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Eco-Confident

Confidence is an amazing thing.  Some believe it can make athletes more adept, students score higher on tests and people in general more attractive.  Those with confidence hold their heads high, speak with authority, are willing to take risks and are less likely to hesitate.  <!--more-->These are key ingredients in the recipe for getting things done.  And while it’s important to avoid becoming arrogant, stubborn, or unwilling to listen, a little confidence can be a sustainable designer’s best friend.

We’ve been conducting sustainable design workshops here at LUNAR recently and are finding that one of the largest obstacles between designers and sustainable design is not a lack of knowledge; it’s a perceived lack of knowledge.  Most sustainable design principles, like increasing modularity, consolidating materials, shrinking and lightening, etc., are just plain common sense and the majority of our designers already know a sizable handful of them.  They just don’t know that they know.  And as a result they feel unequipped to even take a crack at a more sustainable design.  With some simple training sessions to go over the basics, it becomes easier to convince designers that they can design in this sustainability arena with some confidence, which leads to more experimentation, creativity, and ultimately better products.

Now I understand that encouraging a designer with a basic or even flawed knowledge of sustainable design principles to confidently charge forth can be seen as irresponsible.  What if they try to make a product more useful but end up making it unnecessarily complicated?  What if they add superfluous fasteners in an attempt to make something easier to disassemble?  Well…so what if they do?  If they tout their design as an attempt at sustainability, someone will point out the flaws, they’ll learn from their mistakes and move on to their next, better attempt.  Because the real danger is not designers failing in the name of sustainable design, it’s them not having the confidence to even try in the first place.

--Travis Lee

Design Education Comes of Age

I got my start in the world of “multi-media” and “interactive television” before the web exposed the need for Interaction and Experience Design to a wide audience. And before meaningful programs in designing interactivity existed. We learned things the old-fashioned way. We tried things out and made mistakes.

So I’ve been watching various programs in interaction design grow up in the past 10 years with a degree of skepticism. It’s not easy for me to believe that the painful lessons we oldsters learned can be taught in school. But in 2009 I have to admit, we’ve all come a long way, baby. Jon Kolko’s tenure at Savannah College of Art and Design has turned out young talent that have learned the tools and methods of the trade admirably. And after reading this piece in Core77 about a project for Freescale at SCAD by Dave Malouf’s latest crop of students, I’m doubly impressed.

There’s a lot of thoughtful work here, and nice integration of Industrial and Interaction Design. It’s also refreshing to see students modeling their work after design firms with attention paid to detail and professionalism that is key in the working world. No more collections of half-finished ideas that “seemed cool.” Design is as much about communicating ideas as it is having them, and that’s finally made it into the curriculum. So kudos to the latest crop of graduates. My only advice? Keep your enthusiasm and passion as you continue to learn through your mistakes.

-- Gretchen Anderson

Comics & Interaction Design

Connections - August 5, 2009: At LUNAR, we've been applying the compelling storytelling techniques from comics in our interaction design work. In this episode, LUNAR interaction designers Gretchen Anderson and Ron Goldin talk about how comics can be a powerful and surprising tool in the design of complex products and experiences. 

Resources:

• Cooper’s economizer concept
• Help Remedies
• LUNAR's SoftRemote concept
• UP storyboards
• UP color script
• Comics featured in this Icon-o-Cast (on Flickr)

Send us your feedback. 

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John Bond: License to Storytelling

New ideas present an interesting challenge: how do you describe something that doesn’t exist yet and is a change from what people are accustomed to seeing? Sketching, models and visualizations are all tools that designers use to communicate ideas, yet they often don’t express a key variable - time.

A recent solution LUNAR experimented with is video. This particular one, John Bond, is an investigation into storytelling that explores how an interface concept is used by people over time.

Storytelling helps place a new idea (how it works and what it does) within familiar situations. Viewers of Bond films can immediately relate to the interface’s intensions as John Bond cuts through file management, wayfinding and client-wooing, just like his counterpart in film cuts through chase scenes and bad guys.

Viewers are left with an understanding of the design and how it works from beginning to middle to end. And as designers we can talk about John Bond as a real person: “How does John’s assistant use this product to support him, let’s sketch that out,” iterating further ideas based on needs and desires. Cinematic storytelling is also a great way to introduce emotion into a concept, allowing clients or teammates to get jazzed up about an idea.

Storytelling may seem like extra work, but it’s important to understand how a design lives and connects with people over time.

-- Nick Hausman

Evolutionary, but not revolutionary: T-Mobile's myTouch 3G

The myTouch 3G can't escape comparisons to the iPhone, but to be fair, it's not a bad evolution. For those who can't afford an iPhone, or those who are still seeking the "iPhone for Business" myTouch has some interesting characteristics.

• Android is starting to become real. Applications are not restricted like they are with Apple apps; this means offerings such as Google Voice are available on the myTouch. Using Google Voice instead of paying $20 for text messaging a month could recoup the $200 cost of the phone in 10 months.
  
• Customization is everywhere on the myTouch - designer cases, personal background images, home screen themes. This might be refreshing for users who feel limited by the iPhone's "two colors and a custom photo" approach to "make it mine."
  
• myTouch restricts users to three iPhone-like application pages, however, it does go one step further by allowing users to pin open widgets to the desktop. Widgets like a search bar, music player, or calendar can be used directly from the desktop without having to first open the application. They can also run in the background.
  
• Sherpa, an application commissioned by T-Mobile and designed by Geodelic, has a learning engine that understands what you like, making future suggestions as it learns about your preferences.  If you like Indian food, when you travel to a new city Sherpa should be able to show you where the best chicken tikka masala is.
  
