Everything nice in the Microsoft camp

There was a lot of buzz and anticipation around what kind of products and service Apple would offer after the death of Steve Jobs and now the Microsoft camp seems to getting a substantial amount of attention (criticism and otherwise) with its showcase of innovative products.

‘When Microsoft showed off their surface tablet a few months back, it wasn’t the OS, the battery life, or the touch screen that stole the show. It was a clever case that doubled as a keyboard. In retrospect, of course that case was a big deal; typing is the one important thing that you really can’t do well on a contemporary tablet. Microsoft recognized the platform’s chief design flaw and fixed it.’

The mouse that couples with the tablet is equally interesting. It is the lightest mouse made my Microsoft and it can fit into your pocket.

‘An interesting bridge technology to support multi-touch gestures for those who insist on using a standard mouse (or those who really need one for using Photoshop or Illustrator in their desktop-style incarnations).’

Read the full article here.

Apart from innovation, if Microsoft needs a push; it’s definitely in the direction of re-branding. Recently, design student Andrew Kim undertook the challenge as part of a 3-day projects and the results were quite impressive! read more here.

Interesting reads

August 7, 2012

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Dichotomy of Designing Journeys

As service designers, we like to think that we bring to projects a unique approach, creative skill and a deep understanding of people and their needs. But what about allowing those people to design and implement for themselves, without us orchestrating the entire process?

A Seren service design approach

In a recent successful project for a leading telecommunication company, Seren tried to go beyond the conventional approach by encouraging users to take our recommendations, enhance them and make them their own.

Our objective was to improve retail experiences for customers across the UK. The intended outcome was to make relevant recommendations that would ensure that the customers would leave a store feeling amazed, excited, reassured and looked after.

We applied Seren’s methodology of interacting closely with stakeholders in the company to get an insight into their business proposition. We traveled around the UK and conducted in-depth ethnographic studies, interviews and workshops. This gave us an excellent understanding of the perspectives of two key groups: stakeholders and end users.

The second stage of our process was customer journey and moment mapping. Seren uses this method frequently to map customer journeys through an entire experience. Within the journey we identify moments or areas where we can make an impact through design and creative thinking.

This is particularly valuable because it allows us to create ‘moment clusters’ within a journey or even an entire organization. For example, it helped us realize that the time when we needed to create the biggest impact was before the customer even entered the store.

Once we had identified key moments, we brainstormed with a cross-disciplinary group of business owners, retail store managers, retail staff, designers, writers and customers to develop recommendations that would enhance a person’s journey.

Looking through a different lens

As service designers or investigators, our focus is the customer or the end user. What do they need, what do they want and what can we provide for them? However, we seldom ask ourselves whether the customer is the right person to design for. Typically we don’t challenge the core assumption that the customer is our audience.

This Seren project was unique because we chose an approach that considered the staff and the customer journey in parallel. We realized that we had to design for the people who would implement the recommendations and not just for the customers who would be experiencing them. For example, if our research tells us that customers want to learn more about products, we are quick to design better information graphics, add more content and empower staff with relevant material. But how do we encourage staff to share their knowledge in the right way? How do we make it an enjoyable process and create a real sense of ownership so that they continue to make it part of their role? How do we go beyond training and reading material, so they are naturally motivated to share their expertise with everyone who enters the store?

Flipping usability on its head – the implementer’s journey

Recommendations that emerged from the needs of customers and business stakeholders were designed from an equally evolved staff and customer perspective to address day-to-day user needs. This led to three conclusions:

1. You can create great ideas that address customer needs but you have to tailor them to the people who will implement them. Often the implementer or staff journey is seen as a support process. However in order to create a sustainable service it is crucial to give the back office as much consideration as the front office.
2. Lots of companies spend time, effort and money documenting customer needs, but they seldom look at staff needs. For example, many previous recommendations for retail stores failed because they addressed the customer without considering how little time staff had to implement them.
3. People who are the closest to customers, like store managers, often have imaginative ideas and an acute sense of what will actually work. Therefore the design process should enable them to collect and sift ideas alongside the designers. This should be a collaborative process that goes beyond the familiar concepts of “engagement” and “co-creation workshops”. It should allow the implementers to influence the design process itself. This approach also helps us develop the implementer and customer journeys together.

