Adobe have released a new tool for designers called Edge Reflow. Its purpose is to make the process of designing for multiple screen sizes within one workspace much more simple and time-effective.

This is my experience in using Adobe Edge Reflow for the first time, and these are my findings on how Edge Reflow can be a useful tool for visual designers with limited CSS experience and what can be achieved from it.

Designing a responsive website is hard with current and past processes. Different processes are having to emerge to make this time and cost effective. Examples of this include Style Guides and Component Sheets which we have used in previous projects. It has always been challenging to find a way of effectively visualising the responsive design to clients as discussed in our blog post, Prototyping – beyond desktop and mobile, last week .

Edge Reflow aims to bridge the gap between flat comps designed in an image editor such as Photoshop or Fireworks, and a built website by producing one design built on HTML, that takes all viewports into consideration — a “high-fidelity web design” according to Adobe. This therefore presents the web better than a ream of PSDs or wireframes, allowing more effective communication of an entire design to a client. It also exposes design flaws quicker and forces further consideration before the build stage. Effectively it serves as a responsive prototyping tool, that doesn’t necessarily require the skills of an experienced developer.

It does however require a little familiarity with HTML, CSS and responsive design concepts, therefore presenting a moderate learning curve for designers without this knowledge.

As a visual designer with no experience in HTML or CSS, the world of coding is a scary place. Margins, padding and floats aren’t terms I am used to in my specific role in creating designs for web. With a little introduction into the basics of web development, I picked up this programme without any problem. It has very simple construction tools that any designer used to working within the Adobe Creative Suite will be comfortable with.

There are two basic regions within the interface; the design canvas for WYSIWYG layout and the property inspector, for styling individual elements. This is pretty simple and each serves to do what you would expect from it. Three types of elements can be added to your workspace: boxes, text and images.

New sets of layout styles can be added for different screen resolutions by creating breakpoints, these start new media query regions that can be easily flicked between. Going into these different media queries allows you to tweak the properties of each element, change font sizes, edit box sizes and such.

A key feature in this is that you can live test during the process of design, which isn’t something I am used to. It makes the process simple and saves a lot of time flicking through windows or uploading files. It is essentially a browser within the programme. A handle at the edge of the design canvas is used to change the size of the canvas, flicking through the media query regions, demonstrating how the layout will respond. Using this handle exposes layout flaws in between your breakpoints, giving you a quick and easy way to resolve said problems.

I set myself the task of recreating the Great Fridays holding page, as it is a fairly basic layout and works well on mobile and desktop. This was a useful exercise and helped me understand CSS positioning concepts and the importance of ordering elements. It makes it easier to digest as it is presented in a visual manner. This is obviously a massive advantage for someone like me, who prefers to work with visual based tools. Once I grasped this, it was a simple task of inspecting the existing Great Fridays holding page and matching the values to the layout and styling in Reflow.

At first I was a little confused as to why the margins and padding took different settings across the various media query regions. This was because I was trying to use the programme as if it was Photoshop. Care must be taken when dragging the elements into place, you will notice inconsistencies across the different media query regions as working in only the design canvas is imprecise. The main thing to consider is the ordering of elements in the ‘default’ media query, once this has been laid down correctly it is a case of tweaking the layout in the different media queries as desired. Once I grasped the rules of the layout tools, it was pretty straight forward from there.

Styling the elements comes as second nature to me, and the options presented work very similarly to most visual design applications. The text styling is similar to that of Photoshop, whereby you can modify the colour, size, line height and so on. Styling boxes and images allow you to add rounded corners, drop shadows and everything else you’d expect.

Reflow helped give me a better understanding of CSS rules, and how a design works from a developer’s point of view, and this can only improve my skills as a visual designer as well as my working relationship with the development team. Seeing the designs transition from a desktop-sized resolution to a small-screen resolution is quite satisfying for someone used to working with flat graphics, and I was impressed by the relative ease of prototyping this design.

A great feature of this tool is that it allows designers to prototype working responsive sites without the input of any developers. The ability to extract the CSS from this design is also a plus. It is reasonably accurate and can be used elsewhere making it a great time saving asset in the process.

Edge Reflow is intended to be used for creating visual designs, but would be great for UX prototyping and quick mockups as well. It’s a mesh between a layout editor and code editor, creating an interesting tool for those who are more visually-minded. It is not meant to replace any tool in the design process, but rather add to it.

I believe it will eventually become a staple of Adobe Create Suite as it grows. The ability to change the ordering of elements in a similar way to that of Photoshop layers, and introducing some interactive functions would go a long way to address any grievances I’ve had with it so far. Reflow is the best way that I have seen to prototype responsive web designs from a visual designer’s perspective. It won’t replace software such as Photoshop or a code editor, but it will sit harmoniously alongside them as a tool focused on prototyping responsive layouts.

If you have an Adobe Creative Cloud membership, Edge Reflow is available to try out for yourself.

This is the second part to the blog post I wrote earlier in the year, where I talked about prototyping an experience for a TV set top box. Part 2 is all about my journey and thoughts using some of the tools available for prototyping. The blog post is by no means a review of the tools.

In the summer of 2012  I had experimented with using Proto.io which at the time I’d been really impressed with. I worked with a team of mobile developers and between us, we wanted to get something together to show the stakeholders. Having something to touch and interact with, such as a smartphone allowed us to spark an emotive response as well as soliciting feedback from users.

Proto.io pitch their product as “Silly fast mobile prototyping – That includes smart TVs, gaming devices, refrigerators, alarm clocks, cars and any other interface you can think of.”

It’s an attractive statement, especially the point about Smart TV.

Proto.io’s really easy to use and comes with a range of realistic UI components and tools that give you the ability to rapidly get something onto the canvas.

There’s also the option to skin your prototype, this means that you can frame it to mirror the look and feel of the device you’re prototyping for.

For our prototype we wanted to take the URL that Proto.io generated and be able to browse it via our set top box and interact with it, either with a keyboard using arrow keys, or other keyboard keys to mirror coloured hard keys on a remote control and a keyboard key for making a selection.

I set the canvas up to mirror one of the sketches we’d completed that explored how a user could navigate a simple dashboard interface. Remember we want to design and build this quickly to fail fast and learn from it.

The user should be able to navigate to a particular place holder panel with complete freedom, and when the focus is set on one of the panels, the user can then navigate between the smaller placeholders located in the lower part of the screen.

When the focus is set on one of the smaller placeholders, the user can move back and forth across the 5 smaller placeholders whilst the parent placeholder above is highlighted as ‘selected’.

The user must be able to move the focus back to the first set of larger place holders and move horizontally back and forth. Each time the focus is set on one of the larger placeholders, a different set of smaller placeholders load below the larger placeholder.

We want the user to follow our navigational model with the use of arrow keys for moving between placeholders. This allows them the freedom to move up/ down/ left/ right, mirroring d-pad interactions on a remote control.

If you’re familiar with online prototyping tools, you’ll be aware that you can usually set or add interactions to most elements on the canvas. In this case, Proto.io allows you to set an event to a keypress. For example, I can trigger an event by binding it to a keypress.

With my placeholders set up, I started to bind events to key presses, in this example, I created an event to set the focus on one of the larger placeholders to the right of where the current focus was set when the right arrow key was pressed. Proto.io makes all this really easy and it didn’t take long to mirror the sketch.

I continued to set up events and after getting to the last placeholder, it became apparent that as a user I was losing the freedom of being able to move up / down / left / right using arrow keys and the ability to mirror a d-pad on a remote control.

