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Message to Mobile Operators: Monetize Personal Data

Theo Forbath — Tue, 14 May 2013 18:17:18 -0500

As the exchange of personal data becomes a lynchpin of the modern business model, mobile operators are confronted with new challenges and opportunities. At frog, we’re working with mobile operators on the challenges and opportunities in a world where a richer personal data stream is opening unprecedented possibilities for creating value. This article explores the why behind the market’s development and how operators can use Leverage, Risk, Scale, and Tangibility to evaluate opportunities to create value from personal data.

Personal data is the root of the next-gen business model

Twenty years ago, nobody imagined creating revenue from personal data. But a number of factors—the rise of the Internet, globalization of workforces, heightened access to capital, and a strong entrepreneurial spirit—changed all that by opening the way to rapid social and technological growth. Enter Google, Facebook, Twitter, and a whole new era in the sharing and consumption of information (read: data). All of these business models were predicated on the notion that if you can create a service cheaply and then offer it for free to establish a large user base, value would follow. And it has, mostly in the form of personal data monetization.

Now, by the time you read this, a huge trail of data will have been generated. Nearly everything we do in our daily routes—from checking email to buying coffee or driving to work—leaves distinct trails of data exhaust that describe who we are, what we do, and how we spend our resources. Today, your morning coffee not only gives you a buzz but also generates a rich personal data stream that can be logged, tracked, shared, and monetized.

As we continue to advance technologically and behaviorally, the opportunities to create value from personal data have become ever more real and exciting. These include embedded computing, the cloud, streaming service delivery models, location-based services, and multi-screen modes of online access in combination with mobile-centricity, hyper-sharing, and rising demands around the quality and cost of technology. With all these technological and behavioral forces taking shape, more and more businesses are taking strides to get in on the data monetization game.

Mobility and a growing dependence on connectivity put mobile operators in an advantageous position in this changing market. After all, operators provide the backbone of a consumer’s digital life and they have high levels of trust concerning sensitive personal data, such as home addresses, billing information, location, calling and texting histories.

Yet it won’t be easy for a mobile operator to create new forms of value from this personal data, mobile or otherwise. Operators must be willing to explore fundamental changes to the existing business framework, from new and different revenue models to new partnerships and customer segments (including B2B models). This will require more agility in responding to market dynamics.

Click here to continue reading Message to Mobile Operators: Monetize Personal Data (PDF Download)

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As frog’s vice president of innovation strategy, Theo Forbath helps clients transform their products and services, key business systems, and applications into competitive global solutions.

frog is pleased to join the 17th annual CONNECTIONS: The Premier Connected Home Conference, hosted by Parks Associates, May 20-23 in Las Vegas, Nevada. CONNECTIONS focuses on emerging technologies, monetization strategies, and content distribution for connected CE and connected home services. The agenda features key industry leaders, representing Comcast, DirecTV, Ericsson, Honeywell, LG Electronics, Microsoft, Ooyala, Qualcomm Inc., Verizon, TiVo, VeriFone and many more. Check out a full agenda and register to attend here.

To schedule a meeting with frog at CONNECTIONS or CTIA, please contact Marie.Lozano@frogdesign.com.

The 10 Building Blocks of Design Studio Culture

David Sherwin — Mon, 13 May 2013 08:21:15 -0500

This is an excerpt from from my new book, Success by Design: The Essential Business Reference for Designers, out now from HOW Books.

Culture is everything people in a design business do that supports the process of making work happen. Culture can create joy for designers, while improvements in process can facilitate profit. A common misperception is that culture emerges organically based on the decisions of a business owner or CEO. But a design studio’s culture is not created solely by those at the top. For a design-led business, culture is generated from ongoing contributions and discoveries from both studio owners and employees.