Based on the above three insights, we shared our recommendations with key implementers from various retail stores, including store leaders, managers and staff. They were then given responsibility to take forward the recommendations, contextualize it in a way they felt were relevant into their stores.

They then went on to integrate them into their day-to-day managerial tasks and train staff to implement them.

‘ I had a little idea for work within the fourth recommendation. This is a massive opportunity for us right now. What better way to develop relationships with these local, small businesses? This could be a great idea if done right, and a task with great potential for a staff member to evolve.’ Store leader

 Conclusion

‘I am really looking forward to contributing to the group and giving you all an insight into how we are working on trialing new bits and pieces!’ Store staff

Our recommendations have evolved dramatically in the last few months. Stores have adopted our ideas and made them their own, developing tools, designing staff incentives and building training modules.

Over the last few months of trial we witnessed a 143% rise in new customers and a 133% rise for small to medium business customers.

By designing for the users who would implement the services, we ensured that the application of the recommendations would be relevant to each individual and to the context of the store. Again, by designing concepts that people could make their own, we have allowed for them to evolve and grow as the company at the same time, store and the brand philosophies change and develop.

Me and projects, Workshops

July 31, 2012

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Emotional IT by Design Thinking Network

I recently spent a very useful day attending the Emotional IT workshop organized by Design Thinking Network UK on the 3^rd of July. The workshop attracted an interesting mix of participants from the IT sector, business development, law and of course design background.

Emotional IT aimed to explore ways in which information technology could be effectively humanised. The topic has been discussed to no end over the last decade or so but, I suppose the novelty to this subject was that it aimed to employ a service design approach to do this.

Using methods that Design Thinking Network have created like value mapping, the workshop divided people into groups to work on issues they have encountered where they have felt that IT was in fact not human centric at all.

Presentations were quite varied ranging from designing an IT platform for homeless people to thinking about generating more employment amongst young people using business and IT resources.

The value mapping exercise was perhaps the most meaningful one through the brainstorm and workshop activities. Value mapping might be a subjective method of articulating how people think and can also be understood in various ways (personal values, cultural values, business values etc) but, it is an essential approach to try understand what we want our customers to become.

You can join the Design Thinking Network here

http://www.designthinkingnetwork.com/

Their next workshop is about retail spaces and you can get tickets here.

http://designthinkersgroup.eventbrite.com/

Observation and Inspiration, Workshops

July 10, 2012

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Notes on Ezio Manzini

I had the incredible opportunity of attending a talk given by Ezio Manzini, during the Sir Misha Black awards at the Royal College of Arts, London this week. Mr. Ezio was present there to receive the Sir Misha Black award for his incredible work in the area of design and social innovation. Ezio Manzini’s work has held me captivated since my first year as a design student back in 2000 and I am thrilled to have finally met him and spoken to him.

His talk was very inspiring and however hard it was, every now and then I did manage to peel away and take some quick notes on my phone…

Ezio spoke about some very big ideas and it is difficult to summarise them with ease or even understand their depth without studying them carefully. I can perhaps do more justice to them in person however he is a quick summary. Mr. Manzini raised some key questions on our approach as designers and more importantly about the value service design can add to our everyday. I am  certain we all encounter these questions as designers in to day practice. Since a lot of our design approach is user centric, one has to often question the nature of the role that users play in a creative process.

What is the extent of the role a user plays in a user centric approach?

Is he merely a node for information gathering and idea testing or is he/she a collaborator?

Give people tools that guarantee their right to work with independent efficiently and that allow the user to express his meaning in action.

