I found this interesting little film on Facebook. It’s a description of what buddhism is about, and even though I will not judge the accuracy, I like it’s straight forwardness.
“Things are real – as they are – before we conceptualise them.” Something to reflect upon!
Also the text-to-movie technology (xtranormal) used for making the film is [...]
These are barley grains, from which you make malt and in turn beer or whisky. They come from the exposition at the Guinness brewery in Dublin, “The Guinness Storehouse”.
I guess that if you were to visit the Guinness factory some 20 years ago, you would probably be led through the factory in a group. Your [...]
Some time ago I checked in for a flight at one of the terminals of Arlanda airport, and I was confronted with this peculiar thing. A small piece of (maybe bullet-proof) glass separating the customer and the staff.
I found two things interesting about this. Firstly I wonder what went on in the minds of the [...]
A few weeks ago I assisted in a workshop for the chemical company Perstorp AB, the Warrington production site. They had found that their offices and production units were too spread out and that they needed to re-arrange parts of the plant according to new needs.
As you know the world has changed and today it [...]
Some things are so complicated that you cannot understand how they could be so just through ignorance or negligence. The complexity seems to be there by design. Like bank notes, old style airline tickets, the table of contents of medicine or the back of a PC. When discussing examples of this approach, a friend of [...]
There have been many attempts to explain what value is, and the difference between the seller’s and the buyers’ product. Here’s another one!
For the seller the deal is about costs and revenue, for the buyer it’s about the perceived value. Only what is perceived has a value for the buyer, the customer. Again, the total [...]
A few days ago I attended a seminar at Transformator, a Swedish service design agency. They showed a very inspiring presentation with concrete and tangible examples – very refreshing in a design area that is still under development and where still most of its stakeholders seem to have a different view of what service design [...]
We would understand anyway.
When the queuing time is 2,5 hours (early May, on a weekday) or more for the larger pavilions it’s an interesting alternative to visit several small pavilions and get in touch with countries you have little access to otherwise.
This is the queue to the pavilion of Saudi Arabia.
To see some highlights from big and small [...]
Even if you don’t visit one single pavilion at Expo 2010 in Shanghai, only the infrastructure and constructions around them make a fantastic experience. Just the number of flags near the entrance is breathtaking. These are 189 national flags and 57 international organization flags. The whole area, with all its components is an experience in [...]
Just watching all the world expo pavilions from the outside is a great experience. When you enter, often after a long time of queuing, you will find various expositions which can vary in quality just as any expositions.
You may conclude the types of pavilions like this:
In some cases you get a great experience of the [...]
My first impression of Shanghai, and China, is friendly and efficient. Like the Maglev train from the airport which reaches 431 km/h before it has to slow down again.
With buttons ranging from sad face to happy face you can rate your experience of the passport control officer. Signage is clear and evident, complemented with English. [...]
This Monday I attended the Visual Forum 2010 in Norrköping, co-located with the EuroGraphics 2010 conference. There seems to be a growing interest in visualization, and specifically in Norrköping they are just about to open the Norrköping Visualization Center.
With visualization as a theme you might expect a lot of designers and communication people [...]
The video has now been published on YouTube.
To see my talk at TEDxNorrmalm, 17th of april 2010, click the image or this link.
Welcome!
The concept of USP, “Unique Selling Point” or sometimes “Unique Selling Proposition”, has been widely questioned. It has been claimed that you cannot be unique these days; you have to add something else, sometimes called ESP – “Emotional Selling Point”.
Well, even if the idea is correct in some sense, I would argue that the discussion [...]
A long time ago I took this picture, and I have used it many times since, discussing our biological fundament for how we perceive and consume. How humans in their natural environment spend a large part of the day chatting, thus stimulating their brains so that they can think fast when a lion shows up! [...]
One of the stories in my TEDx talk was from a vacation in Croatia. I had some “house red wine” with my dinner one night and it was so good that I asked what kind of wine it was.
“- It’s house red wine.”
“- Yes, but I mean, what kind is it?”
“- No, we make it [...]
My talk was basically about my experiences from several creative areas, and the pattern I have seen when putting these on top of each other. Instead of a PowerPoint I used the blue and red glove so that the audience could follow the idea and make up their own minds on the pattern I am [...]
Twenty years ago there was a tea and coffee store in the block where I was living, and what always struck me when visiting it was that there was no particular smell of coffee in the shop. Today this would of course be impossible; a well dosed smell of coffee is expected [...]