Brick wall. Hit. There was no way of moving between all the placeholders and the prototype remembering the last location of the cursor or remembering a selection.

I decided to email Proto.io support and ask for some help, I was convinced after seeing some of the cool stuff they’d made that I was either missing something or they’d point me in the right direction.

A few hours later I received a reply that hinted at what I was trying to do was possible with some limitations. I employed the logic that was suggested however the limitations pointed towards simulating the movements between placeholders, rather than our test users having 100% freedom when navigating around the UI.

I decided to press on and fired up Axure. I’ve seen some pretty cool stuff done with Axure and there’s lots of clever people out there making it do all kinds of interactive stuff. I was pretty confident I could try and get it to emulate the example above with the placeholders.

Following the same exercise as above my prototype started to take shape and included using dynamic panels and cases. Axure is a powerhouse when it comes to building complex cases and page interactions. More placeholders were added to the canvas and I started to look at how I could bind the arrow keys to events and allow the user to navigate freely around the screen. The prototype started to follow the same pattern of limitations that I’d experienced with the earlier tools.

I headed for the support forums and also researched some of the really informative tutorials and examples. Then I found this thread: Arrow keys for navigation.

Axure made my list of ‘non-accessible’ prototypes.

Along the way I’d noticed a recommendation for Justinmind, I saw the product mentioned on other blog posts though didn’t have any first hand experiences of using it.  Justininmind pitch themselves as:

The best platform to define web and mobile apps with rich interactive wireframes.

Whilst there was no mention of TV, gaming consoles or even refrigerators, I thought I’d try it out and see if I could replicate what I was trying to do with both Proto.io and Axure.

Justinmind was fairly powerful in allowing me to create interactions on the canvas, however once again I ran into the same problems as earlier in relation to using the keys to navigate or remembering the cursor location.

I browsed the help section and couldn’t pinpoint anything that would help me get back on track. With the clock ticking I fired an email to support. I received a pretty good response that again indicated that I’d be able to use arrow keys to navigate between different page elements plus the suggestion of using dynamic panels to show and hide content. Again the limitations, of moving freely between elements on the canvas started to slow me down.

Running out of time and after more experimentation with Justinmind, I decided to move on and considered using  HTML, CSS and jQuery instead. Hang on. I had an idea! Adobe Fireworks.

Fireworks claims to offer rapid prototyping and optimization of interactive designs for use on websites or in apps for tablets. No mention of TV though if we’re building something for the browser, maybe I can replicate the navigational model where the other products haven’t been so successful?

I wired out the dashboard and started to export when I realised that the support for pages, states and hotspots, which are powerful for building web apps and mobile sites, don’t offer any accessible solution from what I can make out, that allows you to use keyboard keys out of the box to navigate. I reviewed the export options and had a quick look through the forums, however as with all the previous attempts at building an accessible prototype, I couldn’t get Fireworks to hit the mark.

I shared my findings with the team and decided on our next move.

So how did we do it? We decided to build our own framework that was close to production level code. We built a single page framework that pulled in real data using JSON. We planned out the data structure in advance to save time which allowed the front end development work to work in parallel to the back-end work happening in Drupal.

The single page framework allowed the user to navigate a series of screens and pages with complete freedom and remember their last location. Mapping keys to the remote control was fairly simple as well as their corresponding actions when using a regular desktop keyboard and using the arrow keys to navigate. Other keys were mapped to simulate hard keys, such as the coloured buttons on the remote control.

What would I do differently next time? Sketch and head straight for the HTML / CSS / jQuery tool box and start to put something together that’s rapid and we can learn from fast. Why would I do this? At the time of writing, and reader please correct me if I’m wrong, I don’t believe there are rapid prototyping tools available to quickly produce an accessible prototype that will work across a range of devices and platforms such as TV.

How do we make it better for designers who don’t have coding skills and don’t want to open Pandora’s box? For desktop and mobile, I think that space is more than covered, there’s some great products and tools out there, however as we start to use other devices and platforms, there needs to be a shift in the offering or an improvement in making existing tools more accessible, and by that I mean allow complete freedom when navigating a prototype that doesn’t require a pre-defined navigational pattern or the requirement of a mouse or trackpad for example. Alternatively the ability to include use of a screen reader, remote control or other devices such as Leap Motion would be advantageous.

Our products and applications will always be better if we prototype sooner rather than later and faster, as well as getting the prototype to work on as many devices as we can or as required and make them accessible for all. It’s not just going to be screen size or browser that we’ll be talking about, the interface landscape is changing constantly and the requirement for the way we provide input, the environment and products we use to do that and how we connect with the web, changes with it. That means the tools we use have to change too and right now, the offering is vast though potentially limited in capability with the focus being applied to desktop and mobile and poor support for accessibility.

I’ll continue to explore this space with the work we do here at Great Fridays, and will look to share and expand on these initial blog posts discussing prototyping beyond desktop and mobile in the future.

The car as we know it has dramatically evolved over the last century or so. When Henry Ford started making cars you could have whatever colour you wanted as long as it was black. Today consumers are presented with a myriad of choices from performance and safety through to environmental options. Within the last 5 years however, car manufacturers have recognised that the car is really the last unconnected part of their lives. In the past, car manufacturers boasted about performance, reliability and design. Now they realise that iPod connectivity and built-in GPS are valued features that many consumers expect; buying habits are changing.

This leads us onto questioning whether we really need to be connected in our car? Isn’t the car the last safe haven from the world of information overload? What information do we actually need when we are behind the wheel?

Henry Ford’s famous quote was; “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses”. This may be true, sometimes you have to help your customers imagine what they cannot. However, the connected car seems more of an adaptation of driver’s existing bad habits, rather than a revolutionary idea (at least in the designs we are seeing in the market today). How often do you drive along the motorway and see some lawbreaker with their mobile glued to their ear, chatting away, oblivious to what is going on on the road around them? Just consider the technology that is currently available in your car; you can fiddle with the radio, change a song on your iPod, call a contact from your telephone dashboard display, all whilst taking your eyes off the road. The challenge for manufacturers is to introduce more technology into cars without it being distracting.

Car manufacturers have seized the opportunity to support driving interactions by developing what has been termed the ‘Connected Car’. The concept varies across manufacturers with all of them seeking to find new ways to introduce technology to change the way we interact with our cars and the world outside them.

This year’s CES provided a plethora of new products aimed at making the ‘connected car’ a reality. Products covered a number of everyday tasks from parking, entertainment control, mobile and social media notifications, email communication and navigation.

Not surprisingly, in-car entertainment has been identified as the first major opportunity to investigate. Research shows that 50% of all radio listening happens in the car. Pandora Radio is a brilliant example of a company who has done just that. They have developed a product to seamlessly fit in with car manufacturers’ thoughts and ideas, by stripping back their normal web based full service offering and developing a car specific product which aims to limit driver distraction. The car version of Pandora takes away the vast amount of artist information presented to the driver, replacing it with a simple limited information format which doesn’t distract the driver.

Honda, has also recognised the importance of the connected entertainment experience and have developed a service called HondaLink. Once a customer has downloaded the HondaLink app from the Appstore they can select, browse and listen to personalised, on-demand radio stations, audiobooks, podcasts and entertainment feeds from major internet based providers. On top of this, texts, emails and social media messages are read out to the driver.

Not distracting the driver whilst driving must be the single most important factor in any new in-car entertainment system and until these ideas are more thoroughly tested it is difficult to establish how exactly they will be adopted. Manufacturers are investigating new types of interfaces, some are tangible; touchscreen, physical buttons and voice control, while others require gesture, IR sensors and eye recognition. These interfaces present information differently to the driver, changing their experience from a physical reach and touch to something more intune with the task in hand; driving.