In researching my recent book on how design businesses can be more successful, I began to see important building blocks that were present in the most successful studios. These building blocks are divided into two groups: hard building blocks and soft building blocks. Hard building blocks are realized through a budget, meaning that you can allocate money and time for them as part of business overhead. The soft building blocks can be created through the decisions employees make over the course of their daily work, life and play (with less material investment by the owners).

A healthy studio culture draws equally from both types of building blocks. They provide emotional and material stability to employees in the face of ongoing work challenges, and often clients, family and the general public perceive them as ingredients of the company’s brand. These building blocks are equally present within design firms and in-house design teams—though for the latter, the composition of some building blocks may be heavily influenced by the company's overall behavior and needs.

Let’s take a deep dive into these building blocks, with important questions to ask yourself (and your team) in order to create a strong studio culture.

The “hard” building blocks of design studio culture

Type of Work

Type of work is the largest cultural building block for any studio, as the majority of the time in the studio is spent immersed in the work.

The kinds of customers selected by the business owner, the design disciplines practiced by the staff and the way projects are delivered by the team all contribute to the excitement that motivates employees and owners when they start work every morning.

What follows are the questions you should be asking yourself before the phone rings and prospective clients ask you if you’d like to take on a project. Your answers, and how they may overlap (or not) with your staff’s answers, will help you better understand where you can take your studio portfolio.

Customer types

What industries do you want to work with? As an example: Health care or consumer electronics?
What size of client do you prefer? Working with small companies or only the Fortune 100?
Are you working with for-profit companies? Are you focusing on opportunities from the nonprofit sector? Or are you interested in working with start-up firms?
How deeply are you entrenched in helping shape your client’s business? Are you a strategic partner, or does the client see you more as an executional vendor?
What types of brands are you seeking to work with? Small, hip local companies? Or older, established international firms?
What ethical stance do you take on certain types of clients? For example, working with a religious organization may not be considered appropriate for some studios, while others would jump at the chance.

Discipline and practices of design

What types of design does your studio want to practice? Print design? Interactive? Industrial? Environmental? Service?
What tangible things do you want to generate? One of the benefits of designing products, environments and brand systems is that every project generates physical evidence of your efforts. When creating interactive products or online advertising, that may not be the case. You may blink and miss it.
On what scale do you want to operate? For example: If your firm focuses on branding, do you want to create simple identity systems or the kind with hundreds of moving parts?
What other disciplines would you like to partner with? For instance, an interior designer may work with an architecture firm to design a retail space.

Style of delivery

What size projects do you seek? Do you prefer short-term projects, or would you enjoy working on an engagement that lasts years?
Are there specific delivery processes you prefer over others? Some designers like to work in a controlled waterfall-style project process, while others like the close collaboration and constant change that emerges from an agile or scrum-based project process.
Where are the clients located? Are you comfortable working with clients in a completely virtual manner, or do you prefer face-to-face interaction?
What level of security do you want as part of the client relationship? For example, do you desire a client retainer, which guarantees revenue at the cost of freedom? Or do you generate revenues from flat fees, causing the staff to regularly propose and secure new work as part of their work life? This can influence the studio atmosphere.

Space
Once you know what kind of work you’d like to create, you’ll need a space where you can make the magic happen. Studio owners must carefully consider the placement of their work space, the studio layout, the use of the studio environment and whether a formal space is even necessary to get the design work done.

Placement
You may be tempted to lease or purchase space in a far away, yet “up and coming” neighborhood that is great for your budget. However, getting to work shouldn’t be hard work for your employees or your clients. Otherwise you are implicitly charging your employees time that they could be using to take care of their wants and needs. Well-placed studios can help support those needs, by being near local coffee shops and restaurants, gyms and yoga studios, public transit or the freeway.

Layout
The layout of a studio helps facilitate the flow of conversation and the style of work taking place. Studio layouts can be open, closed or some combination of open and closed elements.

