobile phone for illiterate consumers – many illiterate people were already buying Nokia’s products that were designed for people who could read and write – and the current experience was recognised as being suboptimal. After a few rounds of design research my answer was that it was better to sell another half a billion phones of the models that were already being sold to literate consumers (with a few subtle but important user interface tweaks) than to develop something fully optimised but new. There are many reasons why a dedicated product for illiterate consumers was not appropriate at that time: the social stigma associated with buying a device that was seen as being for “disadvantaged” consumers would be a disincentive to purchase — they wanted a device like “everyone else” because they aspired to be treated like “everyone else”; the cost of a new device, versus the economies of scale of selling a few hundred million more of those that were already on the market; the challenge of designing something that made a genuine difference to illiterate consumers is non-trivial—I liked to think of illiterate consumers as "just like the rest of us, only more so"; and something I refer to asproximate literacy – that it is better for illiterate consumers to be able to turn to their neighbour and ask them for help because they own the same or similar device, than to struggle with a new interface that needs to be learn (there are many types of illiteracy—the classic definition refers to textual illiteracy, but it might be technical, mobile, financial, numerical—all of which impact use). Whilst the outcome sticks in the craw of the purists and ideologues—a notionally sub-optimal device is better than good enough one that is engineered/designed better but misses the bigger picture. An obvious example? I’m writing this on a suboptimal QWERTY keyboard, but do benefit from the standardisation of suboptimal QWERTY keyboards on many of the laptops I come in contact with. My recommendation then was that a dedicated device for illiterate consumers was the suboptimal choice.

It’s worth pointing out that my answer today would be different today for a number of reasons. Many of these illiterate consumers are now on their 3rd, 4th or 5th phone; connectivity is both more reliable and faster—which makes the learning experience easier. The cost of devices is significantly lower. And because touch screen technology—which Huawei and Nokia are increasingly putting into the hands of lower income consumers in emerging markets enables far more direct manipulation (something that makes more complex tasks easier for an illiterate person to accomplish). My research on designing for illiteracy is a few years old but the fundamentals are still sound—you can read it here.

***

You might think that conducting research in a country half way around the world, in languages and dialects that the core team doesn’t speak would present the biggest challenge. Or that pulling a project together at a week’s notice, gathering sufficiently meaningful data in the a few days the team is on the ground or perhaps you might struggle with having a life outside work when you spend half the time on the road/in the skies/on hi-alt mountain trails are the biggest tests. But the real challenge is setting the right tone for the relationship between the team that is going in, and the people they are going to be interacting with.

There are four things that I’ve found consistently set the “right” tone for the research:

Stay and spend local
Build a trusted local team
Recruit through extended networks, rather than go through a recruiting agency
Provide participants with sufficient control of the research process.

I could write a chapter on each of these (in fact I have, to be published in due course) but I’ll give a quick example on the last point. Beyond getting the normal data-consent we encourage in-depth participants to review and delete any or all the data we have on them before we leave. Also we offer them a copy of their data – at least in a manner that is practical for them to consume – it could be anything from a printed photo through to a copy of every digital file. I understand why someone reading this would get angsty about privacy issues (it is a topic that has consumed a lot of my energy over the years), but I consider our teams to be working toward finding workable solutions that meet our legal responsibilities as well as our moral sense of doing the right thing — they are more informed than most.

This does of course assume that the research is “done right”, when in many instances it isn’t. There are teams that takes a “lets see what we can get away with” approach. Some are overly motivated by money and not more experiential aspects of the project goals. Others don’t recognise that they are experiencing culture shock. Some teams subcontract out the most important relationships and those are then primarily based on financial reward. And there are instances when the team hired in to do the job doesn’t have the necessary experience. After a decade of doing this research I continue to learn – but it still surprises me the rudimentary mistakes that people make.

Aside from my employer frog there are a number of companies that to operate in the design + innovation space—IDEO is probably the most well known and is a strong competitor on certain projects, Continuum has just opened a studio in Shanghai (welcome, hope you are enjoying the weather), and Method has recently been bought and are seeking to extend their offering to encompass more design and build. Also many ad agencies and suit-and-tie consultancies are trying their hand with varying degrees of success. And of course there are many, many more regional and local players. Local agencies/studios in countries such as India and China are evolving and are becoming stronger (even if their websites sometimes seem to cut-and-paste the offerings from the international players), but are still a long way away from adequately and consistently serving multinational clients—staff turnover is a bitch in high-growth economies and talent tends to gravitate to the better paid, and less frenetically paced multi-nationals. Of course this is not the whole picture, and yes there are some stunning local agencies out there—but for now I’ll stick with the thread of working with multi-national clients on complex multi-national projects. Can local design companies come up with ideas that are more relevant to their locale? All things being equal their nuanced understanding of the local market should give them the edge. But all things are not equal—in the global marketplace it is rare for a single product to be designed for that one country—it needs to work across territories, and the agency needs a understanding of the big picture—the client’s corporate strategy, the culture of the decision makers, how innovations are brought to market, and the multiple other cogs in what is a massive machine. I’ve also seen time and again that bringing fresh-eyes to a market helps reveal things that natives have long since taken for granted.

For the sake of argument lets assume that the label of “design imperialism” doesn’t fit if the solutions are proposed by a local design agency. There are multi-nationals that are looking for combination of local insights and opportunities that leverage these insights and help in building these out. Why would a multi-national corporation agree to pay a premium to a global (or regional non-local) design consultancy when a local company can do the “same” job for less? Because in most cases it’s a long way from being the same. The premium comes from offering something unique such as deep experience in analogous industries and a breadth of offering—from research to design to build to support. It also comes from the fact that multi-nationals are tapped into what is happening globally in this space. They also have a track-record of delivering. The smart non-local agency doesn’t pitch for work where there is a strong local player that could do the same (most likely more narrowly-defined) project for considerably less—and takes a medium to long term view of the agency-client relationship rather than short-term gain. And yes sometimes they pitch and are beaten by local agencies who are simply more focused and better at that particular niche. The challenge is that there are few products and services that are truly designed for a single market (basic localisation aside).

