How much of your page goes unnoticed?

You’ll find a lot of literature and best practices when searching for answers on what goes beneath the fold of your website, so Google came to the rescue and just released the Google Browser Size, a visualization of browser window sizes for people who visit Google, which you can customize to see how does this measurements fit you own website, pretty much as I did for the above screenshot.

Thankfully I’m working on the redesign of my own website for a couple of days otherwise much of what goes in here would go unnoticed

Robolamps by Robert Matysiak

via Gizmodo

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The Dyson Air Multiplier

I didn’t see it, but when I see I’ll probably react the same way they did:

Know more at the Dyson website.

Philips Design Probes

A Design Probe by definition needs to be as provocative as possible in order to attract and generate enough discussion and ideas around it as possible. A Design Probe will eventually lead the researchers to insights into our (people/consumer) mind and in particular get insights on future preferences.

Therefore Philips seems to have conceived a full program around the concept of Design Probes, certainly in an effort to continuously tap and track future trends that may open doors into mainstream issues and potentially future business solutions for them.

Here’s two of the several examples coming out of the program:

Future of Food

Off the Grid

if you’d like, you can read more about the Philips Design Probes Program or simply join the discussion at Ning.

Coca Cola Fountain of the Future

Seems that great design is all about creating a bond between shape, product and end-users!

Coca-cola is one of the most renowned brands all over the world, but isn’t prune to the fact that it’s user base seems to be increasingly moving away from it’s core business: the carbonate sodas! Their response comes in the form of the new Coke’s Freestyle fountain machine:

I’m sure that in a near future we’ll probably find machines like this pretty much everywhere and not just for drinks. But I’m delighted with the overall ideas that went behind this project:

The fountain features a vast array of beverage choices, apparently more than a hundred, which means CUSTOMIZATION! It allows local merchants to tailor the selection of drinks to fit the peculiar tastes and wishes of their customers.

It’s set to use a new, smaller syrup packaging. Coke has one of the biggest, if not the biggest supply chain in the word, therefore savings at this level are good for everyone on this planet, plus less space means a lot more variety in the machines!

As every other 21 century machine, it needs to be connected! The new fountain features an onboard computer allowing for seamless and remote monitoring, it’s the dream come true for all marketeers and supply chain managers, the perfect tool for data mining customers behaviors.

In a world about to see the end of mass production and the return of customized, local goods, it’s very interesting to see Coke joining the ranks of other companies aiming to simplify our user experience but still get a high quality service and product by redefining the way we interact with these machines.

Oh well, I’ll probably need for a while to be able to test one back here in Europe, but I confess I’m eager to test one…

Less attention => new forms of Advertising

We’re all under flooded and overwhelmed by advertisement, so everyone of us have developed different ways to address the problem, some called the ad-blindness, others advertising counter measures, some more conscious others not so much, but in the end they all resume to forms of ignoring advertising…

At this point I need to say that it has worked rather well for me, nevertheless yesterday I was caught by surprise with a campaign by Apple on NYTimes. Strangely the AD was pretty normal, no fancy graphics, no key images, just the same two guys they’ve been running for a while. What caught my attention was how somehow their behavior didn’t make sense, until I finally noticed that the campaign was run over multiple AD tiles on one same webpage!

Brilliant I tweeted!

Although the quality, immersion and interaction is completely different I managed to record a small video from it, just to be able to mention it here:

Back, while, when I was still working at SAPO I realized that stupidly running regular advertisements is much simpler and require less work than to actually plan and deliver a successful campaign, it’s not the same to say that the more money you spend, the more results you’d get (that’s yet another problem!), in a sense that if a company really need to put out their message, and especially in this times of financial burdens it requires to be a step ahead and in this case by being ingenious and deeply smart!

An ethnography primer

Great design always connects with people. Designers inspire, provoke, validate, entertain and provide utility for people. To truly connect, designers need to have compassion and empathy for their audiences. Designers need to understand the relationship between what they produce and the meaning their product has for others. And they need to observe the people they are designing for in their own environments.

AIGA, in collaboration with Cheskin, has produced a simple and straight-forward primer introducing the crucial role that ethnography plays in designing.

Objectified

A peek at the upcoming design documentary “Objectified“, by Gary Hustwit, the director of “Helvetica“.