Closed environments are manifested through cube farms, closed-door offices and conference rooms—areas where people can seal themselves off from others and focus on their work. My first years as a designer took place in studio environments where each designer had his own cubicle, and any ongoing conversations required us to peek our heads over walls. At one point, we joked about sawing holes in the cubicle walls so we could see each other’s faces without having to stand up. (This was before video chat, mind you.) The layout of the space was a direct reflection of the kind of work that was taking place: production-heavy print deliverables.

On the other end of the spectrum, I have been working the past six years in entirely open studios, with little to no privacy possible unless I exit the studio floor. The complexity of the work product—much of it rooted in designing and developing interactive products and services—requires constant collaboration. An open studio plan encourages ad hoc conversation and a cross-pollination of ideas that otherwise would never see the light of day. However, an open plan also requires pockets of privacy, whether via conference rooms or closed-door “war rooms” where the staff can work without distraction. Noise-canceling headphones also are handy—I consider them the new “do not disturb” sign.

Use of environment
Decisions about the use of studio space can have a major impact on culture for both employees and visitors to your studio.

Design Commission leases an affordable studio space within the Tashiro Kaplan Artist Lofts. As a requirement in the lease, part of the design studio must be run as an art gallery. Every first Thursday of the month, the employees have to put on a show as part of a community art walk. Year after year, they have exhibited work from a range of international artists as well as created their own interactive art installations. This activity is also reflected online through a gallery website.

Other examples come from design studios that intentionally preserve a portion of their space for bringing in visiting artists and fellows, running a small retail store or subletting office space to like-minded businesses.

Co-location via virtual spaces
Some businesses choose to forgo a leased office space and work virtually, using by-the-meeting office spaces for face-to-face meetings with clients. In these situations, design teams work from home or from a local coffee shop, connecting regularly through email, IM, phone calls, video chat and online collaboration tools such as Basecamp, Campfire and WebEx. With the recent increase in drop-in and shared spaces, you can have the benefits of a studio environment on demand—providing the needed infrastructure at a fraction of the cost of leasing a full-time space. Plus, you also get the benefit of having some office mates to chat with.

Amenities

Amenities help create an atmosphere that supports staff as they go about their business. These amenities can help satisfy creature comforts—such as the daily caffeine fix—or encourage the staff to stick around the office, whether to socialize or to stay at work a little longer. (Sometimes both.)

Amenities are factored into the studio overhead as part of the benefits provided to all employees. They may be as simple as free soda and juice in the fridge, or a studio iTunes account stocked with thousands of tunes. Whether it’s locally sourced fruits and vegetables as a daily late afternoon snack or ice cream sundaes with chocolate chip cookie dough on the side after a hard week, what does your studio provide to keep your staff well-fed and happy?

Amenities may also include side benefits, such as subsidized gym memberships, a weekly on-site masseuse or free dining for those who choose to work past 7 p.m. Be aware that these perks can say a lot about your firm to potential employees. If you offer free cab rides home after 9 p.m., you might be broadcasting that working there requires staying late.

Training

Training is a line item struck from studio budgets when cash flow is meager. But both on-site and off-site training opportunities help foster a culture of continual learning. Designers are refreshed and revitalized by information and inspiration from outside their daily purview or work responsibilities. This can happen in person or virtually, whether by attending conferences and events, taking classes in new techniques or technologies, or fostering staff-led learning opportunities within your company.

Strapped for cash but want to satisfy your staff? Rotate the staffers who attend important events and require them to summarize and share what they learned with the studio.

The “soft” building blocks of design studio culture

Community

All work and no play can make a design team wear away. For this reason, design business owners should carve out dedicated time where studio staff can decompress and grow closer on a personal level.

Community-building activities and social outlets may be designed into the workday by studio management and staff, but ideally they should be realized and enlivened by the staff. Whether movie nights, Friday afternoon cheese tastings or ad-hoc happy hours, semiregular social outlets are often the highlight of a busy week. They become rituals ingrained in the company operations.

