Patience!

The media and means we use to get a message across are evolving, leading information to be provided faster and faster. But although the messages are transmitted fast, that doesn't mean that the success of a product or service, will be fast received by the public as well. Web presence needs patience because although its tactics are fast, the core strategies may take many years. As Seth Godin has stated, the trap is to "use all your money to build a fancy website, and leave no money or patience for the hundred revisions you'll need to do." So, it is not about the medium, but about the whole strategy, and sometimes new media may not guaranty instant results.

Hewlett Packard's Innovation principles

Design can help companies to move out of recession through simplifying, differenciating and innovating. As HP's chief Sam Lucente claims, design can help simplify products by reducing parts and thus save money, and creating user friendly objects, differentiate typical products by giving the consumers the "new must have product", and innovate by inventing a new product or service that will "refresh" the market and move towards economic recovery.

If design is personalised and consumer orientated can lead to fresh results and optimistic consumer behavior.

Innovation through Recession

The current economic situation will make consumers seek for practicality and sustainability in their lives. Recession will automatically make companies deal with consumer issues, and come up with new ideas, products and services in order to fulfill the need of the market for practical and sustainable lifestyle. For example, new consumer friendly gadgets, cheaper ways to produce and thus sell everyday goods and new flexible debit or credit products, will become what companies need to look at. The attention needs to be turned to the new challenges of the consumer. we all know that, if a situation hits "rock-bottom", the only way is up!

Personal information control through the Internet

As Google specialists and innovation gurus, discuss about the on-line personalization of health issues, (just like e-banking, in the future we may control our health issues through the Internet, and exchange views and comments), a question arrises concerning how we can on-line organize our entire lives. In the future apart from our financial and professional issues, we might even be able to control our personal contacts, our family matters, our eating habits. Seems that e-banking opened the way to a new form of order in our lives. The only drawback, of course, would be the privacy of these services, and how it can be guarantied when we are willing to provide a lot of personal information on the web.

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"Real world outcomes with "killer" aesthetics"

"Designmatters" is a program at Art Centre College of Design, where students are developing communication design projects relating social matters, such as poverty, climate change, obesity, etc. Its purpose is to create designers that through their work will approach a new meaning of design, and that is to change the world.

Marianna Amatullo, the co-ordinator of  "Designmatters" believes that "in an expanded tool kit, designers can be instrumental contributers to a conversation about the future that is getting increasingly layered and multidisciplinary". She mentions that "if we are ever to reduce or curtail dire societal ills and achieve sustainable development - by definition, prosperity that is globally shared and environmentally sustainable - responsible design needs to be front and center as part of the equation". The students are encouraged to deal with their work in an advanced aesthetic way.

"When it comes to social-impact messaging, the key advice is don't be drab; make it intriguing and make it look as fabulous as the new beer commercial. Generate mileage by utilizing the same attention-grabbing strategies you would for a consumer-based product".

In times when fundamental changes in the way we think occur, and worldwide social issues need to be communicated, design and its principles must play a key role to get messages across to as many people as possible.

Is it for real, or is it a signal?

Signaling strategies are like bates, used by marketers to add an exaggerated value to a product or service, and thus attract consumers. There are times that they become short term trends. If a celebrity uses or is seen with a specific product, it would be no surprise that the next day you would see 10 people in the street doing the same. Careful and discreet use of these signals is a smart and powerful marketing tool. But, overusing them, may have the opposite results. Consumers need to filter these signals. Overexposure of a product or person should alarm them about its "validity". Also, marketers should realize that an exploited signal looses its authenticity and its real character. It can make the consumers become tired of it and its financial success may be proven to be short term.

The Mimique phone

RKS design is an industrial design firm, based in California. Their work is driven by, what they call "Strategy Fueled Inspiration" which is defined as "...design that connects, innovation that resonates, experiences that ignite." They approach each project using, as they say, the "Psycho-Aesthetics" methodology.

One of their latest products is the "Mimique". An innovative mobile phone, designed to accomadate "Google's anticipated Android open-source, cell phone software", that gives consumers the choice of downloading Google applications in their mobile phones according to their needs. So, their devices become customized, and not tied up to the restrictions of the manufacturer, as it happens with phones today. (Even the iPhone has boundaries, because one has to be an AT&T client to use it and its applications). Also, all their cell phone activities are synchronized to their Google account on the web.

Design wise, the "Mimique" is keeping up with Google's "less is more" approach to give customers what they really want. Its size and 3D antenna, give it an old school mobile phone look. It communicates "cell phone", something that the new phones do not. Its size and thin structure place it easily in the hand and in the pocket. It is affordable and designed for mass consumption. The "Mimique" has customizing skin applications and of course, due to the Android software one can choose its features and how it will work. Aesthetically it is so cute and rounded., it looks alive! This concept phone is... just a concept at the moment and not yet available to the public.