Which makes a decent enough segue to the globalisation debate.

The Real Design Imperialism

It doesn’t take much effort to find something about globalisation to be incensed about: Starbucks pricing your favourite coffee shop out of the neighbourhood; riots in Indonesia triggered by Asian financial crisis; Apple imposing its corporate values to the worldwide availability of adult content on their application platform**; Coke and Pepsi logos being painted onto remote pristine mountain ranges.

Or perhaps you prefer to take the profit-at-any-cost argument to the next level: Nestle’s aggressive sale of milk-powder in markets where doing so is likely to inhibit the lactation of mothers; Facebook and Google endlessly exploring and redefining privacy in their race to monetise you through new services; Monsanto’s development and apparent halting of sterile seeds to force farmers to make repeat purchases every year; the very visible suicide rate of Foxconn factories in China (most likely some of you will be reading this on a Foxconn assembled device); companies that are benefitting from the sale of monitoring equipment in countries like Syria or Egypt; and accusations of racism in the advertising of Unilever’s Fair & Lovely Skin Whitening creams – for a good background see thisthis paper. Make no mistake—governments***, BigCorps, organisations, agencies need watching, need to be held to account, and in many markets there are players that hold a disproportionate amount of power.

But as consumers, employers and employees I, you, we, they are complicit in this relationship in the products we make and consume; as well as the lifestyles we aspire to and the moment to moment decisions we make in how the products we buy are used. Sure, we demand privacy but we are willing to let your personal ethics slide when a photo worthy situation presents itself. We have grown used to free email, but (momentarily) rally against our email being read by an algorithm so that Google can serve us more contextualised advertising. We roll up to a remote mountain village and mutter expletives at being woken by a ringtone—but get the jitters at the mere thought of giving up our own connectivity. We complain of global warming and then jet-off to another conference that espouses amongst other things sustainable living. We are highly vocal about the price of new electronics but vote with our wallets when it comes to disposing of them in an slightly-more-costly but environmentally less impactful manner. Or, to loop back to the asker of the original question—we fly half-way around the world to conduct business but not track every source of income that enables that business to occur, that underwrites the production; the many different players in global network that allows us to get there, stay there, communicate with collaborators and loved ones while we are there.

***

I conduct a fair amount of community facing activities—from spending time in universities to doing talks around the world, and I am grateful for the opportunity to share and learn from the intellect in the room. But on occasion the assumptions behind the questions miss the mark to the point where a step back is necessary—the questions from Pop!Tech were such an occasion. There are a number of misconceptions about consumers in highly income/resource constrained (poor) communities that seem to repeat themselves with a depressing regularity and is often directed from passionate minds with a particular, accusatory venom:

Consumers on low levels of income are incapable of making rational or “right” choices for themselves
These same consumers are duty bound only to make rational choices (“rational” as in on things that have an immediate benefit to their current socio-economic situation, as defined by the person making the argument)
Any time a consumer makes an “irrational” choice the “fault” lies with the company providing the products
Companies that target consumers in countries with very low levels of income are inherently evil

Lets go through each in turn:

Consumers on low levels of income are incapable of making rational or the “right” choices for themselves

I would argue that these are, through necessity—some of the world’s most critical consumers. Not having to think about every single thing you spend your money on, the trade-offs, the social debts you might be calling in, is a luxury that relatively few can afford. Consumers on very low levels of income are consistently pushed to make more rational choices than their wealthier counterparts because the issue of how to spend their limited income is consistently more present in their day to day decision-making processes. Like their wealthier counterparts they also have rich strategies for coping with limited and variable formal and informal forms of income and credit—Portfolios of the Poor is a good read to get started on this topic, and a minor contribution to this can be found in this research in Afghanistan. Predictably Irrational, Freakonomics and The Undercover Economist all do an entertaining job of exploring the notion of the ‘rationality’ and “rational consumer behaviour”.

Consumer literacy (knowing what you are buying and its value, and understanding the trade-offs in the choices you make) and the broader textual literacy/numeracy issue is a fascinating topic, and there are certainly consumers everywhere that don’t make, what most of us consider to be rational choices. Don’t worry—if you talk to very low income consumers they often consider the purchase decisions of relatively wealthier people to also be irrational—it’s all relative. The people making this argument seem to mix up formal education levels and peoples’ ability to read and write with intelligence and street smarts (most adult illiteracy is a result of a lack of opportunity to learn or apply what is learned, not a lack of intelligence). I’m not trying to gloss over very real issues of consumer literacy, and the Marketplace Literacy Project is a good place to start in understanding the benefits of education and training in this area. Financial literacy presents a particularly interesting challenge—and both the IMTFI and CGAP, or even my own research in this area are good starting points if you want to explore more.

These consumers are duty bound only to make rational choices (“rational” referring to those things that have an immediate benefit to their current socio-economic situation, as defined by the person making the argument)

Is saving three months salary and on occasionally going without food to be able to afford a basic Nokia branded mobile phone irrational? What if it’s used to enable a business? Or play games? Or chat with loved ones? Or browse porn? Is spending one month’s salary on a unknown-branded device any more rational? Just how rational is your purchase of your iPhone? That pair of Nike sneakers? Those red high heels? Who is to define what is rational? What was the opportunity cost of your last large purchase? What is the opportunity cost of buying that branded phone versus one where the manufacturer is unknown? And who is to decide what the viable opportunity costs are? Or to loop it around to the design community — are low income consumers duty bound to ignore aesthetics and more superficial elements over more functional choices? And to loop once more — are designers duty bound to make products for these markets aesthetically displeasing? Because that’s where this argument is heading.