Outside of entertainment and information delivery systems, manufacturers have been working on the ‘Self Driving Car’. Have a look at this amazing video which shows a test drive of one of Google and Toyota’s Self-Driving cars tested by Steve Mahan who is 95% blind. Whilst the test route was heavily programmed it shows a brief glimpse into the future, and a real paradigm shift in the way we use our cars.

As exciting as the self driving car is, it is going to be a while until we see these cars on our streets en masse. There is however a buzz being generated about the use of in-car apps. Although, we are finding the prospect, as it currently stands, difficult to get too excited about. There are some interesting concepts, but they don’t seem to have fully addressed all the design and safety considerations of implementing technology in cars. For example, is gesture the best form of input for drivers who should really have two hands on the wheel? And is social media really useful to have in your car when travelling at speed? Cars can offer a haven, an escape, where your mind focuses on nothing but driving. However, when you start to throw in social media and gossip into the mix, it can become a very distracting environment. Many people are unable to use their mobile phone while walking down the street. Do we really want these people, connected, behind the wheel of a powerful machine? It suddenly makes travelling by car feel very dangerous.

We hope that perhaps the connected car will instead evolve into what we are terming the ‘contextual car’. It would be nice to see design solutions that try to better balance the safety issues of interacting with technology in vehicles, rather than taking a mobile touchscreen and putting it in a fixed position on the dashboard. This feels like an archaic compromise to what is a serious social issue and one which could have major repercussions if implemented incorrectly. Instead, we would like to see the car respond to the driver experience. For example, a driver should not be accessing Facebook while driving at 70mph or indeed at 10mph. However, setting these information channels to inform you via push notifications and allow you to respond via speech, could be fun and engaging but not distracting. Traffic reports from the highway agency that give you an update on the situation, could be useful or perhaps you sharing with others in your network the latest issues on the roads, in real time. Drivers in China may have been particularly grateful of these types of notifications when the north-south Beijing-Tibet expressway experienced an 11 day traffic jam.

Wouldn’t it be great if the car was smart enough to detect which functionality should be available to the driver, with permissions being set depending upon the situation the driver finds themselves in. This intelligence would be a great advancement to the market and it would go some way to persuading safety regulators to jump on board. This isn’t groundbreaking technology, we have seen this type of intelligence in designs for the home, e.g. Nest, the thermostat that learns its users habits. If the car industry had a similar device this could improve the driving experience dramatically. Imagine how you use your car, it often supports the many roles you have to adopt in your life. For example, between 8-9am you’re a parent who needs to entertain the children on the school run, then you’re a professional driving to work – catching up on the latest news. Later in the day you may be looking to wind down on your drive home with some relaxing music. For a lot of people this routine very rarely changes. If cars could learn these patterns then that would be something to get excited about. Imagine reducing the amount of time you have to spend adjusting the radio, seats, mirrors or heaters. Imagine a car that identifies it is you driving the car and modifies the internal elements to meet your requirements. This is the sort of technology in cars that is really exciting.

Of course, technology plays a role in the development of the ‘connected car’, but the most important consideration is understanding the user’s needs. There are two key user groups within a vehicle; (1) the driver and, (2) the passengers. Their needs are not necessarily the same. The features that they need from a car can be slightly different as a result of their role in the car. The driver’s focus is likely to be on navigating, parking and travelling safely and comfortably. Let’s take this further, rather than a driver looking down at a dashboard display, could information be presented in their field of vision? And although social media messages may be interesting, they are not relevant to the driving experience. What could be useful is information displayed about; the distance to the car in front and stopping distances, GPS and expected time of arrival, weather and road conditions, or perhaps the location of the nearest free parking space. We speculate that there could be other apps that would be useful, e.g. if the driver has to drive 60 miles to work and they only have enough petrol for a 50 mile trip – it would push petrol station information to the driver. We have already seen insurance companies tracking driving performance with boxes that are attached to cars, perhaps these could be developed to provide in-car feedback. These notifications may help bad drivers recognise their errors. Something that would be beneficial to all road users.

Passengers, on the other hand, have very different needs. They are not responsible for the vehicle and can relax. Their needs are more driven by entertainment than road awareness and navigation. Therefore apps that require higher levels of interaction are more appealing to these users. It could be argued that apps that suit these users’ needs already exist in the apps market – the car is just another place where they will consume that content.

Apps in cars presents a lot of opportunities for drivers to become distracted. Hopefully, drivers will remain responsible and only engage with apps that enrich the experience of driving, rather than those that may endanger it.

The technology should be in the background, it should support the driving experience, not deteriorate it, or even worse jeopardise lives. We still do not fully understand the behaviour changes that apps in cars will generate, but let’s hope that they are not detrimental to the in-car experience.

My New Year resolution for 2013 is to spend more time gaining and sharing knowledge.  The last four years have been exciting and bloody hard work as we continue to grow the global presence of Great Fridays.  I have been head down for long periods fighting with everything that growing an agency throws at you.  Part of the last twelve months has been spent finding brilliant people to help Rob and I steer the ship.  We have certainly found some rock stars from the Product and Service Design world including Jeremy Offer, Guy Jenkins and Ed Valpy.  They are definitely the smartest people in the room.  Combine this brainpower with the integral crew of Chris Hughes, Bryan Sayle and Tiff Pike and you have a potent group capable of reframing any Design Challenge, no matter how big.

Now that we have such a killer senior management team, it means that Rob and I can breathe, and assume the ambassadorial role so important in this exciting world in which we live.

Hopefully this is the first of many blog posts in 2013 to share some of the knowledge we have gained over the last 12 months.  I wanted to focus this particular blog post on my travels in January with Jeremy Offer, our new Design Director (and founder of Dekode).  I have been lucky enough to visit CES and the Bloomberg Businessweek Design Conference in the last couple of weeks, so writing about it should be easy.  The problem is that I have so much material that I could write a small manifesto.  So I am not going to focus on CES, but the amazing event that followed at the DE Young Museum in San Francisco.

Bloomberg Business Week pulled out all of the stops to lay on a Business event with an acute focus on Design. Bloomberg Designweek 2013 sounded like an event we couldn’t miss when looking down at the list of globally recognised Design talent on the schedule.  It was obvious that we would get an authoritative view of broad Design challenges facing business, and how the best reframers in Design are changing the world.

“Good design is often the defining element of the products, businesses, environments and sciences that become legendary,” said Josh Tyrangiel, editor of Bloomberg Businessweek.

“These designers are setting the bar for innovation in their respective fields, and at this event they can venture out of their professional enclaves, come together, perhaps even collide, in unexpected and provocative groupings, to discuss process, passions, influences, successes and failures.”

The days started with sessions about ‘Cities’.  A brilliant mix of Urban Architecture, Landscape Architecture and City Transportation Design.