When I lived on the East Coast, Wednesday lunch meant Tex-Mex. It was our ritual for decompression. The studio principal would take the last few minutes of lunch to encourage staffers to talk about what was happening in their work and to tap into the creativity of the other designers to help them solve any problems they might be having. (It also made the lunch billable!)

The larger the business, the more these connection opportunities will help define the culture and inspire your staff. “The details, rituals and the camaraderie are an important part of frog culture,” says Doreen Lorenzo, president of frog, a global innovation firm. “For example, coffee time is at 4 p.m. every day at every office. It is a time to pause, maybe grab a bite to eat, talk to someone you haven’t spoken to, even play a friendly but competitive game of foosball. I often thought that if we took coffee time away we would have the highest attrition frog has ever seen. These small details make it an important reason why people choose to work at frog.”

Philanthropy

While earning money is obviously important for running a stable business, many studios also donate staff time or money toward passion projects related to nonprofit, educational and philanthropic causes. Studios can provide staffers with charity days that they can use individually or in groups. Some studios donate their space or evening hours toward supporting local educational or fundraising events. The costs of these efforts are included in studio overhead and can influence the type of work that a studio receives.

Recognition

Design business owners set the tone regarding how the performance of studio staff and their work should be recognized. The best recognition for your efforts should come from your client’s customers. Studio staffers, however, may desire additional praise from their peers, the press or the blogosphere. Some studios take pains to enter competitions, though such efforts can be costly and steal time and attention away from other endeavors.

Also, recognition doesn’t have to be solely about the work. The personal passions of studio staff can be shared with the world, as long as you continue to support your studio culture and properly represent your brand.

Leadership

How the studio owners lead a team, as well as how staff are properly trained and supported in taking leadership roles, can have major cultural implications for staff happiness. Not enough leadership, and your core staff may feel adrift. Too much active leadership, and your staff can feel like there’s no space in the work (or the studio) for their vision.

Challenge

A high level of challenge in client projects can supercharge a studio environment. Smaller-scale, more tactical projects may exercise the staff’s skills and craft sensibilities. Tackling larger-scale projects and design problems can provide the studio with new perspectives on persistent issues in the world and give your staff the chance to make a difference.

Additionally studio owners and staff can take on internal projects and initiatives to stay nimble and challenged when the project work isn’t as stimulating as they would like. Regular critique of ongoing projects should also challenge designers and studio owners to realize their best work.

Ownership

Ownership is the one of the best indicators of healthy leadership. Ownership is when the staff feels like they have control over their time and their work product. It emerges when business leaders provide their designers with the necessary space to ideate and create appropriate design solutions. It can also arise when a designer is able to imprint her unique perspectives and expertise on any of the cultural building blocks, such as the design of her office space, securing the right type of work, gaining a leadership role, receiving recognition or even coordinating a guest speaker series for the office.

Some design businesses provide incentives for demonstrating ownership around growing studio accounts, such as profit sharing. Staff can also gain an ownership stake in the studio if they stay with the studio for a substantial period of time. However, such monetary carrots might not appeal to everyone, and they should never preclude your staff receiving regular opportunities that align with their evolving passions.

What studio culture would you like to create?

Now that you know the building blocks of design studio culture, what are you going to do to focus on the culture at your studio or business?

I’ve created a Studio Culture Worksheet along with David Conrad, the Studio Director of Design Commission, to help you answer the following questions: What can your staff do to create their ideal studio culture? And how can that culture align with everyone’s desired working environment?

Here’s how to use the worksheet:

Take the worksheet and list what cultural building blocks you currently have in place as part of your studio.
Consider, based on what you want to do in the future, what new building blocks might increase joy. Add them to the worksheet.
Highlight which cultural building blocks you could give to others to increase their sense of ownership.
Have other team members do steps 1–3 with their own copy of the worksheet.
Merge all of your answers together and implement what the majority of the staff want first. Delegate ownership of specific initiatives to those on your team that have growth goals aligned with the culture-building activities.