Any time a consumer makes an “irrational” choice the “fault” lies with the company providing the products

In a country where lighter skin is commonly associated with not having to work in the field, and where people aspire to work in white-collar jobs is it rational to want to lighten your skin? And if for some consumers the answer is yes, what are the local options for doing so? How safe, reliable and effective are they? If a multinational comes in and offers a product that lightens your skin, and is (by local metrics) consistently safe, reliable and effective are they a pariah or a saviour? Is it the designers duty to work on such a product. Or their duty not to? If a multinational company aggressively markets that product’s by appealing to people’s aspiration to have lighter skin, does it inherently make them racist? What if a local company does the same thing? what if a local company does the same thing, but makes even more outlandish claims? Race is understandably a polarising issue, and some companies shoot themselves in the face with poorly thought out marketing campaigns that justifiably triggers a strong backlash. But I suspect some of you will have realised over the course of this paragraph that the issue is more complex than you first thought. How can you listen and talk to people on the ground, whose agenda you can understand before reaching a conclusion? What do you need to do to move beyond headlines and trending topics?

Or an example that leans the other way. Something that the micro-finance industry is currently grappling with the consequences of an oversupply of easy-credit into markets where consumer financial literacy is relatively low, and where personal effects of that oversupply is medium to long term (lifetime) debt. What are the acceptable costs of trying to service financially constrained consumers with something that, if done right can have a significant positive impact? For which real world products and services does precautionary principle kick in? And before you start to tut, pause a moment to reflect on your own situation and that of your community – how much of what you spend is on credit? What is your level of debt? When will that be repaid?

Companies that target consumers in countries with very low levels of income are inherently evil

There are companies out there that given the opportunity will exploit the communities in which they work and put financial profit seemingly before everything else — just as there are countries in which government/agency oversight is minimal and where lobbyists hold sway. But to assume that every company is that way is putting passion before logic. My assumption is that driven by necessity and constraints, these are the most critical consumers on the planet and that to create a commercially sustainable product or service that can meet their needs at a price point they are willing to pay is quite simply a remarkable achievement, especially considering how nuanced local alternatives can be. Your and my appreciation of whether those products or services are rational choices for those consumers are largely irrelevant, as irrelevant as your purchasing decisions are to them.

To paraphrase something I wrote a few years ago that I think still stands: “Pushing technologies on society without thinking through their consequences is at the very least naive, and at worst dangerous, though typically it, and the people that do it are just boring. This site is a pause for reflection in our planet’s seemingly headlong rush to churn out more, faster, smaller and cheaper.” For me, my employer, our clients, understanding what drives people, users, constituents and consumers is the first step in creating meaningful products and services and eventually creating a sustainable business. That a single financially constrained consumer gives up some of his or her very limited income to purchase that product is quite possibly the highest accolade.

The poor can least afford to purchase poorly designed products and services, and they can least afford to investments that fail to deliver. The real design imperialism comes from those people who assume that the world’s poor are not worthy of the attention.

***

This essay started with a question from Pop!Tech, so it seems only fair to end it with something from the same event. It’s all good and well to want to think in terms of heroes and villains if that’s your thing, or to buy into the media-amplified “debate” (yes, this includes many of the media organisations that have covered my research) and critique always has a role to play even if at times it appears endless, and occasionally self-serving (and me having just penned a 6,000 word essay on the topic). Far, far more interesting are people who peel themselves away from their screens, get off their butt, and put something of themselves on the line in order to change the world out there.

T’here are three people, that I had the good fortune to understand a little better through the Pop!Tech fellows program, who I think exemplify innovative thinking with a personal commitment to make a difference in the financially constrained communities covered in this essay – Sameer Kalwani of Sarvajal Water, Paul Needham of Simpa Networks, and Rose Goslinga of the Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture.

Find yourself, find your inspiration, go forth a create your own.

January 2012

***

* Give or take permaphuck, the onset of altitude sickness, when there’s midnight interviews to run or data to synthesize, when malarial mosquitos are biting, or its Saturday night and we’re holed up next to drunken, arguing lovers in a Seoul love hotel.

** Humans do have a penchant for watching other humans do things to one another and Apple takes the view that this form of watching through official Apple branded apps will dilute their platform. Their argument that any web content can be viewed through their devices is hollow given that any designer worth their sweaty palms knows the experiential difference between dedicated app and a web page offering the same content (Although, yes this distinction too is changing).

*** If you wanted to push the argument the Chinese government funded building of new apartment blocks in Lhasa is right there on the edge of the design imperialism debate – combining both economic development and ‘better’ housing conditions, with the wholesale change, some would say destruction of more traditional communities as part of the broader issue of pacifying Tibet by encouraging ‘mainland’ Chinese migration. For many local Lhasan families the options are a modern apartment with indoor plumbing, hot running water, stable electricity versus more traditional dwelling. I know which I prefer to experience as a visitor. I also have enough humility to know that my preference is irrelevant compared to the families that are being asked to move, and the urban planners that are tasked with supporting a growing urban center. Not to skirt the broader issues around Tibet and China, freedom of expression, rural versus urban child malnutrition, or geopolitical concerns, but the level of knee-jerk naiveté around some of the conversations, especially by people that haven’t spent time on the ground still startles.

Photo: 3 gents in Tokyo.

frog 2012 最新科技预言

Kristina Loring — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 22:13:17 -0600

当网络上充斥着各种关于如何度过世界末日前最后一年的八卦的时候，青蛙们却在考虑着另一些能改变我们文化的东西。我们请教了全球各地的青蛙与我们分享他们个人最关注的将在今年得到长足发展的科技趋势，以及它们将会对未来的设计、商业、娱乐以及我们日常生活带来怎样的影响。这里有来自各个领域的青蛙——从策划到工程，以及从他们的激情与专业知识中提炼出天才想法。毫无疑问，2012将是广泛连接化、高度个人化、顶级智能化电脑成形的一年，好吧，也许那时连电脑都省略了。

连接城市

首席创意执行官Mark Rolston

现代化城市正在成为一个节拍器，新的URL地址将成为未来的“数据—物理”相互交织的环境。明天的Placebook会向今天的Facebook致敬。在计算机技术、便携设备领域的轰动革新和广泛应用，以及丰富的数据资源正在改变我们生活、工作、玩乐的城市。电脑在城市环境中如何改变着我们的生活方式，这是与我们每个人息息相关的。一座虚拟城市漂浮在我们真实世界的上空，它在不停地扩张并提供日益丰富的经验来让世界更完美，在紧急情况下提供超人的帮助。在未来的变形城市里，电脑不再存在于我们手边，它将围绕于我们身边，它将巧妙地利用环境，用更自然更强大的方式给予我们力量。