Ada Tolla and Giuseppe Lignano set the tone for the day with a linear but superbly executed journey through architectural poetry and brilliantly executed Design.  So we have all seen container-based building projects – in fact prefabricated 40ft long homes were sustainability’s answers to brownfield development in the late 90s.  Until that is, the LOT-EK (http://www.lot-ek.com/) team started to reframe the process of urban design and utilise every last scrap of the utilitarian cargo boxes to create some of the most beautiful and inspiring Architectural Design.  Homes, Museums, Universities.  Follow that…

I have never pondered the challenges faced by transportation planning for long enough to appreciate what’s involved. The invention of motorised transportation has defined the infrastructure of our cities over the last 100 years.  Streets, avenues, pavements (sidewalks), junctions (intersections) all carved into the cityscape underpinning the architecture which flanks them.  So how do you remodel an infrastructure with the density and sheer scale of New York?  Reducing the number of cars and increasing pedestrianised areas and cycle lanes are just a few challenges faced by Janette Sadir-Khan, Commissioner of New York City Department of Transport.  She has implemented such innovative projects as the creation of Broadway Boulevard; the new Select Bus Service routes in the Bronx and Manhattan; the installation of 18 plazas and more than 285 miles of on-street bike lanes; car-free summer streets; weekend pedestrian walks; and the publication of a “Street Design Manual” and a “Street Works Manual” that define new standards for creating more durable and attractive streets.  Prototyping seems to be her secret ingredient on a vast scale. She confidently admits in her presentation:

“We’ve been able to transform city streets virtually overnight. You can literally paint the city you want to see.”

She has a great point and one which other cities are starting to emulate. Prototype the new pedestrian areas by painting out the road, adding some plants, chairs, tables and small food outlets.  If it works, great, make the area a little more permanent.  If it doesn’t work, wash it out and try something new.

“Design can tell you to take your business elsewhere, or it can tell you this is a vital, active retail space. When we pedestrianized 42nd to 47th Street, we saw an 11 percent increase in foot traffic. Now Times Square is one of the top 10 retail locations on the planet, which wasn’t the case before we made that intervention. Good streets are good business.”

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-01-24/janette-sadik-khan-the-benefits-of-a-well-designed-city

The great thing about the conference was the intensity of the presentations.  Much the same as the TED format, giving each speaker 15-20 minutes was just perfect, as it focused every discussion down to its essence rather than attempting to fill the day with content that really didn’t have the same impact.  I have called out two presentations from the ‘Cities’ section of the schedule, but could write about the rest with the same enthusiasm.

Following a coffee break we reconvened for the late morning session about Redesign.  In a nutshell: what happens when a company turns over its bottom line and its future to designers?

Bloomberg Businessweek Design Director Richard Turley opens up this Redesign session. He examines the negative response that can come with change. “The pressure to innovate can leave the reader, the consumer – us – a bit pissed off. We like the Gap logo as it is, thank you very much.”

This is a topic very close to my heart, and gets me up in the morning with a spring in my step, fire in my belly and a brain full of ideas, ideals and inspiration.  Great Fridays believe that Design is becoming fundamental to business change – it’s becoming a revolution on the scale of the industrial revolution, not to mention the technology revolution we have just encountered for the last 30 years.  Design is the change agent required to make sense of the unstructured, excited world technology advancement has created. So how does Design really impact on business value, and more importantly why should we bother?

Yves Behar is a design entrepreneur who believes that product, digital and brand design are cornerstones of any business. He is the Founder of fuseproject, a San Francisco and New York design and branding firm he established in 1999. He is also chief creative officer at Jawbone, where for the past 10 years his products, brand and communications work has made the company a leader in wearable and audio consumer electronics. Jawbone won a 2010 IDSA Design of the Decade award for its headsets.

When asked about the impact Design has on business today and the reasons behind why he started fuseproject, he explains:

“It’s very exciting. We’re really in the era of the designer as founder, as entrepreneur, as a key partner in new businesses. It’s a completely different place from where designers were 15, even 10 years ago; 15 years ago, every meeting I had started with some CEO or somebody on the management team asking me, “What’s the [return on investment] on design? You know, why should we hire you? How is it gonna make a difference?” To today, where it’s, like, “Well, if you don’t have a designer on your team, I don’t think we’re going to give you money.” That’s what we hear sometimes from venture capitalists.”

Being from an industrial design background myself I finally feel like the profession of Design is capturing the attention of executives at the highest level of International business.  Yves is one of many global startup Founders/CEOs who have built their business around an unshakable belief in Design.  And it works!  Not just aesthetically, but as a core pillar and foundation for business success, driving innovation, revenue and growth.

Yves views were later echoed by the Founder and CEO of Airbnb, Brian Chesky.  We were treated to a panel discussion chaired by Josh Tyrangiel, Editor of BusinessWeek, with Brian and the Vice President of Brand Identity at AT&T, Gregg Heard.

Gregg and Brian are both designers now running companies or divisions. Since they have a background in design,  Josh asked Brian about coming from a design background to start a company, and why it was important.  Brian replied, “At RISD, they teach how design can function in the boardroom. I wondered what would happen if design was the boardroom.”
He began by saying that it was essential for technology companies to give designers the clout of engineers.

“When we went to the valley, design was viewed as a huge liability,” said Chesky, who received a BFA in industrial design at the Rhode Island School of Design. “It was not good that we were designers. What they were really saying is that the heart of the company is its products, and the heart of a product is technology, and technology is created by engineers.” Chesky continued, describing design-thinking as the answer to Airbnb’s regulatory troubles in some major cities, including New York City. “We have to think broadly and very differently and holistically about government relations. It’s not just about meeting with government officials. It’s about solving a design problem – if we have problems in governments, that’s a design problem we need to solve.”

So a hard hitting start to the session with an extremely passionate view of Design, and more importantly, the changing perception of its position within the corporate infrastructure.  I would certainly love to see a Chief Design Officer installed in the rightful position on boards of large global enterprises.

The great thing about this conference was the fast paced agenda and mix of speakers.  You would think that jumping around disciplines would be unstructured and disjointed, but that was not the case here at all, as each presentation was seamlessly connected with the same Design principles inherent in each subject matter.  Whether Architecture or Software Design, the basic principles are the same: think, make, do!

So moving from a discussion about Design strategy to one about 3D printing might seem like a massive change but for me this is when a design neutral must surely start to see the main connection between all of the subject matters.  3D printing has been around for 20+ years, so why is it all of a sudden getting so much attention?  Scott Summit has become more than just an innovator in the 3D printing space – his business and ideals capture the exact essence of Design by combining human nature’s basic principles: “passion, desire, emotion and a desire to be unique”.  Design creates objects and beliefs which humanity desires and craves.  It creates a point of difference and engages us emotionally.

Technology and innovation drive change in our society, but without Design most humans can’t connect with these things alone.  What better way to prove the point than with Scott’s work around prosthetic limbs? Scott founded 3D-printing company 3D Systems on the promise of individuals enabled with personal 3D-printing machines:

“It’s a way to get people back to using their hands. It gets people away from their TVs and iPads and back into the garage. Trying and failing and trying again. Creativity in this country comes from individuals. Half the patents in the US aren’t held by corporations, they’re held by people.”

Technology and innovation might have advanced prosthetics, but basic human emotion still reacts negatively to the legacy of mechanical arms, legs and hands used today.  Scott has added a powerful ingredient through design and his passion for 3D printing innovation.   In the same way that humans are drawn towards beautiful clothing, Scott has enabled individuals to create their own prosthetic limbs through customised, individual and personalised 3D printing and the results are astounding.  Beautifully crafted objects of desire are the end result and we find ourselves thinking; how cool would it be to have a prosthetic limb.  Forrest Gump could have been a very different movie!

I believe that Design brings structure where none currently exists. So when Patricia Urquiola starts her presentation I am somewhat bemused for her first five minutes of unstructured poetry. But then she starts to show her work and I am enchanted for the next 15 minutes before she nonchalantly leaves the stage with a ‘follow that’  in-the-air hand gesture.