The good old product lifecycle model has been questioned, but I can’t help thinking that it is a good illustration to the shift of focus that we can see.
The model in brief: when a new offering is launched your first customers will be enthusiasts and after a while the so called “early adopters” will be [...]
By now I think that the idea of how the western world has moved from an industrial state into a post-industrial state, is rather accepted. There are plenty of interesting readings to be found on and off line. I will only refer to this briefly.
What actually interests me is how this model, this shift from [...]
Literature is not really my area, but as some people I have talked to have mentioned this, I did a little research and came up with the rough sketch below. Of course literature is already from the beginning “experience” and there is not the same shift of practice from physical to mental, but still you [...]
Once upon a time, the signs around us referred to known things like natural phenomena. And symbols were given specific things. Today it has become much more complicated, but also more interesting. When we dress in the morning we choose attributes, statements and stories for ourselves and others to see.
Symbols and other signs not only [...]
Holistic, integrated product development – what does that mean? Well, if you want to be successful today and tomorrow, if you want to be innovative and competitive, then it will be too slow, inefficient and irrelevant to first develop a physical functionality and then try to powder on some experience values. You will need to [...]
In the 80’s, the largest milk producer in Sweden – Arla – was facing a decline in milk drinking. From being a standard drink at all meals, milk had started to be considered fattening and was now losing market share to mineral waters etc. Especially in restaurants this was evident – people were drinking other [...]
Last autumn I went on a train trip through Great Britain, from north to south. On this beautiful trip I saw several times, across the country, pubs being left when their surroundings had changed. The whole block may have been torn down to the ground, but the pub stays. If not large industrial or office [...]
Branding is not just about the logotype. Not even the logotype is just about the logotype. That’s what every branding expert will tell you. And they’re right!
But still, once you have managed to build a certain image and confidence, it is striking how strong the effect can be in changing both expectations and experience. Only [...]
I am trying to find the connection between all these aspects. Which are the drivers in this transition that so many products and services go through? I can see so clearly the “before and after”, in so many areas. But how can I explain it?
I think a part of it is about choice. Let’s take [...]
The shift from modernistic to post-modern, physical to mental, basic to added value can be seen in big and small. What’s interesting is how this shift of focus is scattered around all possible areas, taking place at different times. Many areas are still in the modernistic, physical, basic stage, and will still be for some [...]
Even in the major world conflicts you can see how focus has shifted from physical to mental. If you simplify this vast and complex subject into four images you may see this pattern:
World War 1: Basically traditional warfare man-to-man in the fields.
World War 2: Modernistic, industrialistic warfare added the use of not only all the [...]
Here is a first rough illustration of the shift in various areas. Of course this model is very simplified and I want to point out the aspects which are increasingly in focus, not an absolute truth!
Obviously the later aspects don’t replace the earlier. But for me the change of focus is quite evident. You may [...]
Service design is a rapidly growing area that today gets a lot of the attention concerning value creation and cross collaboration. And design. Which is good. In area after area, the potential in developing things and expressions that people actually want, as well as the need of collaboration between competencies in order to create that [...]
During my time as a guest researcher at KTH/CID* I led a project where we imagined future use of IT in a social context. Will interactive television affect future sitting room design, was one of our research questions.
To visualise one of our conclusions, that new communication channels seldom replace but rather complement others, we made [...]
Today is the second day of “The redesigning business summit” in London, with many fresh thoughts in the field between design and business.
The major theme is how design and business development will act after this recession. People will not consume as they did before. They will be more conscious about their spending but they will [...]
When I was a design student in the 80’s, “styling” was a bad word. Any element of a design that was not motivated by technical or practical functionality, or perhaps support to practically understanding the product, was dismissed as “styling”. The expressions should be based on these aspects, clad in harmonious shapes. But if these [...]
Architecture is one of the areas where “postmodern” is referred to as a special style in the 1980’s, which makes the postmodern discussion a bit tricky.
Sweden was one of the leading countries in early modernistic architecture. Functionalism was introduced at the Stockholm Exhibition in 1930. It went very well together with the upcoming creation of [...]
Motivational theories like those of Maslow and Hertzberg also follow the pattern from practical needs to experience. What they have in common is the idea that if you don’t have enough of the basics you will do what you can to fulfil these needs – shelter, food, enough salary to pay the rent. When the [...]
Since a long time, science knows that placebo is over 50% of the effect of medicines and drugs, including coffee. Still most products in this area rely on chemical performance.
This is my first example of how many product areas develop: initially focus on physical performance, then presentation and handling and after that experience and [...]