从计算机技术中解放计算机

高级设计技术总监Jared Ficklin，执行技术总监Robert Tuttle， 助理市场副总裁Adam Richardson

人类与科技的互动将以对话形式呈现的新型计算机技术正浮出水面。我们将能够和它们“对话”。语音识别是关键。苹果的Siri是这项技术的先驱者，不过福特公司在几年前就在他们的车上应用了同样广泛使用语音控制的Microsoft Sync，他们很聪明地没有把这项技术限定于高端的林肯轿车系列，而是同时包括面向年轻消费者的中低端系列，这是一个吸引年轻一代的好办法。语音识别技术如今达到了史无前例的高度，新一代的用户也已经准备好接受语音控制，就像每一块屏幕都已准备好接受触摸技术。不过，语言只是“对话”的一部分，电子摄像头——尤其是带有深度感知装置的摄像头将能够捕捉手势或身体语言之类完善人类交流的非语言信号。当语言和手势的理解相互配对，人类将能自然得与科技交谈，而不必说那些死板指令。2012的策略路线就是“设计人类”成为最基本的交互装置。

量化的自我

创意总监Tomas Sutton

我们将看到开源平台的崛起，他们为第三方传感器、前端程序、分析引擎提供API。一个运动爱好者将能够整合他在Fitbit、Jawbone、Zeo、Nike plus和Withings的数据得到对自己的健康状况与生活方式的全面了解。出于简化目的而产生的这种驱动力将引导我们基于数据创造更大的价值和见解。当服务变得更聪明，它们的见解将变得更简洁但更有价值。我大胆的预言数据将超越眼下的“可视化”而达到人性化的建议，提示与引导个体行动的水准。

还原社交网络：科技终将以人为本

业务发展副总裁Nathan Weyer

Facebook不是个人化的，他是社交化的，但它关系着互联网的更新换代。现今的技术、产品和服务都不能充分满足人们对于亲密感，私人关系的需求。Facebook和Flickr在发展早期都感到了这种需求，可如今我们的社交网络与硬盘都已经被超越我们处理能力的数据洪流所吞没。我们在网络上的形象都是放大了的个性，不是真正的我们。日前大热的云计算更加剧了这个问题：现在我的一万张照片都已经储存到了以太网上，但这是否代表了我以更感性的方式与它们联系在一起？是否代表了我在以一种更有意义的方式与我最亲密的三个朋友分享他们？2012年我们不再受制于数以TB计的数据，着眼于单个数据的分享。2012年，社交产品将开始缩小社交圈子，找回亲密感与真实感。

聚缩造就专业

创意总监Michael DiTullo

在过去的十年里，我们目睹了大型硬件聚缩成为体积更小更通才型的设备。智能手机几乎是一个瑞士军刀般完美的聚缩数字设备。它吸收了大部分移动设备的功能，像是听音乐，看电影，拍照，摄像，邮件，日历，或者是更基本的时间功能。我看到无数的博客宣言相机，手表这样的“专一产品”会迅速地萎缩死亡。而我认为新技术将让它们得到更好的发展。当用户购买“专一产品”，吸引他们的是更好的质量和设计。结果“聚缩产品”在成为初级电子产品的同时抹杀了其他产品改善的空间。这其实是在给各大公司和品牌一个机会去做设计师们最爱做的事——把产品做得更好！

交互编排

资深设计技术总监Jared Ficklin

用户交互将不再局限于那块小玻璃中。你将不再需要一个明确的工具甚至不再需要去操作设备。随着科技发展，像微软的Kinect技术将会看到用户在空中的动作，手势将加入传统的交互方式。这种新层面的交互方式要求对于精确度和人体工程学的新想法，并且要考虑到是否会人觉得某些手势很傻或着冒犯到别人。我们现在非常热衷于这个概念，我们甚至推走了设计师们的桌子以腾出更大的空间进行手势的设计。

强调信用的贷款和交易成为主流

助理副总裁、策略师Tim Morey

经济不景气，加上所谓的协作消费或共享经济的崛起已经让社会对于“消费的末日”这样的观念议论纷纷。像AirBnB和Zimride这样允许人们以自己房屋或汽车的份额进行贷款的公司被引作使用和交换商品的新途径的例子。但真正有趣的地方是新形式的信用因为社交网络技术而变得可能。我们都加入了Facebook和LinkedIn来与同事朋友保持联系，但大规模普及的结果是我们几乎能搜索到我们遇见的每一个人。素不相识或从未进行过交易的个体可以使用社交网络验证对方。如果只是在Craigslist上卖东西，买方是个好人还是坏人并不重要——一手交钱一手交货我们就两清了。但如果我是租借东西给你，信用就变得至关重要。我需要知道你不是骗子、小偷或者卑鄙小人。通过连接当面的交易和社交网络，我们就能减少押金之类的金融补足措施。使用Facebook账号登入其他网站已经很普遍了，我们现在着手与利用社交网络将证券信用引入当面交易。比如当你通过AirBnB得以在别人的副卧室留宿之前你需要注册你的个人资料。我最近借用几天别人在多伦多的房子，我们在社交网络上找到了足够多的共同亲戚朋友和同事，这让他能安心地把房产借给我使用。2012年，这种强调信用的贷款何交易将成为主流。偶们将可以基于信用和更陌生的人进行租赁、交换或者贸易。

金字塔底座的移动革新

首席策略总监Ravi Chhatpar

智能手机将在被称作“金字塔底座”的低端大众市场一展拳脚。华为100美金不到的Android手机已经在肯尼亚取得巨大的成功，各大厂商正紧跟步伐去适应非洲、印度、东南亚、南美市场。这些智能手机并不以硬件为卖点，它们是那些更贵更多功能兄弟们的简化版本。但它们肩负着让一大群跃跃欲试的人们得以一探智能手机和丰富应用世界的使命。这群人中充满了实验者、工匠何开发人员，它们会解开一个被高端市场忽视已久的世界——解决它们资深真正的需求的应用的世界。