Ezio Manzini’s work as been ground breaking in the area of social innovation and he set up ‘DESIS’ (Design for Social Innovation towards Sustainability) which is a network of design labs, based in design schools and design-oriented universities, actively involved in promoting and supporting sustainable change. Endorsed by the United Nations Environment Programme. The vision of DESIS and I quote from their website here, is…

In the complexity of contemporary society, social innovation is spreading and its potential, as a driver of sustainable change, is increasing. To facilitate this process, the design community, in general, and design schools, in particular, can play a pivotal role.

As designers and more specifically as service designers, our processes are the same. The tools that we use are similar and our inspirations overlap dramatically. Mr. Manzini rightly points out.

‘All designers in this area are working in the same way. We can enable systems but we have a weakness in incorporating sustainable qualities. We can talk, show how things might work but we lack the real culture.’

And it is this’real culture’ that we need to define and strengthen in the way we deliver our outcomes.

Like I mentioned earlier, it is hard to summarise all his thoughts in a short blog post, however, it is surely worth thinking about how our process fit into the greater environment and as designers how can we create systems and ideas that empower us as a society.

Lao tzu writes in the Tao Te Ching
‘Give man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifestyle.’

And finally I want to end with one of his last slides. One of our fundamental needs and a fundamental principle for us to remember in everything we create and every idea we germinate.

Everyone has a fundamental right to pleasure. (Carlo Petrini) 

Observation and Inspiration, People & Projects

March 11, 2012

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Starting the year with pen and inks

A recent pen and ink that I did. Hopefully many more to follow!

I heart

February 26, 2012

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Hello everyone,

Today with strong resolve of not letting posting on FN slip down the bottom of my priority list- I have emerged from the dark!

So lots has happened these past few weeks!

I am officially in London now. This is it. I am going to set aside my stick and bundle and make this my home for the coming few years!

I am officially a Designer at Seren Partners Ltd here.

I have hence officially moved out of Nokia Research Center.

My time at NRC was amazing! I grew so much as a designer and researcher and I am only beginning to see that now. So good times then! and good times now at Seren!

Seren is lovely design studio with  a force of about 30+creative brains. We have a gorgeous office in Old Street and we are doing incredible work for some of the biggest companies in the world such as Vodafone.

Things have been a bit crazy since the time I landed in London, about two weeks back. I literally landed running. Finding an apartment, packing, unpacking, starting work and now I am beginning to feel a bit more settled- which is an amazing feeling!

I am going to post pictures of things around me this weekend so come back! But for now I am leaving you with some noon inspiration- to snap those brain cells shrouded in the post lunch laziness!

Check out Stacy Rozich’s blog and work!

 

I do a lot of illustration work inspired my mythology, strong clear lines and her work really resonated with my sense of aesthetics. I love her illustrations, the humor and the diversity!

Enjoy!

 

 

I heart, People & Projects

illustrations

November 23, 2011

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Bhasha2011, Nokia Research Center

The Bhasha design competition finally ended! And not to sound too big headed but it was a brilliant success. I have just finished sending the last set of journalists material and now I can sit back, take a deep breath and call it a wrap!

To give you a brief overview

Every year Nokia collaborates with universities and colleges across the world to nurture innovative ideas from the talented young minds that will shape our future. Sponsored by Nokia Research Center Growth Economies Lab and a part of Nokia’s Open Innovation activities, this year’s offering is Bhasha.

Bhasha is a platform that stimulates the collaboration between Nokia Research Center and India’s key design institutions to explore and develop innovation in design.

‘Bhasha’ aims to identify ideas and designs that will encourage the use of Indian languages on mobile phones, and as the result possibly make users more literate in their native language through casual learning.

Mobile technology truly holds a great potential to make a difference in people’s lives. While there are numerous attempts to introduce new information services through mobile phones, especially in domains such as agriculture, entrepreneurship and healthcare, there is one critical barrier in adopting such mobile services in India: Language.
India is a unique country with many languages. There are 22 official languages in the country and over 2000 spoken dialects. Needless to say, a lot of cultural experiences, entertainment and news are absorbed in local or vernacular languages.