Typing e-mails from the iPhone

Another innovative , but really useful, iPhone application has been developed. "TouchType" transforms the ordinary telephone touchpad layout, to a "landscape" keypad, in order to allow users to write e-mails easier and faster, as if they were using their laptop. The application, costs only $0.99 and has already accepted rewarding comments by users, since writing long messages and e-mails, is definitely difficult for the average adult human finger.

It is interesting how the iPhone is moving beyond the boundaries of a beautifully designed phone gadget, and evolving into a small personal computer, not only in terms of capabilities, but of generic design, as well. Some years ago, the desktop PC became portable, and the laptop was born. Our everyday tools, are becoming smaller and smaller (and music players are just computer applications now). So, can the iPhone be developed to become the new laptop? And how would that affect the way services and cooperations work? Maybe one day, because of the portability of our information and working devices, our offices and working environments will change. Access to our job matters from the palm of our hands would make our lives easier or force us to work 24 hours a day?

Getting the best of ONE world!

"When in doubt, maximize."

You cannot have it all. Businesses should go all the way with promoting the qualities that are most powerful in their products, rather than trying to combine characteristics in order to attract a broader spectrum of consumers. Specializing in one, key aspect of a product and maximizing its value, may lead to a more specialized market, where quality means a lot more than quantity. Lets face it; it is far better to have a five minute shower with hot water, than a thirty minute one with luke warm.

Branding and Industrial Design - the gap is getting smaller.

Branding firms are slowly entering the Industrial design field.
(Or the otherway around.) Design disciplines are combined for more powerful and "whole" design results.

Social networking

Facebook. It is not a fad! Social networking is here to stay!

In the future, we will need systems to organize our web friends and connections. Like iTunes organizes music from the day that our records became mp3's (and thus we own much more music now), the people we know through the internet are just a click away because they are just icons in sites like facebook. The need for something more controlled and "closed" or "exclusive" will contribute to the creation of new forms of social networking systems. These systems will probably aim to more than just messaging and chatting between friends. One day we will be having more than one identity or personality that we socially use on the web that maybe we will need systems to organize our identities.

Re-Constitution 2008

Re-Constitution 2008 is a project by design group SoSolimited that uses design software and aesthetics to deconstruct and analyze candidate performance in presidential debates. They call their work "dynamic interactive installations" for museums and corporate clients. These interesting and amusing sound-image installations, allow the audience to have a fun with subjects that are important but still publicized in a specific way by the media. But also, in terms of sound and design, it could be a great way to broadcast information relating other topics as well, like sports, music, entertainment, etc. Apart from the satyric part, it would be very interesting to see ordinary TV broadcasts that we take for granted, deconstructed in that way.

Design thinking!

A new mentality based on Design Thinking is likely to produce solutions for the actual needs of consumers, (rather than persuading them to buy and consume more), and provide more communication choices to business thinkers.

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"Thinkers" or "Makers"?

Design Vs. Design Thinking

THERE SEEMS TO BE A "CIVIL WAR" between the supporters of the view that design thinking (researching on new ideas that would produce breakthrough products and services) is what most of what design is all about, and those who, in a more traditional manner, believe that design is mostly about the process of creating something practical and aesthetically beautiful. The "pure traditionalist point of view" on design is expressed thoroughly in Dan Saffer's post on Adaptive Path blog.

Although we might have heard it before, there is a "golden section" to this issue. There is definitely no civil war between the two approaches, because simply, design involves both "thinking" and "making". If the primary goal of design schools is to prepare students for the competitive market, then focus should be given to both disciplines, but in a balanced way: the first years of college should be slightly focusing on the technical part, leaving the final or graduate years to focus on design thinking. Besides, even while being involved in the actual "making" of design solutions, one obviously is preoccupied with a lot of thinking.

Technical skills, and the ability to "construct" need to be there in order to have ideas and think without limitations. But good design skills, can be proven useless, if the idea is not working...
Generally, lack of either one of these disciplines, can frustrate any designer.
But, who knows; maybe in the future, two kinds of designers will be graduating from design schools: "the thinkers" and the "makers". It all depends on how specialized the market is going to be.

http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/NussbaumOnDesign/archives/2005/10/the_art_and_inn.html

The decorations aim to put in perspective the whole "private character" of the loo. With humor and stereotypical reactions (shown on the pictures placed on the wall), they deconstruct taboos and with naughtiness, whisper in one's ear: "Do you think you are alone"? It would be interesting to see how many men actually felt uncomfortable in there...