物质世界中的数字发现

创意总监Scott Nazarian

未来几年在现实世界的非结构化的探索经验将变得非常有趣。“搜索”同时在数字世界和物质世界的进化将成为2012的重点。通过Siri以及Gowalla、FourSquare之类的服务项目的引进，我们已经很熟悉一部分功能性的（软件）和具象的（媒体）组成部分。复杂搜索和知识管理算法的汇合，以及越来越多方面的基于位置的应用程序造就了现实与数字世界之间高度流动的无缝连接。这个由Wolfram-Alpha的“智能”和基于位置语义理解是未来“智能空间”的软件基础。同时，更灵敏的传感器和制动器将定义新的物理与建筑的表达方式。当然这看起来只是Technorati搜索引擎的一个显著进展，但对于亚洲或其他地方的在将来的十年内即将生活于所谓智能城市的上班族们来说，他们已经怀抱着对于集成的“可搜索性”的预期。

后PC时代蓬勃发展的商业

金融服务助理副总裁、创新战略团队Toshi Mogi

商业的后PC关口已经近在眼前，消费者们将继续不断涌向手机、平板电脑、智能电视、游戏机平台。金融服务公司意识到对消费行为和预期的巨大转变做好准备将是一个明智之举。我们将很可能看到各大公司将他们在网络上成功经验运用到更精简的移动平台上。但是做为目睹飞速发展成熟的后PC平台的消费者，他们期待的更多。后PC平台为我们提供了移动性、便携性、支付功能、视频协作功能、位置感知功能、自然语义处理、手势理解等等。聪明的公司会运用这个新鲜的日益变化的调色板在现实和虚拟世界里创作美妙的使用体验。他们的目标，是让客户满意，忠诚并参与其中。

算法时代

资深设计技术总监Jared Ficklin

我们生活在应用程序的年代并正在进入一个新的领域。语音识别、面部识别、同声传译机甚至只是一张音乐播放列表背后性感的数字将不再只是超级计算机和桌面端的领域。智能手机也将运行这些算法，对它们的数据支持也将更加流畅。忘记全球变暖吧，消费者将为一个收集数据，解决日常问题的算法投入大笔的钱。

仿生学

顾问编辑Reena Jana

在2012年，将会有越来越多的科学家、技术人员、建筑师、企业甚至是政府将仿生学（模仿生物建造技术装置的科学）作为一种有效的创新战略。为什么呢？通常情况下，节能、环保这些技术难题都能在自然中找到解答。如何从雾气中获取水分的解决方案，已经经过非正式研发团队——包括动物、植物、昆虫和其他参与者长达数十亿年的“测试”。他们拥有的流线型外观也远比传统人造工艺更符合空气动力学。虽然仿生学已存在一定年头，但在2012年，有影响力的头脑们将更广泛地应用它，包括规划新的城市和城市基础设施的更新。此外，随着研究的深入专家们也开始探讨仿生学的不足之处，分享更棒的实例。

云中王国！

高级副总裁、工程师Mark VandenBrink，执行策划总监Abby Godee

我们正迅速进入一个高科技世界，在那里，移动性将不仅仅意味着更轻便的设备而是互联网上我们每个人都在产出的无孔不入的数据薄雾。管理、保密、理解这些数据的工作将在未来几年内变得至关重要。其中，让这些数据变得对消费者而言也浅显易懂是关键所在。“这可能吗？”从来不是我们的问题，我们在乎的是“什么时候这样一个能够无缝融入日常生活的，令人信服且有用处的生态系统可以成形？”，我们认为在2012，我们终于能做到了。

远程合作

执行创意总监Holger Hampf

如果你的日常生活需要用到远程音频或视频交流，你一定因为延迟而十分恼怒过。随着不同人，不同地点之间连接的日益增长，我们迫切想要和远方的同事工作时就感觉像在同一个房间里那么“直接”，而科技似乎远远落后于我们的需求。掉线、信号差、视频中断处处阻碍着我们。我们离高清体验的距离如此遥远，有时让我感觉应该放个烟雾信号弹也许还比较快捷。毫无疑问，科技在快速发展，这从与亲朋好友用Skype打越洋电话的人数就能看出。然而，事实上我们大部分的长距离对谈都非常恼人且一点都不好玩。我们得在设计与科技中找到一种创新的结合方式，来把远程对话体验变得更充实更直接。

重塑：模拟人类

frog创始人Hartmut Esslinger

创意模型和样品的制作是使设计变成现实的唯一方法。工具——不论是真实的还是虚拟的，它连接着我们的想法与真实世界。然而，工具也定义了我们如何塑造事物：它们的局限性使得我们必须密切参与到工具和材料之中，磨练自己的技术，最终臻于完美。而如今那些“方便”的电子工具在给我带来初期的“成就感”同时也让我们变得沾沾自喜。这将直接导致平庸以及卓越的创意的流失。许多被戏称为“聚苯乙烯石板”的新兴电子产品的设计，我们评价它时会把它的转角做得有多漂亮作为标准（复古的50年代棱角分明的设计），当代的数字设计软件正是不计其数的重复的乏味设计的罪魁祸首。查理・卓别林的“摩登时代”就是对我们当今机械化的丧失人性的社会的最佳预言。

5 Lessons From The Best Interaction Designs Of 2011

Robert Fabricant — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 17:15:24 -0600

Like many of you, I was delighted to find an Amazon Kindle Fire sitting on my desk a few weeks ago, when it was first released. My delight was heightened by the fact that I hadn't actually bought it. The Fire belonged to another Robert in frog's New York studio, Robert Curtis, who was more than happy to unbox the product with me so that we could both get a sense of the quality of that crucial "first" user experience with the product. Lest there be any doubt as to whose Fire it was, the screen immediately displayed a personal message: "Hello Robert Curtis. Welcome to Kindle Fire" (even though it was not yet connected to our Wi-Fi network).

