Those of you who remember my degree project – ‘Chameleo – The Intriguing Case of Human Identity’ will probably remember this video.
It was done as a final ‘package’ for my MA Interaction Design degree from the Umeå Institute of Design. The project was sponsored by Microsoft (Seattle) and very kindly mentored by my guru – Mike Kruzeniski.
This is just a shortened, quicker version of the same for a little (dream) competition entry.
For the past few months, I’ve been intensely involved in concept-development, scenarios, Microsoft surface prototypes, writing and video production for our project titled – ‘Helping Hands – The Future of Integrated Healthcare’. The video below along with the article attached caps intense collaboration between several of my most talented team members working with limited resources and time.
After over 40 years of pioneering work in the Life Science industry, we have been working for the past months to put together our take on the future of Life Science. Our story comprises not only scenarios and a clear picture of the eco-system in which Life Science might exist (in 2015) – but we have gone as far as prototyping glimpses of how interaction might occur with doctors and other medical professionals and services. The future concept and prototype was developed by the Life Science team at Ergonomidesign including user experience and interaction designers, design strategists, graphic designers, developers and health care professionals. Our challenge was to envision the future of Life Science and develop possible solutions for the world to test, use and reflect on.
The future of Health Care is a subject that has aroused intense speculation recently across different forums. Several interesting scenarios and points of view have been discussed. Professionals and designers alike have tried to make sense of a fuzzy future. Predicting possible futures for the Health Care industry is an ambitious task, fraught with great risk. There are far too many disparities in various global Healthcare Systems today that make it impossible to present one comprehensive solution that fits all. The industry is constantly affected by Government legislation, making their rate of development impossible to predict in isolation from external factors. Most importantly, Health Care is about us – ordinary people – for whom tailoring one universal solution is out of question.
Often the best way to predict the future is by attempting to design and build critical glimpses of it. Storytelling has usually been the most favored approach – usually giving rise to compelling and believable scenarios. The approach taken by us at Ergonomidesign was to bring in elements of prototyping at crucial moments in the scenario, in order to demonstrate key interactions actually taking place. Right or wrong is always subject to debate – a process of endless iteration.
More to come, once our press-kit is released.
Medical Ecosystem in 2015
Personally, I’m very excited, exhausted and delighted that this project came as far as it did. We started with no real plan except to talk about the Future of Health Care at the World’s biggest medical fair in Dusseldorf – Medica. What followed was some intense periods of creative thinking and making, learning new tools along the way and alot of positive energy from everyone involved.
I am always rendered speechless by the sheer beauty of BERG (London) work combined with the visual brilliance of Timo Arnall. I dont really know the intricacies of who were involved in the project, but it seems like they had several different teams collaborating on this project. What struck me most about their video was the high quality of the production and the simplicity with which an idea had been communicated. It’s really inspiring to see!
Excerpts from the BERG blog:
We’ve been working with our friends at Bonnier R&D exploring the future of digital magazines. Bonnier publish Popular Science and many other titles.
Magazines have articles you can curl up with and lose yourself in, and luscious photography that draws the eye. And they’re so easy and enjoyable to read. Can we marry what’s best about magazines with the always connected, portable tablet e-readers sure to arrive in 2010?
and then later
The design has an eye to how paper magazines can re-use their editorial work without having to drastically change their workflow or add new teams. Maybe if the form is clear enough then every mag, no matter how niche, can look gorgeous, be super easy to understand, and have a great reading experience. We hope so. That gets tested in the next stage, and rolled into everything learned from this, and feedback from the world at large! Join the discussion at the Bonnier R&D Beta Lab.
Recently there have been digital magazine prototypes by Sports Illustrated, and by Wired. It’s fascinating to see the best features of all of these.
I especially love the idea about rubbing and ‘heating’ up content to make things active. As mentioned in their blog, they let the Web be the Web and focus their exploration more on the subtle joys of reading a magazine in the digital realm.
(Image courtesy: BERG London blog)
I’ve been following alot of the projects about digital reading recently and found this concept to be among the better ones by miles.
I aspire to reach near such levels of clarity, honesty and beauty with my work someday.
I’ve recently been working a lot using the Agile method – a method used alot in the software development World, but something that has immense value for us to use as Interaction Designers.
I’m sure alot of my colleagues/alumni are now experiencing this method wherever you are in the World. Please feel free to add to this post.
Johnny Holland recently posted an amazing article titled ‘ How UCD and Agile can live together’ where a lot of the definitions are given. I think it would be very interesting for us to read and try to implement this method more into how we approach projects – especially those in teams. Several projects of our’s are done in teams, with different backgrounds – experience levels, skills and roles.
Excerpts from the amazing Johnny Holland blog:
User Centered Design is the methodology by which you design a holistic product while considering the needs of stakeholders and users. Agile Development is a programming methodology and philosophy intended to overcome the challenges of the waterfall development process and to deliver clean and functional code. How can these two methodologies come together?
Framework
In order to have this discussion, I would like to define a few terms as they will be referred to in this article. These are by no means absolute definitions, but in writing this article and soliciting feedback from practitioners I thought it prudent to define what I do (and don’t) mean by certain terms for the sake of the article.