Get a copy of Success by Design: The Essential Business Reference for Designers on Amazon.com.

Designing the Future / The Future of Design

hannah.piercey@frogdesign.com — Thu, 09 May 2013 19:31:19 -0500

Healthcare Needs Innovation Now

Fabio Sergio — Thu, 09 May 2013 17:34:32 -0500

New developments in connectivity and monitoring are shifting an industry traditionally defined by incremental change.

frogThink at The Tech

Timothy Morey, Bonnie Reese, and Maryanna Rogers — Mon, 06 May 2013 18:24:27 -0500

Approaching a problem with a design mindset is a craft—a way of working that may seem effortless, or even second nature, to a master craftsman, but can prove very hard indeed for a novice. And, like all crafts, it is something you learn by doing rather than by knowing. You can read all about “Design Thinking,” or other user-centric approaches, but it is only when you start to do them, to apply them, and to practice them that you start on the journey to becoming a master craftsman. As a result, these methodologies don’t really lend themselves to classic corporate education seminars. You can learn what they are in a seminar but not how to apply them. Such methodologies do not easily fit into a traditional school curriculum either. Though core curriculum standards are beginning to value twenty-first century skills, such as collaboration and creative problem solving, it is not obvious how a school might integrate the design-mindset into students’ schedules. It’s creative but it’s not “art”; it involves problem solving but it’s not math. So, if design-centric thinking is the future, and schools are not adopting it, how and where might we teach it?

Museums are a great place to start. They aren’t constrained by curriculum, they are environments that celebrate innovation and creativity, and they are often dealing with groups of students looking for an interactive experience.

The Tech Museum of Innovation is rising to the challenge, employing a hands-on, collaborative approach to its exhibit philosophy. As a museum without a collection to showcase, they put designing and making at the center of the museum experience. In fact, The Tech Museum has been providing opportunities for visitors to engage in “design challenge learning,” as they call it, for over 25 years—with The Tech Challenge (an annual team–based design challenge for 5th-12th graders), design-based lab programs, summer camps, and workshops. Now, as the museum is in the process of a complete re-design, they are also focusing on how to bring more design challenge learning to the museum floor.

The exhibit design team from The Tech came to frog and asked us how best to use some of our collaborative methodologies (which we call frogThink) in a museum environment with kids. We were thrilled to be asked to think through this with them and quickly pulled together a cross disciplinary team to engage for a day and define what this experience might look like. What better way to tackle the challenge than through some collaborative design exercises?

We started off the workshop by defining key Experience Principles. It was important to identify a set of principles that took into account the range of roles and people who would be engaged in the experience – the kids, the teachers who bring school groups, the parents, and the museum staff. Here were some of the key principles we identified through this exercise:

Make it collaborative: Give everyone a clear role in the process (including the adults on the sidelines)
Make it fun and entertaining for everyone
Provide a low barrier of entry, making it easy to get drawn in to the activity
Tie the activity to an achievable/tangible output
Create a lab environment where you feel inspired to invent and it’s safe to fail
Enable sharing and celebrate the outputs
Allow for reflection and realization of value

After establishing a shared vision for the key elements the experience should incorporate, we reviewed a range of different types of frogThink activities that we use in our business. Then we broke up into groups to tackle the design of the actual activity. We formed three groups made up of designers from both frog and The Tech and tasked each group with creating an activity flow of how museum visitors might engage in designing a social robot. We asked each group to use the Experience Principles as a touchstone for their activity design.

Our design also had to take into account the logistics of managing a field trip. These specific needs added a certain degree of complexity—keeping them safe, engaged and contained, taking into account the required chaperone-to-kid ratio, providing them with opportunities to MOVE and run around. We also had to ensure our activities would scale to different timeframes given the various constraints on school groups’ schedules. Finally, we had to recognize that not all chaperones speak English.