Patricia Urquiola was born in Oviedo, Spain in 1961 and now lives in Milan, where she opened her own design studio in 2001 for product design, architecture, installations and concept creation. She previously headed the Lissoni Associati design group.  Her clients are diverse.
Her work was also diverse, as well as beautiful across a multitude of disciplines, and her ethos and passion to work with the teams at the sharp end of design rather than in the higher political echelons is brilliant.  “I want to work with the craftsmen and women” she states, “so that I can understand the materials, the skills and the passion. Only by doing this can I produce.”

“I want to change the world” she declares.

The most disappointing part of the day for me was the Information section.  I am a huge fan of the work done by David McCandless (http://www.davidmccandless.com/) a London based data journalist and information designer.  I have seen his presentations at TED and several UK events before and I am in awe at his approach and attention to detail.  Giving data meaning by creating amazing visual representations is a beautiful craft combining mathematical understanding and interpretation, and then representing results in an easy-to-understand visual format.

I am not saying that the presentations were not well conceived and executed, but there was simply no ‘wow’ moment.  I have however chosen a couple of standout moments from the two hour session which for me were the most impressive.

Eric Rodenbeck is the Founder, CEO and Creative Director of Stamen Design, a boutique design and technology firm in San Francisco. Stamen’s focus on the marriage of interactive data visualisation and innovative design has attracted a growing client list to the studio, including BMW, Digg, The London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games, The New York Times, SFMOMA, Vito Acconci, The Exploratorium, and the University of Southern California. His work is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City.

Amongst the body of work presented by Eric, the piece that captured my attention was his presentation of transactional data from the NASDAQ.  Robotic, systematic transactions can be seen on the visualisations frequently showing throughout the day.  The larger the transaction the larger the bubble appears on the visualisation, and enterprises/companies are represented by colour.  This was a fascinating presentation which captured immediately the way in which automated robots or programs trade on behalf of the humans who created them, manipulating the market and seeding ideas and patterns.

The best data visualisations are ones which present an idea or theory quickly to the viewer, replacing pages and pages of data – ones and zeros.  Eric’s representation of the NASDAQ did just that, and it captivated the audience.

http://content.stamen.com/visualizing_a_day_of_financial_transactions_on_nasdaq_part_2

The other notable mention for this section goes to Steve Duenes.  Steve is the Graphics Director at the New York Times, a position he has held since 2004. The Times’ graphics department is a group of 25 journalists who research, design and develop the interactive maps, visualisations and animated graphics for the Times’ digital platforms and newspaper. Steve has also been a contributor to the New Yorker magazine and faculty member at the School of Visual Arts in New York.

Steve must be one of the luckiest men in the US at the moment, with a team of talented designers and engineering folks responsible for representing the state of the world through infographics.  Everything from the US election campaign to the western obesity problem, Steve’s team has created infographics which represent acutely the issues in beautifully crafted visual formats.

The final session of the day was the one I was most excited about.  ‘Imagination’ as a title for the afternoon schedule had already raised expectations.  I have always been a big admirer of IDEO, and in Particular Bill Moggridge, who unfortunately died from cancer last year.  Bill’s plethora of Design presentations over the years have certainly been a great inspiration to me as a fellow Industrial Designer-turned-business reframer. IDEO is a great company commanding worldwide respect for its Design/Business thinking.

Maybe it was because I had built up my expectations for Paul Bennet, current Creative Director at IDEO and his afternoon presentation, that I was disappointed.  Paul’s presentation skills were excellent, but in my opinion he tried to focus his presentation on such a high level of thinking around humanity that the Design focus was lost.  “I met a princess” he pronounced, as part of his presentation.  I hear a lot of commentary about peoples’ perceptions of IDEO and that they sometimes are responsible for too much thinking and not enough doing.  Paul certainly didn’t help to quash these rumours.

Thank goodness then for three speakers who kept me on the edge of my seat in the later stages of the day and made the entry fee well worth it.  Pixar is a great example of a Design led company that has stuck by its principles and reaped the rewards over the last 20 years.  It was really interesting to look through the keyhole at a sliver of the processes embraced at Pixar and in particular the way in which it iterates concepts and ideas like any other design-led discipline.  Michael B. Johnson, who responds to the nickname ‘Wave’, leads the Film On-Line Group and supervises the Story/Editorial Pipeline Team at Pixar Animation Studios.

His groups are responsible for the design, implementation and support of the preproduction pipeline for Pixar features and shorts. His team works directly with the directors, editors, producers, production designers, art directors, artists and production folk who start the process of bringing Pixar stories to the screen. Johnson has been at Pixar since 1993 and has written tools for all of Pixar’s feature films (and many of its short films), including tools for storyboarding, pre-vis, layout, animation, modelling, lighting, rendering and editing.

Prototyping and testing on the audience was brilliantly demonstrated by Michael using some of the tools he has created for Pixar since assuming his position there in the 1990s.

The underlying theme of the talk is teamwork, and Michael often quotes words of wisdom from his fellow colleagues. John Lasseter, one of Pixar’s founders, noted that “Quality is the best business plan”, or as another colleague put it ,“Pain is temporary, suck is forever”. The Pixar family very much keep these mantras in mind, always striving to do things better.

Michael is very modest and always refers to ‘we’ when discussing the groundbreaking tools he has developed to make the process of creating animated films as easy as possible. Again the team is at the forefront. His tools have revolutionised the storyboarding process, but he has also changed the way the team give and receive criticism by making everything as interactive as possible. Storyboarding has moved from being a huge board on which you stick drawings to a digital presentation that includes voice overs and can be done in real time to make it more accurate. He has changed the way people give and receive criticism by making it possible to draw over and make notes directly onto sketches which are immediately available via an online system for the team to view.

From prototypes to mind-blowing robotics and informatics, can a human beat a robot in a game of Paper, Scissors, Stone?  The answer became abundantly clear over the next 20 minutes with Professor Masatoshi Ishikawa: a resounding “never”.

Masatoshi Ishikawa has been a professor of creative informatics at the University of Tokyo since 2005. His current research interests include robotics, high-speed vision, dynamic image control and meta perception.

I urge you to search on YouTube for some of his latest work.  Robots that can hit a baseball into the same exact spot every time, even when the human pitch is different every time.

What better way to end the day than listening for 30 minutes to one of my design heroes?  Up there with Jonathan Ives, Tony Fadell can be placed on a similar pedestal for his work on the first 18 iterations of the iPod, working at Apple with Steve Jobs.  His most recent project, NEST, is the most unlikely of products, but he has managed to make the home heating thermostat cool.  I want one, it’s gorgeous, was a reaction in my head when I first saw the device last year.  The Nest Learning thermostat now ships around 40,000 units a months (only available in the US) – amazing growth and it’s not hard to see why.

The Nest Learning Thermostat learns about you and your home to turn itself down automatically when you’re away, guide you to energy-efficient temperatures when you are home, and free you from programming hassles by creating a personalised temperature schedule.

Before Apple, Tony Fadell built the Mobile Computing Group at Philips Electronics. Fadell has authored more than 100 patents. He graduated from the University of Michigan with a bachelor’s in computer engineering.

So an amazing January to start 2013, which should act as a great springboard for the year ahead.

The US point of view is so refreshing at the moment.  They have really embraced Design change and it is working in both Enterprise and Startup arenas.  Silicon Valley could well undergo a name change in the coming months to represent its newfound love and appreciation for all things Design.

Over 60% of Great Fridays’ business is now conducted with our friends across the Atlantic and we are really fortunate to have grade A Design talent in Great Britain.  We really are at the centre of a Design revolution and it’s extremely exciting to be a part of it.

