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just a reflection media what is around us

kommunikation som påverkar

from Cecilia Edling Ostman on LinkedIn

Kommunikation är sannerligen ett brett område. Kommunikatörer i organisationer pysslar med internkommunikation och externkommunikation, som i sin tur kan brytas ner på säkert hur många underliggande typer som helst.

Det ultimata målet med kommunikation måste vara på beteendenivå. Det gäller för övrigt alla som håller på med människor… Kommunikationsbranschen i stort har varit, och är fortfarande, rätt dåliga på att definiera och mäta dessa. Mina närmaste konsultkollegor och jag talar rätt ofta om att gå från värderingar/kommunikation till praxis och beteenden. Alltså att se bredare på kommunikation utifrån frågan “vad kommunicerar detta”. Inte bara börja med kommunikation som innehåll utan lika mycket vad något i sin tur kommunicerar vidare. Vi arbetar inte specifikt med kommunikation utan förändringsprogram, men kommunikation blir där självklart ett av alla viktiga verktyg. Exemplet här ovan – från Kårrestaurangen på Chalmers – trillade jag över på LinkedIn, delat av Cecilia Edling Östman, en kollega från vääääldigt länge sedan.

Ett fantastiskt exempel på hur kommunikation, i det här fallet med uppgift att lyfta klimataspekten av vad vi stoppar i oss (gissar jag, oavsett så skulle det kunna vara det), kan ta ett fantastiskt steg från uppmanande budskap ofta en bra bit ifrån aktivitets/beteendetillfället till mer av en aktiv (“nudging”) roll exakt i beteendetillfället. Och med enkla medel.

Den här typen av kommunikation lånar mer från digital/tjänsteutvecklingen än traditionell kommunikationsstrategi och planering. Kommunikatörer som ännu inte lånat/stulit/berikat sig i den världen missar något.

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design nuggets video clip what is around us

slight perspective shifts

I love this. Slight perspective shifts with dramatic manifestations. Little shift in, big shift out.

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future internet technology video clip what is around us

ICAs framtida vision en underskattning av tekniken

ICA delar i en film med sig hur de ser framtiden. En framtid de, antar jag, gärna ser och bidrar till. En otroligt krävande, påträngande och underskattande om du frågar mig.

När dina ägg är slut ska du inte bara tala om detta för en liten manick, utan följa upp denna upplysning med en beställning på nya. Kanske även antalet. Det funkar ju, men det är ungefär som de där människorna (ni vet vilka) som talar om att de ska maila, drar iväg mailet, för att 2 minuter senare dyka upp (fysiskt eller i SMS) och tala om att de har mailat. De utnyttjar liksom inte styrkan i tekniken (jo, jag talar om mail som teknik). Predictive technology ska ju ta handlar om just detta, exempelvis google now.

Inköpslistan som skapas av alla dessa krävande inmatningar i ett system (som under de första åren inte kommer vara optimalt utan en orsak till extrem frustration fattar man ju), pushas sedan ut till en stackars familjemedlem (eller slav, det förtäljer inte historien). Snacka om oväsentligt, påträngande strunt. Stackare.

Ska framtiden verkligen behöva vara så krävande?

Nä, så här kommer det inte se ut. Varför? För det första för att det är inte bra, och för det andra för att vi redan har teknik som gör detta på ett bättre sätt.

Egg minder by GE and Quirky
GE har, tillsammans med Quirky, som sysslar med produktutveckling (ofta en “framåtlutad teknisk inställning”) med crowdsourcing som metod, tagit fram en lösning på äggproblemet. Nja, kanske inte ett jätteproblem, men det är ju på detta sättet vi hittar rätt framtida applikationsområden och utföranden – på lite quirky vis… Egg minder hjälper dig ha koll på hur många ägg du har i kylen, samt hur gamla de är. Nästa steg är uppenbart – beställ när antal = x. Du bestämmer så klart, men behöver inte bry dig mer. Inget swipe. Inget inmatande. För varför liksom?