Each group designed a unique activity flow that responded to the challenge. One activity engaged the group with a provocative video to draw them into the challenge. Another group focused on simulating customer research to define the solution. The third group employed a lateral thinking exercise to generate unique robot solutions. Despite the differences in process, each solution aligned across the Experience Principles and included compelling components that could be prototyped.

The next step will be for the exhibits team at The Tech Museum to prototype these activities to test with the kids to see what works and what needs further shaping. We look forward to hearing what worked and what didn’t. Like all good design, we know it will need to go through numerous cycles of iteration informed by user feedback and testing. Luckily, The Tech team is committed and we know they’ll do a great job tuning the activities for their audience.

Timothy Morey is an assistant VP for the Innovation Strategy Group (ISG) at frog’s San Francisco studio. Bonnie Reese is a principal creative director at frog’s Austin studio. Maryanna Rogers is The Tech Museum’s director of innovation.

Mobile Ecosystems Evolving

Various frogs — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 12:15:37 -0500

Download Mobile Ecosystems Evolving

Mobile technology is more than the sum of the world’s portable electronic devices and the supporting telecommunications infrastructure.

Unlike earlier versions of the Internet, the mobile Web is a halo of information that follows us almost everywhere, an increasingly meaningful part of our most minute interactions with the physical world. It is an infinitely complex, dynamic system fed by billions of users and a growing variety of hardware and software programs that generate, transmit, and structure data.

These continuous streams of data are already transforming business on many fronts. How can improved user experience design make the vast trove of data more useful? What role does hardware play in the new digital ecosystems? And as the mobile Web continues to evolve, how will we prefer to interact with it?

frog explored these questions over the course of several weeks in our recent web series, Mobile Ecosystems Evolving. From healthcare, to retail, to enterprise—download the full collection of the insights and perspectives that were shared as we studied the future of mobile technology and its impact on diverse industries.

Rethinking Big Data with frog

Shine Chu — Sun, 28 Apr 2013 01:21:30 -0500

In today's age of hyper connectivity, data consumption and production will continue to grow at an inexorable pace especially in China and throughout Asia. Organizations will not only be challenged to manage, secure, and understand the data but also to create experiences that consumers find meaningful. With frog's Chief Creative Officer Mark Rolston, Executive Creative Director of Global Insights Jan Chipchase and Executive Creative Director Rainer Wessler, we will explore the notions of radical transparency, intimacy and authenticity that are pushing the boundaries of big data in Asia and enabling a new generation of change agents.

在当下的这个网络世界，数据正在以惊人的速度被生产、被消费。如何更好地管理、保护和理解这些大数据，将是未来几年里，我们所有人的重要工作之一。而其中最关键的，则是要让数据对消费者有价值。本次活动演讲嘉宾包括青蛙设计首席创意执行官Mark Rolston、全球视野洞察执行创意总监Jan Chipchase以及执行创意总监Rainer Wessler。届时，我们将与大家共同探索、搜寻，究竟有哪些开放透明真实的理念在整个亚洲范围内不断推进着大数据的变革。

Join frog at our "Rethinking Big Data" event, to be held at the SOHO Design Center on May 16.

青蛙设计诚挚邀请您参加5月16日于SOHO中国创意空间举行的“重新思考大数据”活动。

Thursday, May 16, 2013

6:00 pm Registration 签到

6:30 pm Cocktail Reception 冷餐鸡尾酒招待

7:00 pm Presentations 主题演讲

SOHO China Design Center

1st Floor, No. 299 Tongren Road, Jing'an District, Shanghai, China

上海市静安区铜仁路299号SOHO东海广场1楼

To RSVP, please contact frogsh.marketing@frogdesign.com

活动预约请联系frogsh.marketing@frogdesign.com

Speakers 演讲嘉宾

Mark Rolston, Chief Creative Officer 首席创意执行官

As Chief Creative Officer, Mark is responsible for driving frog's global creative vision. An early Web pioneer, Mark co-founded frog's digital media group in 1996, working with clients to leverage emerging technologies and setting the tone for user interface design and e-commerce platforms. Mark has been widely quoted in the press, including in BusinessWeek, The New York Times, Technology Review and the Wall Street Journal.