We just need to convince Michael Gove to Educate our children on the importance of Design, rather than taking it out of the curriculum.  Oh Dear!

Maybe I can talk about my thoughts on that in February…

M

You may have noticed over the past week that we’ve begun to roll out our new brand. This is something we’ve been working on for the last four months, something that we’ve deliberated on repeatedly, and something that we’re ultimately very proud of. We’ve developed a brand that we feel, reflects our company ethos and encompasses our processes, approach and personality.

Explore the journey, from our initial understanding of our inner culture through interviews and workshops, through to the development of a brand that encapsulates our essence and is demonstrated in the sophisticated logotype and clean approach.

1. Our journey began with a process of self discovery. We asked ourselves (and others) lots of questions.

2. Through workshops we analysed our findings.

3. We harvested many ideas and initiatives that shape our culture and who we are.

4. Design exploration, based on visual research and defined principles.

5. Design refinement, in line with our developing brand work.

6. Finally, a visual style for Great Fridays, our values and personality.

7. Our visual identity. Currently being rolled out across the company.

Our visual identity manifests itself through the font Bliss, a beautiful font with an open character and Englishness that represents us perfectly. We’ve applied generous breathing space to the characters and the use of an en-dash to bond us to what we care about. Through application, colour and usage, our simple yet distinctive identity represents our core brand and is in tune with our culture.

I read this comment on Twitter last week.

“Just opened Pandora’s box … prototyping”

As an experience designer I can understand why the ‘tweeter’ may feel like that.

The prototyping topic gets hotter by the day with new blog posts appearing from a wide range of individuals and companies. You only have to search Twitter for #prototyping to see some of the ongoing discussion about best approach, methods tried and tested along with arguments about which is quicker; prototyping in the browser with straight up HTML and CSS or using a 3rd party tool such as InvisionApp?

Over the last 12 months we’ve seen discussion surrounding responsive and adaptive prototyping, no longer do our designs fit the 960 grid we were all so keen to adhere to once upon a time. Mix in ‘content driven design’ and the prototyping cauldron really starts to bubble.

If you’re designing and building products and services on a daily basis, chances are that the target platform for your design is no longer limited to desktop. We’re already interacting with the internet/ web in ways we probably never possibly imagined and that’s something that is changing almost daily.

So, what happens when you want to design and build a browser based prototype for a Smart TV or a gaming console? Fire up your coding app of choice and get stuck in? Or choose one of the many services and products that aim to make prototyping life easier without the need of having to open Pandora’s box?

With the deadline looming, I tried both.

As with all the prototypes we are building, we want to use it for end-user testing and communicating how something works to stakeholders. We want to fail fast, design and build something quickly and keep the costs down and save time where possible. It doesn’t have to be fully functioning, though with this project, we wanted to offer as much functionality as possible.

The team was tasked with designing and building a browser based prototype for an interactive cloud based music service for a set top box, to work at the following resolutions; 576, 720 and 1080p.

The prototype needs to work with and without the use of an input device, for example a desktop keyboard when a remote control isn’t available. This would be a similar experience to offering an ‘accessible’ prototype where a user is unable to use an input device such as a mouse; they’d potentially rely on the use of arrows and access keys to navigate between page elements.

Alternatively the prototype should be able to be operated via the D-pad using the remote control supplied with the TV. We want our users to navigate the prototype without being led or guided through a particular journey and most importantly have the freedom to move between any page element and visit previous screens without having to start over.

Visual, experience, screen and human factors are all important for our prototype to work. For example a human factor means the experience could be typically static, with the prototype remaining in potentially one location such as a living room. Consideration was also given to the level of engagement and effort required in this environment.

One of the best things about prototyping is the choice of fidelity. Over the years I’ve shown stakeholders prototypes that have been made up of rectangles with solid colours and a stroke through to hi-fidelity prototypes that embrace the use of real data. There’s lots of talk about fidelity choice and that’s a brand new blog post in itself, ideally we want to pitch our prototype to work with TV and offer as much functionality as possible.

Going back to our environments we mentioned earlier, the environment is a primary factor when prototyping our experience for TV. Using the living room location example above, the viewer is likely to be a distance away from the screen, potentially in a laid back position, sat on furniture such as a sofa or chair.

With this in mind, we knew our prototype had to adopt a 10ft user interface, and by that I don’t mean 10ft in height and width! Try it, stand 10ft away from the screen you are reading this post on and see if you can still make out the text on the screen. Our page elements had to be ergonomically large enough to be easily read at a distance.

To understand more about how a prototype could be operated via the Samsung Smart TVs we have here in the studio, we researched potential issues such as refresh rates / scan lines / safe area / over scan  / transitions.

Interestingly a large number of people are potentially watching Direct-view TVs-otherwise known as the traditional tube television [ CRT ] coupled with a modern set top box. Whilst perceived as ‘old technology’ CRTs are still capable of producing great picture quality. There’s nothing antiquated about the technology other than their screen size limitations.

Every brand of TV is likely to treat overscan differently, so we introduced something called a safe zone. Our safe zone allowed for a 50px margin around the content which should allow the content to breathe with elements still ergonomically large enough to be read when you’re sat on the other side of the room. With the safe zone applied to our blank canvas, the content area now measured 1152px / 648px which would allow us to build our prototype to work at a resolution of 720. Seems small right? It’s also worth noting that TV pixels are rectangular, not square as on a computer screen so during the prototyping stage we need to be checking different TV screens where possible.

So what about fonts?  They need to be large and the contrast ratio is especially important, whilst that might seem obvious, light text on a dark background is easier to read on a TV compared to dark text on a light background. In the past, a lot of prototypes I’ve built have always been the reverse. With that in mind we had to ensure that we used ‘pure white’ sparingly, and that’s because TVs have much higher contrast and saturation levels than computer monitors.

Text entry on TV is generally difficult, and all the currently available options have significant drawbacks. Our prototype has to minimise text entry and only use when required, and potentially support predictive text and auto completion.

Most importantly TV is a passive experience therefore the interface should be intuitive, simple, familiar and predictable. No one wants to work hard whilst relaxing on the sofa after a hard day’s work.

We started to realise that opening our coding editor of choice and dropping some content on Foundation and getting something in the browser quickly to fail fast required more thought and planning than usual. You could also say that at this point we’re making a lot of considerations for a prototype and you’re probably right.

Plus, we all know about browser limitations and the differences in terms of support. If we’re building this using a browser based product or even flexing our coding skills, there’s a danger that it won’t appear as intended when viewed on TV.

To start we looked at contextualising the user’s interactions and playback experience when interacting with the TV platform using a virtual keyboard and remote control. This helped lots with sketching out the interaction design model along with patterns that would be used through the user journeys depending on what tasks the user would be completing.

Research shows that around 50% of TV viewing is still shared, the most likely activity to be shared is the one connected to the Smart TV. This has some bearing on our prototype however following a user-centered design process we can help minimise some of the potential issues that may arise during the prototyping.

We treated the CRT scenario as an edge case, we’d discovered that the CRT may have to be converted to work with the set top box. With the UK government  gradually switching off the current TV analogue broadcast signal, it’s likely by 2013 all of the UK will have switched over to digital-only TV.

Armed with all our sketches, considerations, guidelines and user research I wanted to find out whether some of the tools I had in my box for prototyping would help get something up and running in the browser straight away that would allow the user completed freedom in navigating between screens and page elements.

I’ll be sharing my findings next time around, in the meantime I hope this has given some to context to some of the considerations for prototyping beyond desktop and mobile.