Now, I realize that the Fire has been taking a lot of heat since its launch for some major gaffes in the design, with usability guru Jakob Nielsen condemning it as a "disappointingly poor user experience." This may not be an Apple-quality product yet. But that initial setup experience set a new bar for me. A mere five years ago, critics were falling all over themselves to praise Apple for the revolutionary way that you activated the iPhone--never mind that it took almost a dozen screens, a computer, and a cable. It seemed very smart at the time. But now it seems downright clunky. With the Fire, Amazon has done something few can claim: It has moved past Apple in the consumer market. This is no small feat. It takes a huge amount of work behind the scenes, more than you can imagine, to deliver your device to you, straight off of the shop floor, one to one. The Fire's "out of box experience" is both magical and incredibly mundane--very easy to take for granted, as I am sure we all will in the coming years.

Behind the scenes at the judging. Standing by the whiteboard is Matt Jones, of BERG and Robert Fabricant.

Technologies like cheap sensors and cloud computing are increasingly being used to augment our daily lives in both magical and mundane ways. Everything we do is an app in the making (a million and counting). But in this environment we are also developing a new sensitivity to the thin line between enrichment and annoyance. Which is why interaction design continues to gain prominence as the discipline with the greatest potential to maintain our sanity in this brave new world of distraction. So it was with high hopes that I joined a gathering of some of the best minds in interaction design today, including Massimo Banzi, Janna DeVylder, Matt Jones, Younghee Jung, Jonas Löwgren, and Helen Walters, to judge the first annual Interaction Design Awards sponsored by the IxDA. Our job was to recognize the best examples from 2011 as well as communicate the critical role of good interaction design in our lives. While I cannot share the winners--yet-- this experience was a great moment to reflect on the state of interaction design and what it might hold in the next few years.

Nike Signature Moves Film Room from Sarah Ko on Vimeo.

1. Don't look for breakthroughs.
The overall work was pretty stunning. We have reached an amazing moment in which interaction paradigms that seemed like sci-fi a few years ago are now being broadly applied in commercial markets. This includes everything from gestural interactions to location-based systems and smart spaces. Interaction paradigms that were the sole province of the MIT Media Lab 10 years ago are now in wide use at companies like Nike and Pepsi. For many of us this is like watching our children grow up. There is something both exhilarating and deeply disappointing about seeing this future arrive in the form of grocery shopping applications. And it creates an interesting challenge for the Interaction Design Awards to recognize ideas after they have already gone mainstream.

Artefact's SWYP concept, a printer whose WYSIWYG touchscreen applies interaction ideas you find on cameras and table computers.

2. Embrace the mundane.
The next breakthroughs will be when these rich paradigms are applied to increasingly quotidian and pervasive areas of our daily experience and extended into the physical infrastructure around us. At this point, it is much more interesting to see mobile feedback and data visualization applied to mass transit than to sharing playlists. It is in areas like energy and health care where these interaction models will have the most pull, exposing at the surface level much more fundamental transformations in our basic, physical infrastructure that are sorely needed.

3. Don't buy into the hype.
Don't get distracted by the hype surrounding Google and Apple, Facebook and Twitter, or Android and iPhone. It is time to get out of that game, with technologies like HTML 5 pointing the way. Getting your data onto a single platform is not going to win you any awards. Smart companies are turning their products into services that are broadly distributed, where the value is in the relationship, not a single device. As that continues, we will see the balance of power in innovation shift back to corporations and startups that own these services and away from design agencies that merely extend their reach to the next novel device or platform.

4. Look past the screen.
As we switch to a more service-oriented ecosystem, interaction design must extend its reach beyond the screen, beyond interactive media and digital information. One of the most interesting submissions was a set of printed instructions for a personal medical device that was beautifully designed and thoroughly tested with end users. A number of the judges questioned the relevance of this work to interaction design. But in an environment as heavily regulated as glucose meters, the most powerful and meaningful opportunities to improve interaction might not involve any pixels. Instead these opportunities reside in call centers, bank statements, or explanations of benefits.

Museu da Vida - Interaction Cubes from Mariana Duprat on Vimeo.

5. Video is the only shortcut.
How do you communicate the impact of interaction design across a distributed set of touch points, some online and some off? I came away from this experience convinced that the most important skill that young interaction designers can develop is in video "sketching." Video plays a critical role in communicating new service and product concepts across time and place. There is no substitute. And the best interaction designers working today, like Matt Jones at Berg, use video to ask new questions about the role of interaction design in our lives. Video is the only shortcut that we have as designers. So use it!

Hello Little Printer, available 2012 from BERG on Vimeo.

I hope that you will reflect on these themes--and experiment with them as well--as you review the finalists for the 2011 Interaction Design Awards. The winners will be announced at the IxDA conference Dublin in early February. So please stay tuned and join the discussion on what makes great interaction design.

This article originally appeared on FastCo.

frog's 2012 Technology Trend Predictions

Kristina Loring — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 15:53:54 -0600

While the Internet is buzzing with ways to survive the last year of the world (according to the ancient Mayan Calendar), frogs are thinking of other things that will shape culture this year. We asked frogs from across the globe to share their personal favorite tech trends that’ll crop up this year and what their impact would be on design, business, entertainment, and our daily routines. We had frogs from all disciplines—from strategy to engineering—draw from their passions and expertise to offer their input. Without doubt, 2012 is shaping up to be a year of hyper-connected, highly-personal, ultra-smart computing that, well, might just skip the computer altogether.

Here’s what our tech forecasters predict for 2012. Click on any trend to jump to its description below or flip through the presentation.