作为首席创意官，Mark Rolston负责青蛙设计的全球创意构想。作为一个早期的网络先锋， Mark于1996年创建了青蛙的数字媒体组，运用新生的技术为用户界面设计和电子商务平台奠定基调。他是一个在数字媒体、用户界面设计、电子商务和移动运用领域国际公认的专家，并且其言论广泛地被《商业周刊》、《快公司》、《纽约时报》、Technology Review、PC Magazine和《华尔街日报》引用。

Jan Chipchase, Executive Creative Director of Global Insights 全球视野洞察执行创意总监

Jan Chipchase oversees frog's global design research practice that runs over 150 projects worldwide each year, spanning a range of industries including healthcare, mobile, finance, automotive through to consumer packaged goods. Based out of China for two years, he ran projects across over a dozen 1st to 5th tier cities. Jan is a renowned keynote speaker ranging from innovation, design, marketing and strategy conferences, governmental & C-level events through to TED. His work is widely covered in the media including CBNWeekly, Economic Observer, New York Times, The Economist, Nikkei, Business Week and The Atlantic.

青蛙设计执行创意总监Jan Chipchase领导公司设计调研团队每年全球范围内服务超过150个项目。在加入青蛙设计之前，他曾任诺基亚的首席调研专家。他对于人类行为模式的研究准确地预测了消费流行趋为新产品开发奠定了重要基础。Jan Chipchase曾多次参与复杂的跨国设计研究项目，经验丰富，在将“以人为本” 的深刻理解融入产品开发方面，他的权威地位受到广泛认可。他的研究范围广泛，为了更好地理解技术给人类带来的影响，他寻访世界各地，探究其所处的更广阔的情感氛围，社会背景，与文化环境。他曾被《财富》杂志评为“全球技术界最聪明的人”，Jan的作品被广泛收录于国内外一线媒体如第一财经周刊、经济观察报、纽约时报、商业周刊等。

Rainer Wessler, Executive Creative Director 执行创意总监

Rainer Wessler has over 13 years of experience in strategic design, innovation strategy and concept design, helping clients in the consumer electronics, automotive, finance and retail sectors. As Executive Creative Director of frog Shanghai, he leads the studio's creative teams servicing clients in Asia. Prior to frog, Rainer led multiple programs at the Vodafone Group UX team in Dusseldorf, Germany. Rainer has spoken at multiple universities and events across Asia, such as the World Economic Forum Summer Davos, Tsinghua University, and the Bloomberg BusinessWeek Global Green Summit.

Rainer是青蛙设计上海工作室的执行创意总监，他本人在创意产业领域有着超过十二年的工作经验。在他多面化的学科专业中，战略设计、创新流程管理、概念设计在其职业生涯中扮演了重要的角色。Rainer带领着青蛙设计创意团队服务于来自国内外的全球500强企业。加入青蛙设计前，Rainer曾在沃达丰集团领导设计规范化团队。他本人也曾受邀担任国内外知名论坛大会的主讲嘉宾，如“量化自我北京大会”、“Telco 2.0”、“彭博商业周刊全球绿色峰会”。他本人也曾接受来自《中欧商业评论》等国内一线媒体的采访。

A Model for Innovation in Emerging Markets

Emily Chong — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 03:51:50 -0500

Mobile connectivity is creating and enabling new approaches to markets which have traditionally been hard to crack. For emerging economies, connectivity can improve everyday life for the poorest if companies find a sustainable model for reaching new consumers and understand the complex canvas of emerging markets.