- Agile Philosophy: the tactical, iterative and transparent perspective on a project engaging all stakeholders and members of a project team. The ultimate goal is a clean and functional product built through transparency and accountability;
- Agile Method: also referred to as scrum, the actual development process including all the hard deliverables including user stories, backlog, burndown charts and all the other tangible by products of an agile team;
- User Centered Design, The iterative strategy where design and research practitioners involve stakeholders and users to gain a cohesive view of a project and to empathize with users. The ultimate goal is a cohesive vision and product definition backed with qualitative and quantitative findings;
- User Experience, or IxD, or any other of dozens of titles: the actual process of qualitative and quantitative research, concept validation, and design. The end deliverables include system visualizations, information architecture, and design spec’s.
The picture above is from my flickr-stream and was taken during one of the projects to show the all important ‘Scrum-board’ where time and responsibilities were mapped.
You can read more about the Scrum method and order your own FREE copy here. (highly recommended!)
I hope to blog in greater detail about my experiences with this method in the near Future.
via IDEO
The Ripple Effect in India, by IDEO and Acumen Fund from IDEO on Vimeo.
Some 1.2 billion people worldwide are drinking unsafe water. Although many organizations purify water at a community scale, people spend significant time and effort to transport it—and it often becomes contaminated during the trip. From retrieval to consumption, water’s journey is complex and provides ample opportunities for improvement.
Acumen Fund and IDEO, with backing from the Gates Foundation, joined forces to tackle the issues of water transport and storage. The Ripple Effect project aims to improve access to safe drinking water for over 500,000 of the world’s poorest and most underserved people; to stimulate innovation among local water providers; and to build the capacity for future development in the water sector as a whole. Acumen Fund, a nonprofit global venture fund that uses entrepreneurial approaches to solve large-scale problems, brings experience in the water sector and a deep understanding of what brings success to social enterprise. IDEO offers a human-centered approach to designing products, services, and interactions.
Ripple Effect is a new model that connects organizations, provides insights and inspiration, and gives design and business support to entrepreneurs looking to develop new offerings. The project is entirely public: Acumen Fund and IDEO teams are working closely with local companies and NGOs that provide safe drinking water, and capturing learnings for others to benefit from. The first phase of the project takes place in India (November 2008 to June 2009), and the second phase is in East Africa (July 2009 to March 2010). In each region, our work starts with field research to understand the needs and desires of stakeholders in the water journey, from customers to providers. We then gather organizations to share insights and collaborate around solutions—products, services, and systems that improve water delivery and storage. This is followed by the Ripple Effect Award, an eight-week funded pilot phase during which the awardees prototype new business ideas with help from the IDEO and Acumen Fund teams.
“There is no silver bullet to the world water crisis. Addressing the crisis certainly is not simply a matter of better product design—we will need a range of options that accommodate for the myriad varying climatic, hydrological, terrestrial, and cultural dimensions of the problem,” noted Jonathan Greenblatt of Worldchanging.org. “New players like IDEO can offer highly useful lessons from the field of design that, when adapted to the water sector, could yield interesting results.”
To date, our work in India has contributed to new distribution models, automated water vending machines, and better vessels for existing businesses. These small-scale pilots provide the awardees with opportunities for learning and experimentation, developing new business innovations before taking them to scale. We plan to follow a similar model in Africa.
Visit the Ripple Effect blog here.
Visit the project website here.
by Salesforce.
Why do I blog this? Because so many people have been asking me what this ‘Cloud’ thing is all about and I thought this video did a good job explaining it.
I’ve been thinking and working alot lately about Service Design, and questions about the Dabbawallahs in India have often popped up.
An article I read on Meena Kadri’s blog really delighted me.
Excerpts:
“What do laundry and lunch delivery have to do with my favoured intersection of communication, culture and creativity? Well, in the case of Mumbai’s Dabbawallas and Dhobi Ghats – quite a lot. Via their respective coding systems, both enterprises are able to track items within their service chain to ensure accurate delivery.”
The Dabbawalla service entails collection of freshly prepared meals from the residences of suburban office workers from vast reaches of the city, delivery to their workplaces and the return of empty lunch boxes (dabba or tiffin) to its original home – all for a reasonable monthly fee. Delivering over 200,000 lunch boxes each day to workers who have diverse eating habits (often governed by religion) requires an accurate system – especially as each lunch box commonly passes through the hands of at least six men, in quick exchange, on its path from home to office and back again. Most tiffins are collected by bicycle, sorted into destination groups, then carried together on trains and cycled to the offices of their respective customers. In between they are commonly carried on hand pushed carts and large head-balanced trays – all while jostling with chaotic Mumbai rail and road traffic.
Read more here.
Even though I missed the 20th anniversary celebrations at Umeå I cannot but marvel at the amount of fun this event must have been for those who attended.
This video of a time-lapse, shot by Camille Moussette captures the spirit of the event brilliantly.
UID 20 years – 24 hours time-lapse from Umeå Institute of Design on Vimeo.
The event also marked the launch of the book – “Designed in Umeå” which will soon be available internationally as well.
You might find something on page 69 that would give you nightmares for some time to come. 
Page 69
(That’s all folks! )