• The myTouch uses the HTC Magic hardware, but there's quite a few out there hoping that Android gets ported to the HTC Hero. It seems that in a head-to-head comparison of Windows Mobile and Android, Android wins. Our take: Android was designed for touch, not stylus. And visually it's no contest.

There is still room in the cell phone industry for offerings like the myTouch, so the phone should do well. As more users become accustomed to touch screens and applications at their fingertips, it will be time to start aiming further. For now, we have to make do with seeing the future of phones like in this Will Ferrell skit.

-- Nick Hausman

Can user-centered design save the car industry?

The New York Times has a new article about how Ford used personas to drive the design of the Fiesta in Europe.

I especially like Ford's acknowledgment that personas are a way to "get a common focus for everyone from the clay modeler to the chief executive" and that part of that focus wasn't just about "rational" profiles. As one executive notes, "In buying a car, you have to fall in love."

I wonder how effective they are? As the article notes, "So far, sales of the Fiesta have been strong. It is Ford's best-selling car in Europe, and it was the No. 2 seller over all in that market for the first half of 2009."

--Gretchen Anderson

Photo by Any.colour.you.like / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Simple, minimal, humble.

The family computer died last month.

No tears, she made it to the ripe old age of 7 (70 in PC years). But now that we have a real processor in the living room, I can finally “Watch Instantly” on Netflix.

And, hallelujah! I am impressed and grateful that Netflix has done such a thoughtful job on an entertainment UI. Simple, minimal, humble. The movie stars are the stars, not glassy buttons and “viewing options.”

This is also my first experience with using something running on Microsoft’s Silverlight. Even on a Mac the performance is great, and the technology isn’t elbowing its way forward. Now I’m eager to see how Netflix will deliver HD content…   

What do you think? What are some other “humble” apps that really deliver? What are other great Silverlight experiences out there?

-- Gretchen Anderson

Sustainable design workshop with Taiwan Design Center

After a very successful workshop with the Korean Institute of Design Promotion (KIDP) a few weeks ago, we’re jumping right back in for a second round!

LUNAR will be hosting a sustainable design workshop for a group from the Taiwan Design Center next week. The workshop portion, consisting of presentations by LUNAR employees, as well as research and conceptualization exercises, will take place on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. It will be focusing on creating sustainable products that relate to the challenges of child care. On Tuesday, Jeremy Faludi will be at Lunar to talk about prioritization in sustainable design and biomimicry, and Terry Swack will be here to give a presentation on design level life cycle analysis.

The group consists of several design students, two CEOs, two marketers, and various other professionals from Taiwan. They will be led through the design process and by the end of the week will have their own conceptual product based on what they have learned.

You can see some photos from the KIDP workshop on our Facebook page.

Making mobile phones even more useful (in the U.S.)

Yesterday I headed to the airport yet again, a one-day trip to San Diego. That commute is so easy from Oakland, I didn’t really take it that seriously. I grabbed my bag and took off. Then, my husband calls just as I pull up to the terminal. I’ve left my wallet on the counter. No ID, and no money.

I thought about turning around and going home, but realized without money or cards, I couldn’t get out of the parking lot. So I headed into security to tell them my situation and hope for the best. (Turns out TSA actually has that use-case handled, but that’s a post for a different time.) I cleared security handily, and headed to the gate.

And there, dangling just out of reach, were cups of hot coffee for everyone but me. I thought about pan-handling, but decided against it. Early am flights are tough, but without coffee? Brutal.

Which brings me to: why don’t we have contactless payment through mobile phones in the US? In a world of FastTrak and EZ Rider specialized cards and devices, it seems like we are used to the idea of invisible payment methods as consumers. And as my husband pointed out, Japan has it. Because while forgetting my wallet happens not infrequently for me, I am almost never without my phone.

What other stuff “from the future” do you wish we had? Besides jet packs.

-- Gretchen Anderson

Photo by Yogi / CC BY-SA 2.0

Maker Faire 2009

Solutions - June 26, 2009: What do you get when you combine 600 inventors and innovators with thousands of people who want to see their work? It's Maker Faire 2009.

Join Lunar's Robert Howard, Bob Lane and Jonathan Downing as they roam the faire in search of the new, the cool and the homemade.

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Designing Business; Businessing Design

In today’s Fast Company “Powers of Design” blog post by LUNAR’s John Edson:

“I don't think that future enterprises will be able to connect to customers or remain competitive without increasingly fluid and agile management practices that respond more to the idiosyncrasies of real people than to the current fiscal quarter's numbers.”

Read the post.

Creating Cults and Cultures With Design

In today’s Fast Company “Powers of Design” blog post by LUNAR’s John Edson:

“Building enthusiastic, obsessive love for your company's products begins with enthusiastic, obsessive love for design. Is design on the CEO's list of legacy objectives? If not, the design activity is often about creating better window dressing or optimizing a product for usability--but not about creating a remarkable offering.”

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Why Ugly Sells

In today's Fast Company "Powers of Design" blog post by LUNAR's John Edson:

"Designing universally attractive products sometimes means eschewing beauty.  The real trick is to resist navigating consumer taste and understand the emotional sources for taste."

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Toothbrushes, TiVo, and Twitter (and more)

In today's Fast Company "Powers of Design" blog post by LUNAR's John Edson:

"Our modern era of mass production requires enormous organizations to replicate the relationship of a designer artisan with her customer.  If a company can't replicate the traditional exchange between maker and consumer, the relationship is destined to fail."

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Listen to John as he offers one more example:  his experience with his new Eames Lounge Chair (1:45)

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