Visa, a payments company, recently partnered with frog to complete a three-month long project in Rwanda to uncover how technology can advance financial inclusion. Teams immersed themselves fully into their local Rwandan surroundings, living alongside the people who would ultimately benefit from financial inclusion to understand their everyday lives more completely.

Join Visa and frog at Singapore's historic Arts House on the evening of May 7, where we will present details of this design research activity plus an innovative model for understanding consumers and building market share in the developing world and beyond.

Invite only, for more informations please contact: frogsh.marketing@frogdesign.com

Tuesday, May 7, 2013
6:30 pm Cocktail Reception
7:00 pm Presentations

The Arts House
1 Old Parliament Lane
Singapore 179429
Map

Speakers

Gordon Cooper, Head of Emerging Market Solutions, Visa
Gordon Cooper is Head of Emerging Market Solutions for Visa in Asia Pacific, Central Europe, Middle East and Africa (APCEMEA). In this capacity, he leads a team exploring new business models for Visa in emerging markets, with a particular focus on meeting the needs of unbanked and under-banked consumers. The group’s focal project is Visa’s Public-Private Partnership with the Government of Rwanda and the rollout of the mVISA mobile money solution in Rwanda. Originally from Halifax, Canada, Gordon lives in Singapore with his wife and four kids but spends about a week a month in Rwanda.

Jan Chipchase, Executive Creative Director of Global Insights, frog
As Executive Creative Director of Global Insights Jan oversees frog’s global design research practice, that runs over 150 projects worldwide each year for Fortune 500 clients, spanning a range of industries including healthcare, mobile, finance, automotive through to consumer packaged goods. This role provides a unique perspective on innovation, design and the adoption of technology globally. Over the last decade he has conducted extensive research across the globe, from trend-hotspots through to warzones and pretty much everywhere in between. He is a renowned keynote speaker ranging from innovation, design, marketing and strategy conferences, governmental & C-level events through to TED. His work is widely covered in the media including the New York Times, The Economist, Nikkei, Business Week and The Atlantic.

Innovation from Walkman to Today

hannah.piercey@frogdesign.com — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 14:50:13 -0500

Conversations of People and Things

Rob McIntosh and Holger Hampf — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 15:08:57 -0500

frog developed the Connected\Projected program to explore potential for emergent, integrated product solutions by blending key trends in technology and user experience design.

Using wireless product-to- product and product-to-user features as well as sensors and laser projection, we created a series of first level “Superprotoypes”. Our prototyping process and the prototypes themselves have triggered an avalanche of new use cases, ecosystems, and product concepts that have all grown out of the seeds of that first idea.

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We don’t need to wonder about the Internet of Things. We are already there. People might not have realized it yet, but things are already talking to each other. And, as electronics decrease in size and price, even more of our appliances and products will soon be able to sense, listen, and share. The question is, will we care about what they have to say?

We often hear about smart objects, smart homes, and smart cities. Are we aiming at the wrong target when we assume that everything needs to be smart? A drill should know about speed. A fridge should know about temperature. A toaster should know about toast. The real goal is not how smart each individual node can be, but how intelligent it can become while in a collective network.

This aggregation, translation, and horizontal connectivity is what creates new value and, ultimately, makes us smarter. Things will not only talk but explain what they do or what they need. They will follow one another, discuss, collaborate, create events, and complete tasks together. They will even fight and disagree. What if all my tools could collaborate as I build my house? What if they talked to other products and learned from their experience? What if they competed to be used or suggested what was best in a given situation? What if they learned with us and from us?

Today, a billion new voices are rising in the network. They will talk and be active agents in our lives. But it's not just about talking. It's about creating a worthwhile conversation.

Rob Mcintosh is a creative director in frog's Munich Studio. Holger Hampf is an executive creative director in frog's Munich studio. The Connected\Projected team includes Brendan Donovan, Simo Rebaudengo, Lasse Underbjerg, Alex Jonsson, Patrick Schmidberger, and Miguel Oliva.