Connected Cities
Taking Computers Out of Computing
Quantified Selves
The Reductive Social Network: Technology Finally Gets Personal
Convergence Causing Specialization
Interaction Choreography
Reputation Enhanced Lending and Trading Becomes Mainstream
Base of the Pyramid  Mobile Innovation
Digital Discovery in the Physical World
Flourishing Commerce in the Post-PC Era
The Age of the Algorithm
Biomimicry
Reign in the Clouds!
Remote Collaboration
Re-Shape: Humans Are Analogue

Connected Cities
by Chief Creative Officer Mark Rolston

The modern city is becoming a pointer system, the new URL, for tomorrow’s hybrid digital–physical environment. Today's Facebook will be complemented by tomorrow's Placebook. Explosive innovation and adoption of computing, mobile devices, and rich sources of data are changing the cities in which we live, work, and play. It's about us, and how computing in the context of our cities is changing how we live. A digital landscape overlays our physical world and is expanding to offer ever-richer experiences that complement, and in emerging cases, replace the physical experience. In the meta–cities of the future, computing isn't just with us; it surrounds us, and it uses the context of our environment to empower us in more natural, yet powerful ways.

Taking Computers Out of Computing
by Senior Principal Design Technologist Jared Ficklin, Executive Technology Director Robert Tuttle, and Assistant Vice President Marketing Adam Richardson

A new pattern of computing is emerging where interactions with technology will be conversational. We’ll literally talk to them and they to us. Voice recognition is a key enabler of this. Apple’s Siri is the headliner, of course, but Ford has been employing Microsoft Sync—which also uses voice control extensively—in its cars for a few years. It's being smart about offering it not just in its high–end models or Lincoln premium brand, but in less expensive cars that appeal to younger buyers. It's a great way to get a new generation engaged with the Ford brand. Voice recognition technology has finally hit its tipping point of capability, and the stage is being set for a generation of users to start assuming voice control, just as touch control is now assumed for any screen. However, the spoken word is only a fragment of any conversation. Computer vision—especially depth sensing cameras—will be able to pick up non-verbal cues such as gesturing or body language that complete human communication. When both voice and gesture comprehension are paired, humans will be able to address technology naturally, without command jargon. The tactical steps being taken in 2012 are to “design the human” as the primary interface device in support of that.

Quantified Selves
by Creative Thomas Sutton

We’ll see the launch of open data aggregation platforms that provide API's for third party sensors, front-end applications, and analysis engines. A self-tracking enthusiast will be able to merge her Fitbit, Jawbone, Zeo, Nike plus, and Withings data to see a comprehensive overview of her health and lifestyle. Driven initially by a simplification benefit, the long-term power of this trend will be the ability to construct ever-greater value and insight on top of the data. The smarter the services get, the simpler and more valuable their insights will become. At a presentation level, I believe we will move beyond the current data visualization trends towards humanized suggestions that prompt and guide individual action.

The Reductive Social Network: Technology Finally Gets Personal
by Vice President of Business Development Nathan Weyer

Facebook is not personal. It is social, but it is evolving into the next iteration of the Internet. Today’s technologies, products, and services do not adequately serve the human need for intimacy and personal connections. The early days of Facebook and Flickr felt this way, but now our social networks and hard drives are swamped with a deluge of digital data that we can't process. Our Internet personalities have evolved into amplified personas that aren't truly us. The current fervor around cloud computing only exacerbates the problem: now my 10,000 digital photos are in the ether, but am I any more emotionally connected with them and sharing them with my three closest friends in a meaningful way? 2012 is about culling from the terabytes and sharing with the single digits. In 2012, product companies will deliver new products that begin narrowing the social circle and capturing intimacy and authenticity.

Convergence Causing Specialization
by Creative Director Michael DiTullo

For the past decade we have been seeing a convergence of multiple pieces of hardware into fewer generalist devices. The smart phone is the almost perfect example of the convergent digital device as Swiss Army knife. It has absorbed much of the most common use cases for portable devices, like music and video consumption, digital photo and video capture, email and calendar, and simple things like time keeping. I read countless blog posts proclaiming that dedicated devices, like the camera and the watch, would rapidly shrivel and die. Instead, I think new technologies will provide opportunities for them to get better. When users do purchase a dedicated device, they are gravitating towards products with higher quality and better design to elevate their experience. It turns out that the convergent device is killing the commodity digital product while forcing everything else to improve. This is presenting companies and brands with an opportunity to do what designers love: make things better!

Interaction Choreography
by Senior Principal Design Technologist Jared Ficklin

User interaction with technology is going above the glass. You no longer need an explicit tool or even direct manipulation to drive a user interface. With the ability of technology, like the Microsoft Kinect, to see users’ movements in space, gestures are being added to traditional methods in new layers of interaction. Designing for this new layer of interaction requires new thinking about dexterity, ergonomics, and whether someone might feel silly or offensive with certain gestures. We are so involved in this space right now, that we’ve had to move our design technologists’ desks to create enough room for all the hand waving design.

Reputation Enhanced Lending and Trading Becomes Mainstream
by Assistant Vice President, Strategy Tim Morey

The recession, coupled with the rise of the so-called Collaborative Consumption or Shared Economy, has the early–adopter community abuzz with notions of the end of consumption. Companies like AirBnB and Zimride that allow people to open their homes or their cars to share or loan for a fee are cited as examples of new ways of using and exchanging goods and services. But the really interesting trend here is that new forms of trust are being enabled by social networking technology. We all joined Facebook and LinkedIn to stay in touch with colleagues and friends, but the upshot of mass adoption is that we can check up on virtually everyone we come across. Individuals who have never met or transacted with one another are using social networks to validate each other. If you are just selling goods on Craigslist, it doesn’t really matter whether the buyer is a good person or a bad one: I take the cash, you take my goods, and you are gone. But if I am renting something to you, trust becomes critical. I want to know that you are not a crook, or a thief, or a bad egg. By linking person-to-person transactions to social networks, we are reducing the need for cash deposits and other financial remedies to the bad egg problem. While logging into third party websites using your Facebook identity is now commonplace, we are beginning to see person-to-person exchanges making use of social networks to broker trust. For example, before you stay at someone’s spare bedroom via AirBnB, you have to sign in with your profile. I recently rented someone’s house in Toronto for a few days, and between our respective social networks we found enough friends, relatives, and colleagues in common for him to lend me the property with confidence. In 2012, this reputation enhanced lending and trading will become mainstream. We will lease, barter, and trade with relative strangers, banking on their reputation and connections.

