Transient in a constant flux.

In collaboration with Rui Madeira and Maya Wiseman, we ran a one-day workshop and presented a 45-minute session at Shift “DIY”-themed conference in Lisbon, Portugal, in April 2010.

The world is full of built-in agendas and pre-conceptions about your identity. Most important thing to realise about agendas is that they’re made up, not a given. Misconception that boardroom-type people create agendas and developer-type people execute them. If you’re living in the world with others, you’ll want to know how to jig the imagined boundaries around identities and agendas.

Tools in the workshop
Shapeshifting identities
Use another facet of your identity
DIY agenda: frog vision, jig the spotlight

Three principles of practicing softness in a world gone hard
Strive to change the conversation, not control the outcome
Be gentle
Be ready with a vision when the blinds come off

View the presentation slides on Slideshare

One of my projects at Vodafone’s User Experience team was looking after the Sound-Haptics-Light behaviour of the Vodafone 360 Samsung H1 device – this was later descoped to light behaviour only.

Design definition and specification for sensorial experiences like sound, haptics and light shouldn’t be done via Excel sheets or similar formats used in deliverables for other parts of the overall UI – this is like asking someone to take a Polaroid of a loved one’s laughter. Capturing a loved one’s laughter, not a picture of the person laughing. And so, I communicated the light behaviour concepts via video prototypes to show context of use, then I built a light prototype using a hacked IKEA light + Arduino board + VVVV software and used the physical prototype to come up with light behaviour of the device during incoming communications.

Later on, the Samsung team did create an interface on test devices that allowed us to adjust light settings to be able to derive light behaviour specifications for the final released product. View the testing videos here (31Mb, 960×540) and here (10Mb, 960×540) – videos shot on a Nokia N95.

This was a project where I felt I changed the way of working to better fit the needs of the design and technical development processes and changed internal mindsets, and it challenged me to do physical prototyping and video-work that I hadn’t touched in a while.

Unfortunately WordPress doesn’t play well with video embeds so click the image above or LightExperience.mov to view the video scenario (21Mb, 960×540).

In an interconnected world full of changes, Lucia uses 24Shots to meet new friends in Milan and staying visible with the friends she had left behind in Barcelona. 24Shots prompts subscribers to take 24 shots over the course of a day on their camera phone. Their friends can team up to trigger the prompt at a time of their choosing. A group of subscribers can decide to share and create a montage of images.

‘Applied Dreams’ are two-week innovation workshops in which Interaction-Ivrea faculty and students collaborate with an industry partner. The aim of these workshops is to develop a range of future concepts for products and services. Working together with Huie Ling Peh and Ana Huedo, as a student group we developed 24Shots for our industry partner: Orange/France Telecom.

Unfortunately WordPress doesn’t play well with video embeds so click the image above or 24Shots.mov to view the video scenario (64Mb, 720×480).

Commissioned by Philips Corporate Marketing, this project aimed to explore what the new brand promise of Sense and Simplicity meant in terms of design strategy, product development, interaction and product design, material and finishing.

The Next Simplicity project teams were divided into four domains, each corresponding to a Philips business. I was in the ‘Care’ group, for products in the Domestic Appliances and Personal Care domain. My role in the ‘Care’ group was Lead Interaction Designer, where, together with product designers, model-makers and engineers from Philips Applied Technologies, I designed the interactions and specified the product behavior. We designed and developed six product concepts, five of which were made into prototypes.

The end results were unveiled to the public at an event in L’Espace Grande, in Paris. Two books were published, that documented the project.

The scanning experience is often a stressful experience, for children and adults alike, and this solution aims to ease the patient’s worry by creating a comfortable environment, that is sensitive to the patient’s needs and personalised to their preferences. It combines architectural solutions with product, visual and interaction design solutions to create a seamless continuity between the pre-exam and the exam experience.

This is the second-generation Ambient Experience project to be done by Philips. My role in this project was lead interaction designer. I worked closely with moving image designers, in achieving all the visuals and animations for the environment, as well as product designers, for the tangible interactions, and supported by Flash developers and sound designers.

This was a fun project to do – the limited input/hardkey interaction, small screen, and context-of-use served as both design constraint and creative challenge. It was annoying when the Philips-Nike partnership ended but personally I think the Apple-Nike partnership makes more sense and enabled the product and service to go much further than what was achieved with Philips.