iBeacon är lite på tapeten för tillfället. Det står klart för de flesta att Apple sedan iPhone 4 meckat in iBeacon-teknik i alla lurar. Det är ungefär som jämfört med Bluetooth (det är faktiskt Bluetooth 4.0) vad en full och ansvarslös dörrvakt är jämfört med en nykter – “nej, nej lägg ner ditt leg, jag kommer ihåg dig det är lugnt välkommen in”. Alltså ta tag i en kundvagn och du är registrerad. Lägg ner ditt chip (som du ändå glömde i bilen).

Det är inte framtidens teknik, utan pågående teknikutveckling. Den blir bättre och bättre på vad den är där för; att hjälpa oss. Och i ICAs kontexten handlar detta mycket om att försvinna. Inte att aktivt interagera med oss. Interaktionsdesign och tjänsteutveckling (som den här) kommer, tro det eller ej, handla mindre om att swipa, klicka, peka och dra. Teknik kommer att försvinna, och då gör den ofta ett bra jobb.

Categories
design technology what is around us

what music looks like

Beautiful thing from Yuri Suzuki – what music looks like. I’d like to see this as an application that plays the music of your surrounding. Imagine temperature, light temperature, how tall the trees are, what color of building facades your surrounded by, weather etc. You see where you are, and can be recorded as a painting or photo with artists interpretation included, but sound is different.

Looks Like Music – Mudam 2013 from Yuri Suzuki on Vimeo.

Picked up at Creative Applications

Categories
digital internet technology what is around us

The invisible impacts of paying a premium price or not

Amazon in Rugeley for the Financial Times Magazine

Photograph by Ben Roberts
From Portrait of Amazon Fullfilment Center, in FastCo Design

When I pay a bit extra for organically grown tomatoes, I know why. When I pay a bit extra for a pair of Nudie jeans, It feels right. When I buy a pair of Crockett and Jones, in 2 years I’m reminded of why.

Many premium prices are strategically and purposefully explained and charged with answers to questions of “why” and “for what”. Quite simply premium brands. The tomatoes are better for me, that feels comforting. The jeans say something about me, which I feel I need for some reason I probably can’t explain very well.

“When you buy something from an independent retailer, you might pay more than Amazon, but that extra bit is an investment,” Roberts explains. “When you pay it, you’re investing in the quality of not only your own life but the life of the community around you.”

– Ben Roberts

But premium prices (can) also do something for others. All businesses impact greater society and hence our purchase decisions. This portrait of an Amazon Fullfilment Center so vividly shows the backside, if you will, of everything that I love with Amazon.

It would feel so much better knowing that only robots were hurt, while paying the lovely low prices, enjoying the frictionless delivery and follow-up of the many books that I buy.

I admit that I feel a bit better when I’m reminded every month of the village and child that I support. But the thing is, of course, that we support (or not) individuals, communities and society in every purchase decision but it’s all invisible.

In a world of increasingly quick and rich feedback loops, personal data, interconnected systems, transparency and information accessibility – I’m waiting for better ways of reminding me of the invisible back-end of the products I buy. In context. Not by way of bi-yearly reports on worker conditions in developing countries and/or what’s happening to our farmers seen as we’ve never payed less, proportionately, for food than today.

I want a friggin connected dashboard on the tomato cans I buy. How’s the farm doing?

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brand business design just a reflection marketing what is around us

brands as a part of our environment and more

Camper is a quirky shoe brand from Mallorca, Spain. You react when you see them, from the characteristic “one-way-show-string” models, to the “rounded soldier boot meet clown shoe” inspired style but perhaps primarily their stores, in which their shoes are presented in a very artful way. It’s somewhat of an experience to browse the models which is nice.