What a start to 2013! Following on from the opening of our new San Francisco and New York offices, we’re very excited to announce that Great Fridays has acquired its first Great Business. We’d like to introduce you to dekode – an amazing, award-winning industrial design company that’s now part of the Great Fridays group of companies.

dekode has proven knowledge and experience in designing and developing successful new products. We combine traditional industrial design skills with the latest technology to help our clients create more competitive brand-building products and exploit global market opportunities whilst achieving shorter lead times, flexible development programmes and improved quality. Whether our client is an entrepreneur with a great idea or a multinational blue chip, we help foster brand recognition, innovation and relevance in an increasingly commodotised market.

The product and service design landscape has been changing at a rapid pace over the last few years. If you referred to a ‘product’ in the past, everyone would think you meant a physical item that you could hold and touch. Developing such physical products has been at the heart of dekode’s business since our inception, but as all design disciplines begin to converge, it became more obvious that the demand for physical interfaces with toggles, switches and buttons was being replaced by touchscreens and gesture control.

The convergence of these design disciplines has brought with it rapid change. Nowhere is this better demonstrated than with one of the world’s leading software and service businesses, Google, which has diversified into developing its own physical products such as Project Glass and the new Chromebook.

Great Fridays has also evolved. Now, as Product & Service design experts, our focus is crossing the boundaries of digital into physical as barriers between the two worlds crumble. Consumers expect high quality design whether they’re holding a product in their hand or engaging with an interface on a screen. To them the experience has already converged. And so the acquisition of dekode was a natural step for us to bring physical product design to the centre of Great Fridays and complete our offering by providing clients with a more integrated and thorough product and service design proposition.

Says Matt Farrar, founder of Great Fridays, “We’re extremely excited about the recent acquisition of dekode. Great Fridays has long been an admirer of the work done by Jeremy and his team.

The product and service design marketplace is evolving, and we didn’t want Great Fridays to be restricted in our work with clients to a purely digital manifestation of the experience.  We act as a design authority for clients, helping them reframe some of the big challenges they face by delivering their brand promise across multiple channels in both the digital and physical world.  This strategy is about Design with a capital D, and has significant impact on the profit, revenue and efficiency of all clients we engage with.

Over the next 12 months we will cooperate closely with the dekode team to bring together our obvious shared ethos and methodology.  These are exciting times for both companies as we drive for global recognition.”

Jeremy Offer will become global director of design for Great Fridays, and by working with our existing executive team will be responsible for how this evolution affects our branding, proposition and essence. We look forward to working with the dekode team and expanding the Great Fridays presence further into the design world.

How the year has flown by. Before we knew it we were back on the bus up to the Lakes for the annual Great Fridays Christmas party. Christmas jumpers were donned in support of the Save the Children Christmas Jumper day campaign, something that was taken on extremely enthusiastically by some members of the team.

Same venue, different activity this year. Everything was taken up a notch and after a presentation from our Founders Rob and Matt and the rest of the Senior management team (some very exciting things that you will find out about in the new year), we were split up into teams to start an afternoon of wine-tasting and cooking.

Of course we had to add a competitive element to the day and those with a keen nose were anxious to show off their knowledge of the grape in a series of questions posed by the organisers. After the wine-tasting it was on to cooking where we had a demonstration on how to cook a Pad Thai. Having determined that ‘no you wouldn’t get extra points for downing the fish sauce’ it was on to the task in hand. This was another opportunity to demonstrate everyone’s creativity and the presentation of the final dish was taken very seriously, with some teams using makeshift moulds to achieve the desired effect, whilst others created snowmen out of sugar.

And the winners..who would have thought it but it fell to the ‘No Nuts’ team, comprising of Founder Matt Farrar and Christmas party organiser Nick Bazley. We might ask for a recount…

After the winners were announced everyone went off to glam themselves up and we re-convened in the evening for a Champagne reception and three course dinner. The perfect opportunity to eat, drink, be merry and reflect on a Great year.

A big thank you has to be given to Rob and Matt for another fantastic end to the year.

Merry Christmas!

Every great story is made out of encounters, hard work, passion, respect, friendship, good and hard times – but mainly good. This one is no different…

On Great Fridays’ 4th birthday, here’s a brief reminder of how Great Fridays became the exciting global business and respected design authority that it is today:

Matt Farrar and Rob Noble met at the Internet World Show, Earls Court, London in 2002. At that time, they were respectively running successful companies in the digital and software industries.  After many emails, meetings and the odd beer or two over the next couple of years they finally started working together within the same digital agency.

After three years of working alongside each other with the atlantic ocean between them, cooperating on many projects, understanding and appreciating each other abilities, a friendship developed as did their vision for design.   This vision manifested itself in Great Fridays and on the 11th December 2008 at 4.25pm the new company was born with the goal of becoming known as the best Product & Service Design company in the world.

Here are some key milestones in the companies journey to achieve their goal:

Dec 2008 – Great Fridays is born. Studio in Manchester (headcount of 16 full time employees)

Jan 2009 – First pitch to a new client JK Rowling
Feb 2009 – JK Rowling became a client
March 2009 – Bowers & Wilkins became a client
Aug 2009 – Emma Watson became a client
Dec 2009 – Great Fridays = Digital Agency (headcount of 18 full time employees)

Jan 2010 – Adobe became a client
Jan 2010 – Journey to becoming a Product & Service design company begins
May 2010 – Vodafone became a client
June 2010 – Fenner PLC became a client
Dec 2010 – Great Fridays = Experience Design and Digital Strategy Agency (headcount of 25 full time employees)

March 2011 – Great Fridays ventures created
March 2011 – Gucci became a client
Aug 2011 – Thomson Reuters became a client
Aug 2011 – Pearson Foundation became a client
Sept 2011 – New London studio is born
Nov 2011 – Williams Lea became a client
Dec 2011 – Great Fridays = Experience Designer Agency with a new studio in London (headcount of 30 full time employees)

Jan 2012 – Imagination Technologies became a client
Jan 2012 – Advisory Board formed – Peter Gabriel, Peter Draper, Nancy Dickenson and Josh Ulm
June 2012 – Pearson Corporate became a client
July 2012 – New bespoke Studio built in Manchester, our headquarters
Aug 2012 – PayPal became a client
Nov 2012 – NBC became a client
Dec 2012 – Great Fridays  = Product & Service design company with offices in four locations including two new studios in San Francisco and New York opening January 1st 2013 (headcount of 50+ full time employees)

Before the end of 2012 – … some more exciting news coming  to further our credibility in the Product & Service Design space.

2013…the journey continues and the US adventure as Great Fridays Inc begins its first full year.

A great year and a happy birthday indeed.  We look forward to celebrating in style with the whole team taking a trip up to our annual party in the Lake District on Friday, another Great Friday!

This week Pierre and Stacey take a look at social media and the impact that it has had on both micro and macro levels of society. This week’s blog explores how we consume content via social media. Pierre’s perspective comes from the individual and the way that social media has transformed behaviour on a personal level. Stacey’s perspective is a broader one that looks at how social media has influenced the way that society experiences events.

Social media and the individual

In 2007, social media entered my life. Without knowing it that day, the simple task of creating a Facebook account altered the way I consume content, interact with people as well as creating new habits and dependences.

I can’t really remember how I used to do things before having a smartphone and wasting time on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or my newest app. Social media has gradually and slowly taken more and more space in our lives without us noticing it. The days where I used to read a book or listen to my gigantic portable cd player on my 2 hour train journey to Paris are long gone. Now I have a 3 min walk to work and I still find the time to check my news feed on Facebook. I’m doomed….