Base of the Pyramid  Mobile Innovation
by Strategy Director Ravi Chhatpar

Smartphones will make significant inroads into an entirely new segment: the lower end of the mass market and the “base of the pyramid.” Huawei's sub-$100 Android smartphone has already had significant success in Kenya, and major manufacturers are quickly following suit across Africa, India, Southeast Asia, and South America. These smartphones will not be notable for hardware innovations, as they're stripped down versions of their more expensive and feature-packed brethren. However, they’ll be notable for the fact that an eager population will be discovering the world of smartphones and apps for the first time. This population is filled with experimenters, tinkerers, and developers who will unleash a new world of apps that address their own needs and pain points—those that have been ignored by those focusing on the top end of the market.

Digital Discovery in the Physical World
by Creative Director Scott Nazarian

The experience of the unstructured discovery of the physical world is about to get a lot more interesting in the next few years. 2012 will be a year of continuing to focus on the digital and material evolution of "search.” We're already familiar with a few of the functional (software) and representational (media) components involved through the introduction of Siri and services such as Gowalla or Four Square. The confluence of complex search and knowledge management algorithms, and the growing layer of location-based applications, gives rise to a highly fluid, seamless integration between physical and digital contexts. This evolutionary mixture of Wolfram-Alpha "smarts" and location–based, contextual intelligence is the (software) basis of all future "smart space.” Meanwhile, sensors and actuators of greater acuity may define new modes of physical and architectural expression. Of course this may seem an obvious progression to the Technorati, but for the work-a-day masses soon to be living in so called smart cities in Asia and elsewhere in the next decade, the expectations about how such integrated "findability" actually feels are already beginning to be set.

Flourishing Commerce in the Post-PC Era
by Assistant Vice President of Financial Services, Innovation  Strategy Group Toshi Mogi

The post-PC channels for commerce have come of age, and consumers will continue to flock to mobile, tablet, smart TVs, and game console platforms to conduct their business. Financial services firms would find it wise to ready themselves for this dramatic change in customer behaviors and expectations. We will likely see firms convert their successful web experience to a more streamlined mobile and tablet capability, in particular. But as consumers' experiences with these rapidly evolving post-PC platforms matures, they will expect much more. The post-PC platform affords mobility, portability, payment capabilities, video and collaboration, location awareness, natural language processing, gestures, and so on. Clever firms will wield this fresh and evolving palette to craft engaging experiences in the real and virtual worlds. The aim will be to drive customer delight, loyalty, and engagement.

The Age of the Algorithm
by Senior Principal Design Technologist Jared Ficklin

We live in the App Age and are entering new territory. The sexy math behind voice or facial recognition, real time translation, or even just assembly of a playlist of music, is no longer the realm of super computers or even desktops. Smart phones will run algorithms, and the data to feed them will also be more fluidly available. Forget Global Warming models: Consumers will pay good money for an algorithm that gathers data and solves everyday problems.

Biomimicry
by Consulting Editor Reena Jana

In 2012, we'll see increasing numbers of scientists, technologists, architects, corporations, and even governments looking to biomimicry—designing objects and systems based on or inspired by patterns in nature—as an efficient innovation strategy. Why? Often, nature can provide examples of energy-saving, environmentally-friendly solutions to a variety of technological challenges. These solutions have also been "tested" via billions of years of informal R&D—by animals, plants, insects, and other participants in the natural world who have come up with ways of harvesting water from fog, for example, or possess sleek forms that are more aerodynamic than traditional man-made ones. While bio-mimicry has been an emerging field for some time, in 2012 influential thinkers will begin to apply biomimetic principles on a larger scale, including the planning of new cities and the updating of urban infrastructures. In addition, experts will also begin exploring the pitfalls of biomimicry and will also share best practices, as more case studies are available.

Reign in the Clouds!
by Senior Vice President, Engineering Mark VandenBrink and Executive Strategy Director Abby Godee

We're rapidly moving into a technology space where mobility is becoming less about a set of devices, and more about the pervasive mist of data that we all generate with every interaction on the Internet. Managing, securing, and understanding this data will play a huge part in technology over the next few years. Moreover, making that data comprehensible to the consumer is key. The question has never really been “is this possible?” but rather “when will we have an ecosystem of compelling and useful devices and services that will integrate seamlessly into people’s lives?” We think that time is finally arriving in 2012.

Remote Collaboration
by Executive Creative Director Holger Hampf

When you work in a context where regular interaction via audio and video between multiple locations is a necessary part of your daily activities, you might have experienced great frustration as of late. With the demand for more connectivity everyday, between both people and places, it feels like technology is far behind in addressing the need to work efficiently and with the same "directness" of talking to a person in the same room. Dropped calls, poor reception, and interrupted video streams are the standard. We are so far away from a high-def experience that we may want to reconsider sending a smoke signal. Make no mistake, technology is moving fast, as shown by the popularity of Skyping with friends and family across continents. Unfortunately, the truth is that most of our conversations across distances are far from perfect and no fun at all. We need creative collaboration between design and technology to rethink these experiences so that they are more fulfilling and "direct" activities in our lives.

Re-Shape: Humans Are Analogue
by frog Founder Hartmut Esslinger

The way of design is only achievable via creative model-making and prototyping by the designer. Tools, both real and virtual, connect our mind with the real world. However, tools also define how we shape things: tools’ limitations enhance our deep involvement with them and the materials, and honing our skills ultimately leads to mastership. The curse of “easy” digital tools is to become complacent after relative early “successes.” This can lead to mediocrity and a loss of creative excellence. Like the new “polystyrene slates” of many new electronic products, where excellence is defined by how well the corners are shaped (a re-run of 1950‘s boxy design), our modern-day digital design software is the cause for zillions of repetitive and bland products. Charlie Chaplin’s classic film of mechanized dehumanization, Modern Times, is a déjà vu of our current state.

Image from mofaha.com