Ironically, digital tools have not caught up with Indian languages very well despite India’s growing reputation as the world’s hub for information technology. English is still considered as the de facto language of use. An increasing number of educated Indians are becoming less literate in their own mother tongue: this is an outcome of reduced opportunities in writing, partially contributed by the contemporary education system putting more emphasis on English learning.

Given the current state of local language use, literacy and perception, Bhasha design competition challenged the participating design students to come up with a solution to promote the use of vernacular Indian languages on mobile phones, to promote increase in the level of literacy and in turn preserve Indian heritage and its cultural identity.

Bhasha design competition invited students from the following four premier design institutes in India:

1. NID (National Institute of Design), Ahemdabad

2. SID (Symbiosis Institute of Design), Pune

3. Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology, Bangalore

4. IIT (Indian Institute of Technology), Kanpur

The project was lead by yours truly along with Dhaval Joshi  along with inputs from Younghee Jung. We mentored the students through the duration of this competition, to ensure that all the concepts were thought in a holistic manner. It was important to also guide the participants to ensure that the ideas had a good business model and could be developed in the near future.

The final event was held in Bangalore where 9 finalist teams presented their ideas.

The competition was judged by Mahendra Bhai Patel and Sugata Mitra.

Mahendra Bhai Patel is one of the greatest type and graphic designers today. Mahendra Patel (21.02.1943) is a retired Principal Designer from the National Institute of Design (NID),Ahmedabad, in 2003.

In 2000, he has designed Signage Design System for Tirumala and Tirupati Devasthanam, India’s most busy privilege place.

In 2002 He has designed the Signage Design System for Hyderabad City. In 2010 He received the most prestigious Gutenberg International Award for his contribution in Type Design Development of Indian Scripts.

He has taught and practiced for 39 years at NID since 1964. He has also taught at Rhode Island School of Design, USA; Nova Scotia College of Arts, Canada; Christchurch College of Arts, New Zealand and Indus Valley School of Arts and Architecture, Pakistan.

Presently after retiring from NID, he is busy designing matching fonts for all Indian scripts, including English.
He is a Senior Adjunct Faculty at Symbiosis Institute of Design from 2007 and also a Senior Adjunct Faculty at MIT Institute of Design from 2009, both at Pune.

Website: http://patelmc.wordpress.com/

Sugata Mitra: Sugata Mitra also needs no introduction.

Professor. Sugata Mitra is Professor of Educational Technology at the School of Education, Communication and Language Sciences at Newcastle University, UK. He is also Chief Scientist, Emeritus, at NIIT and since his Hole in the Wall experiment has been one of the most invited keynote speakers on education in the world.

In 1999, Sugata Mitra and his colleagues dug a hole in a wall bordering an urban slum in New Delhi, installed an Internet-connected PC, and left it there (with a hidden camera filming the area). What they saw was kids from the slum playing around with the computer and in the process learning how to use it and how to go online, and then teaching each other.
Prof. Mitra is a leading proponent of Minimally Invasive Education. He has a PhD in Physics and is credited with more than 25 inventions in the area of cognitive science and education technology. He was amongst the first people in the world to invent Voluntary Perception Recording (a continuously variable voting machine) and a hyperlinked computing environment, several years ahead of the Internet. He was conferred the prestigious Dewang Mehta Award for Innovation in Information Technology in the year 2005.

Srishti school of Art, design and technology walked away with the top prizes. Kaccha Limbu a game that helps migrant students to learn local languages and manage their daily chores won the top prize. Pitara, a project that archives stories passed orally won the second prize. The third position was shared by IIT Kanpur and NID for mobile games which both promoted learning local script and phrases.

You can read and view all the concepts here.

Bhasha I am happy to say has been covered national wide by leading magazines and newspapers. The winning teams will have the opportunity of connecting with developers to develop their concepts!

Here are 3 links of many from some of the online coverage we got!

IIFL

VarIndia

LivenewsIndia

That’s all from me till next week!

Enjoy your weekend everyone!

Me and projects

Design, education, Nokia

October 7, 2011

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