I like the reflection below, about how Camper and its stores is part of the cities they’re in. And when you design a store, you can take cultural (and perhaps even political!) differences into account, hence looking at it from the perspective of adding, changing or commenting something that exists, in the greater context of things. In the case of Camper, using different designers to design stores around globe, resulting in drastically different experiences, it’s
“more a cultural thing”, rather than commercial, says Miguel Fluxá.

When we started to open stores outside Spain we thought it was interesting not to repeat them. The world today is becoming a little bit boring, everything is becoming the same. So we thought it was interesting for the brand, and for the cities, to do different designs from one place to the other. We started to do this many years ago and it’s something that has given us a lot of identity and has worked quite well over the years.

– Miguel Fluxá of Camper, via Dezeen

Camper in-store design
In-store design, from Dezeen.com

Categories
design what is around us

design, design, design

Matches

Design is the bomb. Everybody talks about design. Responsive design. Designing for a digital age. Design thinking. Design thinking in customer experience. The designful company. I guess it risk becoming equally watered out/confusing (or for the initiated; finally as rich and properly defined and filled as it should) as “digital” has been for a while, having been everything from the opposite of analogue, to a mental age, to a skill-set, to a way of thinking, to a type of company, to a word used to sell yourself. Yuk.

Wonderful example of seemingly undesigned or design-unworthy objects from Shane Schneck.

matches

matches again

Or this stuff by Karim Rachid

pot2

Pot by karim rachid

Another Pot by Karim Rachid

Everything obviously needed more design focus than we thought. Little has been well designed enough. Design hasn’t reached the little things enough. Etcetera. Or, I’m fooled by lack of perspective and it actually was but not anymore.
Lot’s of great examples from Fast Co.Design.

Update 2016-10-09:
Artsy got in touch and let me know there’s a page dedicated to Karim Rashid, on Artsy.

Categories
design flicks just a reflection what is around us

finding the small, effective, changes amongst the routinely unnoticed

Builder norms and manliness

Striking how deeply ingrained certain things are, and hence how effective it is to break away from those pre-existing truths; mental and social. Like colors for example. Heavy duty stuff should be black and yellow. Hardhats too. Except for this one, demanding attention. Perhaps the company decided to chip in to the gender/socialisation issue. Perhaps Mr or Mrs boss bursted out in a meeting: unicorns shouldn’t be either pink or rainbow colored, and our bags are damn well not going to be orange and black!

It seems like it’s easier to think up big things, big changes, big ideas, big moves, big campaigns, big strategies, big plans. Finding the little things takes just as long to find because they are, per definition, smaller and harder to find. Now back to work, and change the small things that break away from the routinely unnoticed.

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design planning video clip what is around us

urban design – the language of the city

I’m really looking forward to catching this latest film, Urbanized, by Gary Hustwit. Urban design is really interesting when you think about how little you think about it. How cities work, help you, work against you and contextualize your every experience more or less. Think about memories from, say a park, and how that memory could be claimed to be “powered by” urban design. How different could memories be, if the context had been different?

I don’t want to draw ridiculous parallels back to communications planning, but a session we had in 2010 at APG Sweden (Theme being “creating for people”) was with a company called Spacescape who specialize in strategic urban and architectonical analysis. Stuff like spacial analysis, user studies etc. They end up with things like heat maps, showing the flow of people, and hence how changes in the landscape would “upset”, redirect or prevent that flow. That session proved to have a whole lot in common with communications planning. It also left me feeling a bit incredulous towards architects in general.

Categories
flicks just a reflection technology what is around us

the side effects of new technology

modern day knitting

When trying to make sense of new technology and use it the right way for all different purposes, it’s important to look deeper than the visible technology and go for the behavior underneath. Technologies change fairly quickly, but the needs, and however those are met, behaviors, stay. We update our means to our ends.

At the same time, new technologies have brought about new behaviors as well. It didn’t bring about socializing, but it did bring about the swiping of the thumb and tapping of the index finger to socialize. And knitting has been around for a long time, but not knitting with headphones. That’s big in the 21st century.