Let me set the scene for you: As I’m trying to multitask on my way to work, my 3 minute walk becomes an episode of Total Wipeout, trying to walk on a paved street, avoiding unhealthy looking Mancunian pigeons and other determined workers while checking my Twitter & Facebook feeds. Tell me that I don’t deserve the £10k grand prize. Understandably, you’ll disagree with me and advise me to practice multitasking in the safe environment of the workspace but social media has its own ways and like a drug, it becomes addictive.

And the reason behind putting my life on the line during my morning walk? I received a push notification from Facebook. A friend, who actually is not really a friend because we’ve not talked in 5 years, commented on my status and for some reason, it can’t wait. I have to check it out. Now. This example is to my mind characteristic of what new technologies and social media brought us while on their way to World domination: immediacy.

We are impatient users, we want things and we want them now and our weapon of choice is our smartphone. Being pretty much connected 24/7 to the W3 via Wifi, 3G and now 4G does not give us time for ourselves anymore. Every moment of your down time is filled with a new task: Web browsing, online shopping, watching movies, social networking, you name it. And when we’re actually doing something, we struggle to remain in the moment. Our eyes are not enough anymore to capture what we experience, we have to check in, share it and apply filters in our quest of likes, retweets and virtual fame.

Don’t get me wrong I still think that new technologies, Facebook and social media in general are great. There are loads of examples of Facebook being the catalyst to so many amazing stories but I’m starting to acknowledge the impact of it all and I’m not sure I like it.

Social networking apps & sites speak highly of the fact that they bring people together. In a way yes, but half of these people that use social media, do so from mobiles. The experience, on top of being virtual, is also completely individual in nature and by doing it we’re shutting down what’s really happening around us.

Look around when having a drink in a bar or sitting at a table in a restaurant and I can bet you that you’ll see more than a few people staring at their screens, checking what friends are doing instead of enjoying the moment. Chances are that I’ll be one of them.

Facebook recently published a post saying “Birthday cakes are made for people to be together. They give friends a place to gather and celebrate. But too much cake probably isn’t healthy. So birthday cake is a lot like Facebook”.

Well, I might slow down on Facebook then, but I’ll keep eating cake…

Social media and society

As Pierre discussed, we have seen social media captivate individuals. Social media channels such as Facebook have ‘sticky’ appeal. Users return to keep up to date with the latest gossip and connect with friends. However, the appeal of social media is not restricted to a few individuals. It has penetrated mass audiences and changed the behaviours of societies. It has evolved the way we consume, connect and share.

It is not uncommon these days to witness social behaviour captured and shared via the Internet. On some occasions we see anti-social behaviour and criminal offenses but the use of social media by the offenders themselves, or those looking to find them, has led to identification and prosecutions. In the past couple of months, especially in sport, we have seen perpetrators of physical and racial abuse plastered across social media platforms and their shameful actions highlighted. Social media in spite of some of its rough edges can provide these positive movements by showing that not all humanity has sunk to such levels.

2012 marked the 23rd year since the Hillsborough disaster. It is painful to think that the family and friends of those victims had to wait so long for truth and justice to prevail. It was a different time then. Had such an event happened in the last five years it is likely that the situation would have been posted online. In such circumstances we would hope that these posts would raise an alarm – a call for help. However, in 1989 immediate access to the world via online social media was none existent. Instead, the Sun newspaper would print whatever lies they wanted claiming it as ‘THE TRUTH’ and people around the World would believe it. In the technologically advanced world we live in today it almost feels surreal to imagine that something like that could happen, or take so long to provide answers and apologies. The power of social media to encourage action and justice can only be a good thing.

Although 9/11 happened in 2001, it too was not experienced in the way that we engage with events today. We relied on TV Networks to keep us updated on the terrible events that were unfolding. I remember being sat in the front room, the day before I left for university, when this story broke. I wasn’t too focused on the TV so when I first glanced at the screen I thought it was a movie. It was unreal. I was glued to the TV, trying to make sense of what my eyes were seeing. Waiting to hear what had happened and why. Today, some stories are on social networks before they hit traditional news channels. We are no longer waiting on news teams to prescribe the news, we are pulling in information from all over the place. Moving across screens to gather the latest information and reports. In some cases, we are even out there creating and sharing our own footage. In some scenarios people would rather capture a moment and upload it to the internet, rather than help a fellow human being; queue the poor guy in Aberdeen who got stuck in a bin.

It seems now that people, even in the thick of a riot, cannot help themselves from pulling out their devices and capturing the moment. We also saw this in 2011 when the UK riots happened across London. Social media played a role in instigating (Blackberry’s BBM service), sharing footage (Facebook and Twitter) and after the riots, the Greater Manchester Police even released details of convictions and sentences (Twitter).

Of course it is not just in terrible events that we see social media impacting on behaviour and the way in which we share and consume content. Social media is also used to educate and campaign for good causes.

However, if all the evidence is not present, social media can be a very immediate and damaging tool. In the past month, we have seen a very public spotlight on Lord McAlpine. Social media was used to spread allegations and share opinions on awful actions. However, it has since come to light that Lord McAlpine did not in fact commit those crimes. As a result his lawyers have identified up to 10,000 allegedly defamatory tweets about the former Tory party treasurer and are planning to sue Twitter users and broadcasters, including the BBC and ITV, for libel following the inaccurate Newsnight report into child sex abuse on 2 November.

The social media phenomenon has also changed how we experience the physical world. Many people want to capture the experiences of sports events or music gigs. The camera on a mobile phone provides the perfect tool. However, it acts as a kind of portal that users consume the experience through. Crowds are in the moment, but they are somehow removed from it as the technology stands between them and the experience, in some way. It is almost as if people have become so obsessed with capturing the event by getting that perfect Instagram image or video clip that they don’t fully absorb the experience at the time. The idea of capturing the perfect picture is not new. However, in the past those images would be gathered for personal collections and perhaps shared around a bottle of wine while sat with friends. Now, these images are trophies of events; “Take it again, I want to use it as my profile picture”. Perhaps this is reflective of the time, as we have moved from physical products to digital (we have seen this with music and film – see our blog post Life in the Cloud) perhaps we are desperate to have some evidence that we were there. In many cases e-tickets have been adopted so we no longer receive a glossy ticket as a keepsake anymore.

The interesting thing is, once you peel back the layers of technology, the needs of people have not changed that much. We still crave particular feelings and maintain particular needs. It is tempting to discuss Maslow’s hierarchy of needs at this point and explore what motivates us as human beings. This model still holds strong, it is still widely accepted and respected. However, it is important not to restrict ourselves to the triangle that we have long associated with Maslow’s theory. Pamela Rutledge makes the very interesting point that we need to consider a more complete theory to get the most from Maslow’s hierarchy. She suggests that Maslow’s hierarchy presents a simplified view of needs;

“None of Maslow’s needs can be met without social connection. Humans are social animals for good reason. Without collaboration, there is no survival. It was not possible to defeat a Woolley Mammoth, build a secure structure, or care for children while hunting without a team effort. It’s more true now than then. Our reliance on each other grows as societies became more complex, interconnected, and specialized. Connection is a prerequisite for survival, physically and emotionally”

From the individual perspective and the wider perspective of societies we are able to achieve growth and fulfillment from our connections and communication. The level of how people engage with social media is different depending on location and resources, but the crux is the same; to engage and communicate with others enables us to to achieve our needs. Social media provides us with another tool to do this and therefore it is likely that social media will continue to be popular on both the micro and macro levels.